You have purchased your domain and hosting, you've installed vBulletin and you are waiting for members and posts. Uhm, they are not coming .. now what?

What did you do to get your site known - busy and active?

i started my site a year or so before i got vB as a personal site, place to chat with school mates and general stuff. we gained a few randoms who were interested in the music parts of the site. when i switched to vB (vb 2) it started getting a few more hits and my hosting company at the time was... awful and expensive, i made a switch and got a free domain and decided to start up a gaming site. the forums hovered between the two sites and eventually turned into the forums for the gaming site (bpgaming.com) the day after all this happened I was playing DOD with a few people from CS in the same or friendly clans and after some bloodshed on some beach we decided to start up a DOD clan and used bpgaming to set it all off.

since then (5th November 2003) the site has attracted hundreds of gamers for the clans and general chat. Soon it will finally become a true gaming site with a clan on the side :D

I think the most important thing is to first get some people around you that you trust. Having a team of users (or if you trust them enough, make them moderators) will generate some base content for you. And if you have moderators at the start, they should (hopfully) feel compelled to create discussion in their forums.

Putting some content into the forums is a requirement IMO. Even if you ask friends to just talk amongst themselves in a chitchat forum is better then empty forums :D

I just invited friends, and had links from Microsoft, and of course search engines.

I started off with UBB..

I add content, get some people to come by and post... and do my best to advertise the site. Usually never works. :( Might help if I didn't start using free hosts!

After getting a domain, site, and installing vBulletin (prime forum software of choice ;)), I start to put my links to the site in my signature on other boards I'm at. At the same time, I also go around and tell my friends about the site so that they can join; if they like it, they tell their other friends.

If things go right, I start to get small traffic and hopefully start to build up from there.

Yep, customize your board. Not necessarily with hacks (vB is very feature rich out of the box) but your site needs to have a distinctive look.

Also, a couple of articles doesn't go amiss and a good "start-up team". A group of friends who will help to keep the board active til you get enough members for natural momentum. That is the biggest killer to new boards, when no one really posts and there is no reason for members to keep on coming back as there is nothing new to read. ;

Well, I have created 4 phpBB forums, 3 SMF forums, and 2 vBulletin forums. (Yes, I know, Pathetic)

Lets just say, all of them were a waste of time and energy (except the vB one). One of them was taking off, but people stopped coming.

I installed vB and made a site for a clan on UO the game I play, and well, since then posts have been climbing. From November 10th - today at 595 Posts. So, spreading the word, content, and such is my main way of attracting users.

I have tried many, many niches and all of them failed. I am trying it again, but I am not holding my breath. The biggest thing is getting the initial users to see your site and want to stay. That is NOT an easy task when there are many sites with more content, more users and most likely, better than you.


Users like quick replies and a feeling of belonging. If there is very slow activity, then people lose interest. People will go to the site with more members.

Kinda sucks for new forums, but I guess that's the way things go.

they are not coming .. now what?You're doing it backwards!

If you don't have a topic that you love to talk about, and can't round up 20 or so people who you want to invite to talk about it with...then don't bother buying the software.

Forums aren't about templates and hacks and servers and SEO--they're about people forming communities. Start with the people. Call them "beta testers" or "charter members" or somesuch. Talk to them. Build some interesting content. Fine tune your forum layout. Let your moderators practice moderating. Then publicize your forum. That way you'll have something worth reading when people come to your door.

I visit a variety of forums because I want to see what's out there. I haven't started a forum yet because I don't want to create just one more "gaming" forum, there are tons of those. So, I'm researching to see where there's a need that I can fill. Any suggestions?

I visit a variety of forums because I want to see what's out there. I haven't started a forum yet because I don't want to create just one more "gaming" forum, there are tons of those. So, I'm researching to see where there's a need that I can fill. Any suggestions?
I would suggest some, but at the moment I've started my own gaming site, so if I were to give any advice I'd give out my game plan. :p

I would suggest looking at what makes a site successful, but more importantly, why other sites have failed and build upon that. In other words, build on the failure of others and take their lessons that they should have learned and apply it to your site.

Advertisement, advertisement, AND MORE ADVERTISEMENT!!! A lot of good advertisement is word of mouth as well, tell your friends and tell them to tell their friends, also exchanging text links works well too.