by Ash 2 comments

5 Top Tips For Your New Forum Launch

Table of contents

The launch of your newly created community can be a nerve-racking and sometimes frustrating time. Everything needs to be perfect because one bad aspect of your newly created forum can be the difference between success and failure. But what are the best things to do to prepare for your new forum launch?

1.    Don’t Rush

The most important thing that you need to remember is to not rush your launch. This is something that can be observed quite a lot. People get excited, a little bit too much, and want to launch their new community as soon as possible. They don’t have the patience to slowly work on their site and launch it when it’s ready.

Illustration by Finn Reville from Ouch!

A poorly planned community will fail 9/10 times because first impressions are very important. A user will visit your new forum, see how nothing is ready, and leave. They won’t waste their time coming back again. So the first thing that you need to do is install the forum software and put a massive “Coming Soon” page for your visitors. Hide your forum until it’s ready.

2.    Prepare Your Forum

Everything about your forum should be carefully planned and prepared. Your theme should match your niche and be carefully customised so that everything looks good and works as intended. The categories and forums should be set up with informative descriptions and in a logical layout and order. Your brand should be easily identifiable and unique. When all these items are prepared well, it gives a very good first impression and users are much more likely to give your forum a chance by joining.

Before you work on your forum, create a plan for everything so that nothing looks out of place and everything flows correctly in the right direction.

3.    Define Forum Rules

Illustration by Anna A from Ouch!

Your forum rules and guidelines should be well defined and posted on the forum before its launch. The last thing that you want is to have a user break a potential rule that they didn’t even know was an issue. It gives off an unprofessional view of your community when you have to private message a user and give them an unofficial warning about something they weren’t even aware of.

For more information, read our other article on Forum Rules – The Fine Line Between A Lawless And Welcoming Community.

4.    Hiring Staff

One mistake that a lot of owners make is hiring a large number of staff members that aren’t required. A new forum will have a few hundred posts split between a few users. Do you need multiple moderators to manage that content? A forum with a large number of moderators will look bad because all potential users will see is a forum with content only being posted by staff members.

Users want to discuss topics with a variety of different users, not just staff members. Hire one moderator to help you out with moderation duties whilst you focus on admin duties.

5.    Pre-Launch Content

Make sure that when you launch your new forum, the categories and forums have all been filled with content from different users and not just staff members.

One good that you can do is to have a brief “beta-testing” period. Invite a few users from some promotion forums to test the different features on your forum and to help create some new content. It can help make your forum look active especially if the existing content is from regular members and not just staff members. In exchange for their wonderful work, you can give them a special rank or a few added bonuses when the forum officially launches.  

Of course, these tips won’t guarantee a successful forum launch. But they can help you remove some of the most obvious mistakes that an owner can make before they launch their new forum. We wish you the best of luck with your new project!

Illustration by Irene M. Ray from Ouch!

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Darth Cognus

Renowned member

162 messages 76 likes
#1 Dec 14, 2023
  1. This is good, only note is: don't rush but don't dawdle either. A steady sustainable plan lest you and any partners start slipping off the board and the place dies in its infancy. But not rushing is critical, I've had this one the hard way involving community forks from an existing platform, something which has to be paced and executed just right.
  2. I'm weird but in some ways I do think a scrappy, slightly unfinished look can be a selling point. Obviously the place needs to work and be free of huge bugs but a) putting too much time in perfection can raise my note on point 1 and b) there is a certain charm to finding a place that is actively working out quirks here and there, you've already done your bit if the overall experience is decent, can be engaged with and has an audience.
  3. This ties in well with point 2: being too completionist, having a full deck of rules right out of the gate risks intimidating prospective users. There is a critical moment of being part of something new that can be stifled if you already have a chonky rules list. Some guidelines are all well and good, do that, but I've seen people go on with pages of policies and that's just not the way to build up, you're not ready to do that. There's really nothing wrong with a gentle reminder via PM if it's truly necessary to keep people on the right page. Its an opportunity to come off as friendly, engage with the user, and perhaps make a friend through careful attention. And solve whatever issue of course, if it merits such a message. People in good faith generally will not start off breaking reasonable rules. This happens when people who push boundaries appear which I covered in the other thread.
  4. This is solid. If you're brand new I'm not sure you even need a mod unless you're preparing for a volatile landing or need to get staff-level content running quickly. In which case this ties in very well with 5: what you really need is content producers and interested people to get off the ground running.
  5. This is a point that needs to be timed well with appealing to the actual niche you want. Frankly it comes off when you're buying content bundles or doing post exchanges with uninterested people. Generic thread hooks come off as exactly that. The specialized interest should be in sooner than later to give people something tangible to grasp on. Otherwise you start off with pre launch content from a content bundle lacking in particular knowledge or interest which could even turn off people with a deeper interest that see vapid content. It's not easy because to get off running you kind of already need to be in the community you're trying to start. To bring together people who are otherwise organically interested in what you're on about, and offer a platform they'll actually use. It's possible to do it the other way but when forums are already a bit of a rough sell, you probably want to roll as few dice on this as possible.

Food for thought...

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Nomad

Service Team

1,120 messages 514 likes
#2 Jan 23, 2024

Based on my experience I can say, if you dod not have handful of friends willing to help you without asking for money, you cannot become successful with your forum.

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