1 Big Forum or Several Smaller Ones?

[rmjvol]

I've been developing a nice network of content sites over the last year. So far about 7 sites, each with its own unique, useful content. All the sites share a related parent theme but make perfect sense to be on separate domains. I have plans to develop another 10+ sites under this umbrella-theme.

With the 1st few sites, I added forums to each. Found out that community building wasn't as easy as I wanted it to be but still made some small progress. As I grow the number of sites, I see it'll be increasingly difficult to manage the separate forums. It has occurred to me that I could have the domains for the static content and use a new, kinda parent domain to host all the different forums in one location.

Kinda like having a bunch of domains like
searchengineworld.com
phpworld.com
linkbuildingworld.com
googlebotworld.com
with static content and having each link to their own forum on webmasterworld.com. The individual domain names will have strong appeal to a subset of all traffic. The parent domain name will be more generic.

Some advantages of having all forums together:

Single license of forum software to install/support

Users with different interests can be cross sold on visiting other forums & can post under a single login

Branding of the forum's domain

Easier to admin/moderate 1 larger board vs several spread out

Easier to reach "critical mass" with 1 large board

Some disadvantages of having all forums together:

Each individual domain loses some branding

Each individual domain loses some of the tight knit community feel

Inability to brand the forum to each domain

Some forums will be quite adversarial with others (*REAL* potential for flaming)

Separate forums would provide more tageted email lists if I want to market to them

So what suggestions/thoughts do you have?

1 big forum site or a forum on each domain?

[rogerd]

Rmjvol, you've done most of the work for us with your thorough list of pros & cons!

One question that might affect the decision process - how is the traffic level of the individual content sites right now? I.e., is there enough traffic to jumpstart forums on these sites?

[vkaryl]

This is a pretty bright idea given the traffic exists (see question in rogerd's post). How do you think Delphi got started? Just like that, I imagine. So you might BE the "coming Delphi".

Along with rogerd's question, you might want to consider how you're going to moderate a community of forums such as you postulate. Moderators - GOOD ones - are practically priceless. Sometimes you are able to "draft" the great posters from your forums. Sometimes for various reasons that's not a viable option. Will you have a body of site-users from which to draft mods for the forum-world you are creating?

And of course you will also need to implement the sort of forum software which facilitates search-engine access/spidering whatever (eh - no idea really what all it's called since I've no bent that way....), otherwise "getting the word out" beyond your conglomerate might be more difficult than necessary.

FASCINATING idea.... be sure you keep us informed on it, okay?

[edit: could address the question, I guess! I think the "forum world" would be the way to go.... should be obvious from my response maybe!]

[rogerd]

There's a substantial "momentum" effect with forums - it might be easier to get one larger forum going initially. Perhaps a strong individual topic forum could be relocated to the appropriate content site once it had achieved a good level of posting activity.

[fathom]

I would believe that a single forum is the way to go and the advantages of this development far out-perform the advantages of the other (and less disadvantages).

Beyond all else the "community must become its own entity for success".

1. There will always be a single master

2. Many touch-points for that single master will make active membership realized early

3. The active membership will define the boards depth and breadth (not the other way around)

4. Active membership will make moderation realized early

5. Solid moderation will in turn invoke searchers to be lurkers and faster conversion to active posters.

6. ... and lastly you will need to give up your day job! ;)

None of this is easy... but in the end "if" you start with a single community that actually defines its own limits based on "what members will do, post, comment, discuss and engage each other" ... there is nothing stopping you "at that time" from exploring other areas (or re-populating part of the archive elsewhere) with the lessons learned via the first.

The other route... (if attempting to be effective on all) divides attention to all and the likelihood of none being very successful is the better bet.