Topic: Long story short, your forum is dead in the water without a few other posters.

[confuseamuse]

I've been looking through this board for advice on how to build my forum, and while I think the advice is good, there was only one that applied to my situation.

However, all you need before to make a forum is 5-10 close friends with same interest, then open a discussion about the forum.
By working alone, you'll never get a successful forum.

Trust me, I am ASIAN one of many owners of successful forum since 2010 (That time I am still 13).
These screenshots below explained.

Forum:


Chatbox (from mod SimplePortal):

I honestly thought this was the only problem I had to worry about, realistically speaking. My friends aren't interested in the content I want to make my forum about, which is really discouraging as I can't justify keeping it open. I have a lot of topics I want to make, but what's the point without someone else to interject and add their opinion to.

So, this post isn't really about helping me, but I want to say to those considering opening a forum, make sure you have at least one other person interested in your forum's content. It is really difficult to make attractive content if it's just you. I'm not saying it's impossible, but unless you are able to commit to posting regularly (and by regularly, I mean daily) with no other input for a long LONG time, it won't get off the ground.

[Arantor]

Yup, completely agree - starting a forum needs other people involved to make it work. No-one wants to join a forum that has no-one in it.

The environment where you want to make attractive content to share with other people without having an audience feeding it is a totally different thing, it's called blogging

[confuseamuse]

Yup, completely agree - starting a forum needs other people involved to make it work. No-one wants to join a forum that has no-one in it.

The environment where you want to make attractive content to share with other people without having an audience feeding it is a totally different thing, it's called blogging

That's literally the format for all of my posts at the moment. The best I can hope for is either my friends come around and contribute or I manage to attract people intending to "comment", then realising it's a forum, so they can make their own posts. Either that, or I shut the whole thing down.

[Rust]

Indeed, Empty Restaurant Syndrome (ERS) exists for forums and some other forms of online venues.  No one, particularly in this day and age, is going to bother with a dead community.  Add in outdated technology and you've got yourself a ghost town from the word go.  You need a small group of committed folks, no flakes, to have any realistic chance of getting a forum off the ground.  Don't have that and you are just wasting your time and money.

[lostpathway]

I'm kind of in this stage. I and a friend are pretty dedicated to the forum, with two or so others who are irregular in participation. We're new, and so it's the struggle to find other people who share a similar niche interest who'd want to participate. Racking my brain for ways to reach out to others.

[landyvlad]

I'm kind of in this stage. I and a friend are pretty dedicated to the forum, with two or so others who are irregular in participation. We're new, and so it's the struggle to find other people who share a similar niche interest who'd want to participate. Racking my brain for ways to reach out to others.

Social media groups for that interest area? (facebook etc)

Friendly with any shops relevant to your area?  (eg a dealership for a vehicle forum that may allow you have an ad at their customer service desk).



Another question you need to ask yourself, is the forum focus too narrow?
Consider, for example, the difference between a 'Chevrolet" forum, a "Chevrolet Corvette" forum and a "1967 Corvette" forum.