Now that we have picked our forum software as discussed in the third tip in our “In the Beginning” series we must begin to look at design and implementation. This is the part where you need to do a bit of planning as well as outlining. We must keep a few things in mind when establishing a brand new forum. First, you need to keep the number of forums to a number equal or less than 10. I feel this is the magic number so to speak. The less forums you have in the very beginning, the better. It isn’t always the case that you can do this, but try your very best. Keep in mind that you will only be seeing 20-100 posts a day in most cases for the first few weeks, and you definitely want your forum to “appear” as populated as possible. Guests and lurkers coming to your site don’t want to see empty forums or forums that have been posted in for 2-3 days. The smaller number of forums you can have the better. Of course as your membership grows and the daily posting activity increases, you will be able to expand your forums. I like to do this on a “need only” basis. For example, I waited for more than 3 years to break up the General Discussion forum on Sprint Users and create a separate category and forum group for our members to discuss phone manufacturers. Only expand when there is a need to expand. Less forums that are busy look much better than a long list of forums that are dead. I hope you have enjoyed the 4th tips from our “In the Beginning” series.
Thanks for all the great tips. I started my forum this December so it’s still young, but hopefully it will keep growing.