It really surprises me these days that there are number of websites there are popping up that are just forums with 0% actual content contributed by the webmaster. Setting up a forum is easy, even a small kid can do that by just reading the documentation provided by a free solution like phpbb.

I'm sure 99% of these type of websites fail and I can't help but wonder why bother in the first place creating a website like this.

Scribbller's thought for the day

I added my forum 2 months after my content site had been running and had a PR of 2 so I was getting around 500+ unique hits per day, with the forum I immidiately got 20 new members on the first day and at the end of the first week I had over 100 members.

Oh wow. Congrats Scribbller ... do you know how long it took daniweb to get 100 members?! In any case, you'd be surprised how successful forum-only sites could be! Just check out webhostingtalk.com as an example. DaniWeb started as forums-only, and for the most part, we still are. At least more than we are a news / blogs / tutorial site

I tend to agree with Dani! It is not like forums only site don't succeed! It is the content which makes any site succeed!

If you make good informative posts on your forums and give a way to people to find them then your forum site is as good ad a content site!

The reason to start a forum is because you hope that members will provide all of the content - i.e. less work for you. The problem is that without content you have no members, and without members you have no content.

I've seen a number of sites which have always been just the forum and actually the focus was all over the place. The only thing is that all of them started with something very specific and then as the member-base grew, they were able to expand into any different areas. I think that some people look at forums like that and decide to mimic them; the only thing is that they missed that year or two when the site resembled nothing like is it today.

I am not having a go at Daniweb or any specefic sites, I love Daniweb personally and Dani you have probably put in as much work as the webmaster of say yahoo did when he started up if not more. Besides daniweb aint just a forum, it provides good content through tutorials and blogs aswell. The thing is with a forums only site you will never ever get as much visitors as you truely can with a content front end. There is a very good article by Ted S that explains it, Ill try and get hold of it if I can find it.

Going through the beggining stages myself. It's hard to know if I should provide all the content myself or wait for others to provide. It doesn't look great if all posts and information are from the administrator. Been up a week with 33 members but I know many many more are looking, just not joning in yet.

Thats exactly my point why should one wait for others to provide content, its your site so you should be giving your hundred percent to it. This is where Daniweb is different, dani does not wait for others to provide content she makes sure that she answers each and every thread with good content. Same goes for other successfull forum only sites. You just cant install a forum and call it a site and wait for others to provide content for you.

Very true - I started << url snipped >> to allow people to discuss products and articles posted on my review sites. It's just been up for a couple of weeks, so there is not much there yet. But I am hoping once my traffic start to pick up there will be more signups and posts made.

I had a custom cross posting script created that pops a link on an article to the thread on Talk Shack and on the thread itself it also posts a link back to the article itself (basically cross linking themselves).

The benfit to that is, let's say you are looking for a new keyboard, you might run into this item on Hardware Ranking << url snipped >> - and yes, although there are a few reviews listed and it gets a good average, there is a link smack under the summary - Discuss This Product which brings you to << url snipped >> where you can discuss this item with other owners or prospective buyers about pros and cons.

Atleast that is the idea behind it all, the different sites give content by cross posting information and others will provide content by commenting on the different items but I expect to be a huge part of the community as well ofcourse, just like Dani is here.

Although this post may sound self servicing in its purpose, it was meant to show that there is a lot of work involved in getting a forum off the ground and yes, there is nothing more sad than a bunch of forums with 7 posts in them and the owner cannot figure out why.

--Tone

Sorry I had to snip your post, Shackbase We sorta have a policy in the Internet Marketing forums where we don't allow any self-promotion URLs of any kind, even in context. If you like, go create a forum signature, and then post in our Site Reviews forum, if you haven't done so already

However, I really cannot say this enough. (In fact, I think I did mention it in a few other posts but I can't find them now so I'll just reiterate.) Forum members are selfish for the most part! When someone visits a forum and posts a question, all they care about is whether their question is answered correctly and quickly. They don't care whether everyone else's questions are answered - they just care about the one question or comment they have just posted. This can be a wonderful thing to get a new forum off the ground. It means that it isn't hopeless if a forum looks empty - all that matters is that when a new member does post, someone answers them right away. If there's no one else there to answer it, then YOU as the admin answer it. The member isn't going to care if the forum is empty as long as their post was replied to - and they'll keep coming back and spread word of mouth.

Thats ok Dani - they were there to prove a point, no biggie.

And ofcourse you are right about the admin being responsible about getting back to their posters if nobody else is... a bunch of solo posts is a sad thing.

--Tone

btw - Dani.... When you snipped (that sounds so cruel by the way :o) - did you manually edit the post or do you have some kind of nifty script to do it for you?

--Tone