How to start discussion forum

[herofan]

I'm curious as to how one starts and maintains a discussion forum. I'm not interested in competing with this one, but thought I might start one on another topic. How does one start? Do we Google "starting a forum" and have all kinds of options? Is it expensive? Does it take a lot of time to maintain? I notice that some forums look generic while others are distinctive? I'm sure I'll never do it, but just curious.

 

[Tim/South]

Good fourms are expensive to run and maintain. The more traffic you have, the more bandwidth you use and pay for. Adds help and can show a little profit. Just depends on the type of advertisers interested.
It tasks good great Admin and Moderators to keep things from getting out of hand. A lot is deleted before the average member ever sees it. Spammers, mostly p.orn, are constantly trying to sneak in a link. There are hired spammers now who will join and once in begin to spam. They can generate a lot of hits before detected and banned. That is why on this forum a new member must have their first few posts approved before they are visible on public.
It takes a long time to develop a forum and a following. Most forums do not make it.
Keeping a forum like this going is a challenge. Been there, done that.

 

[herofan]

Good fourms are expensive to run and maintain. The more traffic you have, the more bandwidth you use and pay for. Adds help and can show a little profit. Just depends on the type of advertisers interested.
It tasks good great Admin and Moderators to keep things from getting out of hand. A lot is deleted before the average member ever sees it. Spammers, mostly p.orn, are constantly trying to sneak in a link. There are hired spammers now who will join and once in begin to spam. They can generate a lot of hits before detected and banned. That is why on this forum a new member must have their first few posts approved before they are visible on public.
It takes a long time to develop a forum and a following. Most forums do not make it.
Keeping a forum like this going is a challenge. Been there, done that.

Thanks for the info. I ask because I was a member of an couple of forums a few years ago concerning The Andy Griffith Show and Bonanza, which were run by the same person, which no longer exists. I've never found another forum quite like them. They were nice looking forum with pictures, history, and all kinds of stuff. The Bonanza forum had a huge number of regular posters, probably more than I've seen on any other forum.

The thing i liked was that everyone was so nice. There were no formal moderators; the forum owner took care of it, but there was little to take care of. I don't recall any regular members creating issues that had to be dealt with. I remember a couple of times where someone new signed up just to cause trouble, but aside from that, it was calm, but very active. A couple of former members tried to create new sites, but they are practically dead. I'm sure i wouldn't have any better luck.

I found I could relate to the people, like on this forum.

 

[Nesikep]

I was a mod on a a friends local forum, before facebook came around, it was a typical chat place. yes, bandwidth costs, and you need good moderators, as they're the face of your site. i think we had about 100 active members or so and had monthly get togethers.. still have a few friends from there.

Design is really not that incredibly hard unless you really get fancy and go with a completely unique look. There is also a 'hump' you need to get over when attracting people.. it's hard to get it interesting before you have a certain number of posts.

 

[Putangitangi]

How hard it is probably depends on who it's for. I run a hosting service for a few sites (I'm the middle-person between my clients and a company which sells me the space and by having a few clients can cut costs for us all) and one of them runs a forum. I've also set a couple up over the years using free forum packages, but they've been essentially private, with invited membership only. One was for a group of young girls who mainly attended the same school, to give them some online experience while they were too young for public social media sites. The other was a group of women I pulled together so we could have meaningful political discussions without the interference of trolls. I think my client's forum is open to anyone, but I don't know how big the membership is. She doesn't seem to be sucking up too much of my traffic allowance.

I belong to a farming site here in NZ which has mostly been friendly and polite, reflecting the personality of the person who runs it, I guess. Some unpleasantness occurs from time to time, but generally there's very little moderation in terms of stopping people being nasty. Because that community is helpful, pleasant and supportive, the trolls don't seem to stick around long when they find us, perhaps because we don't respond as they expect.

 

[Brute 23]

Its not that bad. Most of the places that will build you a website can also do a forum. We started one from scratch with another group I am part of.

The computer side is easy... its that BS that will kill you. Every one always says... If I had a forum I would... but its not that easy.