The #1 Mistake For New Forums
 

After much discussion with many forum owners over the years, both giving advice, getting advice and feedback, it seems pretty apparent that the #1 mistake for all new forum owners when establishing their new forums is:

• Over-complicating the forum structure (too many forums)

Creating a new forum is often extremely rewarding, though quickly becomes frustrating when new members aren't signing up, or they are, but aren't participating. K.I.S.S - Keep It Simple Stupid is still the most effective principle online and within life today. The simpler you keep it, the more people gravitate towards it.

Whilst you may see forums with millions of posts and 50 forums, often you will find they didn't begin that way. I remember reading Digital Point mentioning this the other day here which I forgot to comment on. Forums grow over years, as do there structures based on the actual topics generated by the user base. There is nothing worse than seeing a new forum with 20 or 30 topic forums, all near empty, yet very close in topic nature.

Create a handful of forum topics to begin, as a busy forum look is better than a ghost town look. This is marketing 101. What looks busy to the eye may not, but it will garnish more interest just because it looks busy. Think coffee shops. Most are small, and with a few people in them, they look busy, so passer bys walk in and get a coffee / snack. Its all marketing. Look how many large coffee shops close down because they are so large, yet can have a small crowd in them at any given time, yet size and space determines to the eye they are not good because they are not busy for the size.

Forums are the same. Create a few generic topic forums to begin and members post within those areas. As more and more threads of the same topic are being created under one forum, you then break those away into their own forum topic, thus allowing that new forum to build as well. You repeat the process from a generic title to actually build your forum structure based on what is the most popular of topics.

Just thought I would share my two cents from marketing and forum experiences.