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My first forum

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Megaman94:
So, I decided to make a forum for anyone who is a fan of the Sonic community. However, it has been over 2 years and I have not reached 20 members. I don't even have a moderator for the forum, it is just me running it and I don't know much about phpBB. I can get members to join, but they never visit again once they sign up.  I have ask for other people's help, but they turned me down. I really need help with this. I want this forum to succeed. Smash The Echidna got Kapus to help with his forum. How the hell did he do that?

http://sonicfansunited.forumotion.com/

Kapus:

--- Quote from: Megaman94 on August 10, 2016, 01:50:08 AM ---Smash The Echidna got Kapus to help with his forum. How the hell did he do that?
--- End quote ---
lol

Well, first of all Smash is my brother so it's pretty easy for him to ask me for something. Secondly I didn't really help all that much with the forum, as there wasn't much to even help with. I just kinda hung around (I was there before smash even joined and adopted the forum as his own). Also, thirdly I guess, that was about..uhhh, 8 years ago I think???

What purpose does this forum serve, exactly? If you're going to run a site (especially if it's just a forum) you're going to need a reason for people to want to come there. It's not really easy to forge a community if you don't have a lot of foundation for one. You haven't really said much other than it's for sonic fans, which is probably too broad. There are a lot of sonic fansites on the net already with their own forums and communities. Why's someone going to go here if they could go to an existing place (e.g. Sonic Retro) that already has a bustling community?

 Individual forums have a much harder time surviving in this age than they did about a decade ago, I might add. With the increase in social media and wikis and stuff, people don't really use traditional forums that often, so starting and growing one is going to be harder than ever. You're probably going to have to narrow it down to more specific interests to get people to partake. For example, Smash's site is (somewhat ambiguously) meant to be for Sonic fanfiction and roleplaying specifically, rather than just being a "sonic forum". Even then though his site is pretty much dead because the sonic fanon community is all gathered together on the sonic fanon wiki.

I dunno what kind of help we can offer you.

SmashTheEchidna:
That about sums it up, and also is pretty much the reason why I turned you down multiple times. My forum is really just a small little place for me, my siblings and few friends to hang out and post things every now and then. I post updates to personal projects I work on, which convince a few to stop by on occasion. But, I stopped trying to make a community out of it a long time ago, and I'm not interested in working on a new forum from the ground up.

Like Kapus said, you should give people a reason to show up. Are you hosting roleplays or contests? Writing fanfiction? Showcasing some other kind of project that people will be interested in? Like for example, people are here on Cutstuff mainly because of Cutmanmike's two games: MM8BDM and GvH. What do you have to offer?

Megaman94:

--- Quote from: Kapus on August 10, 2016, 06:02:12 AM ---What purpose does this forum serve, exactly? If you're going to run a site (especially if it's just a forum) you're going to need a reason for people to want to come there. It's not really easy to forge a community if you don't have a lot of foundation for one. You haven't really said much other than it's for sonic fans, which is probably too broad. There are a lot of sonic fansites on the net already with their own forums and communities. Why's someone going to go here if they could go to an existing place (e.g. Sonic Retro) that already has a bustling community?

 Individual forums have a much harder time surviving in this age than they did about a decade ago, I might add. With the increase in social media and wikis and stuff, people don't really use traditional forums that often, so starting and growing one is going to be harder than ever. You're probably going to have to narrow it down to more specific interests to get people to partake. For example, Smash's site is (somewhat ambiguously) meant to be for Sonic fanfiction and roleplaying specifically, rather than just being a "sonic forum". Even then though his site is pretty much dead because the sonic fanon community is all gathered together on the sonic fanon wiki.

--- End quote ---

--- Quote from: SmashTheEchidna on August 12, 2016, 03:28:34 AM ---Like Kapus said, you should give people a reason to show up. Are you hosting roleplays or contests? Writing fanfiction? Showcasing some other kind of project that people will be interested in? Like for example, people are here on Cutstuff mainly because of Cutmanmike's two games: MM8BDM and GvH. What do you have to offer?

--- End quote ---

I am working on making it more of a roleplaying forum.

Kapus:
Then you're going to have a huge competition with the juggernaut that is Sonic Fanon Wiki. Personally I find that a forum works better for roleplay than a wiki does, but you're still gonna have to convince people to come over there regardless.

Maybe start out with a couple of friends you know who might like to roleplay. Or you could first think up an actual roleplay or story or some kind of idea and then invite people over for it. If it's really good people might be interested.

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