Forum Topics

[nick898]

Every topic I've decided to start as my main theme for a forum has failed for one reason. I'm not interested enough in the topic to be persistent with the forum and patient. I like baseball but I'm not going to make a baseball forum with 30 boards for all the different team so that kicks Baseball out of there. I like the Red Sox but there are already too many Red Sox forums out there. I enjoy skiing but how will I make a skiing forum? What do I make for boards? I enjoy playing the trombone but not many people play trombone and I'm really only a beginning with the instrument. I enjoy debating and I've tried making a debate forum but it turns out I'm not interested enough in debating. I'm decent with HTML so I can't make a web design forum. I don't watch TV shows regularly. I don't make video game forums because that video game will be dead by the time my forum is popular. I don't make forums about movies for the same reason. I have gone through tons and tons of forum directories, topsites, etc... to find topics of forums I'd be interested in and here I am with nothing accomplished

You see where I'm stuck at. I can't think of any good forum topics to use that I would be interested in doing. How do you come up with a forum topic? Do you use some sort of method or do you just decide one day that you're going to make a forum about a certain topic?

[rogerd]

Welcome to WebmasterWorld, Nick898!

Let me start by asking a basic question: if you don't have a burning interest in any particular topic, why do you want to start a forum?

[nick898]

Well ever since I learned about forums I've always been interested in creating a forum with about 50-100 active posters and being the guy who created that. The one who makes the rules. It's almost like a business I guess. I like being in control of my own stuff. I once tried to make a forum with 30 board for each baseball team but that was all cluttered and ugly. I don't really have a burning passion for any topic. If I had any burning passion, it would be baseball. I was thinking of maybe making two boards for it. One for the American League and the other for the National League to decrease the amount but I wasn't sure about it. I have burning passion to be able to control my own forum with 50-100 active posters making good posts.

[rogerd]

Hmmm, well, if your passion is running a forum... I suppose you could pick any topic you find reasonably interesting and focus less on the content and more on the function of the forum.

The only problem is that in the early months, you'll no doubt have to do some heavy lifting as a poster.

[buksida]

How about a geographical or neighbourhood forum, make one for where you live. Info and news for residents, guides for tourists, bring the locals together online. I run a forum for a popular tourist destination in south east asia and it serves just that purpose, info and a meeting place for expats and a place for tourists to ask questions.

[aghill]

Nick - I'd say you don't have to be an expert in a subject to run a forum on it. I run a fly fishing forum, but am an average fisherman. If you make a conscience effort to make the site about the subject and the community, but not about you then you have a better chance at succeeding. If you like the trombone, do a site about the trombone. If you like the Red Sox, make a forum about the Red Sox. If you're not planning a business around the site, pick something you like. (That's not to say that a business can't grow from it later)

[TheDoctor]

Or find someone who's passionate about something, but computer-illiterate. You run the forum while they drive the content.

[rogerd]

Nick, if you can get your forum started, you may find some of the types that TheDoctor talks about showing up. When you see a poster show up with an obvious knowledge of and passion for the topic, be sure to engage him/her. Those contributors will make your forum tick, and may end up being mod material when you are ready to take that step.

[kriskd]

I did as buksida suggested and started a neighborhood forum. Like the original poster, I had a desire to administer a successful forum and given the competition out there, I thought this would be perfect because I already have my member base.

Well, I have only been moderately successful with my project. The challenge here is I'm "stuck" with this group of people who aren't necessarily computer literate. With a forum open to the world, you obviously got a much larger pool of people who can join.

I've actually chatted on the phone with a neighbor who had zero concept for forums. He was sure who or what he was typing to. I think I got him to understand, got him to make a few posts, but he really hasn't returned.

So in my case, getting the members has been easy. Getting them to post has been extremely difficult probably due to being computer illiterate or just shy.

It amazes me the people (myself included) that want to admin a successful forum. I read a post on a gmail swap site from someone willing to give a gmail invite if they could administer a forum!

[TheDoctor]

I'm "stuck" with this group of people who aren't necessarily computer literate

Good practice for you. Nothing comes easy in this life, and if you can get a forum working with your neighbours you'll have no problems when you move on to bigger things.

One of the lessons that's apparent from the posts made to this forum is that running a forum is a lot of hard work and demands a lot of patience.