Did you achieve your goals yet?

[Cedric]

Building a forum from scratch can be an exciting and rewarding experience, but it can also be a long and challenging process. We all have different goals and visions for our forums, and it can take time and effort to achieve them.

So, let's start a discussion about it! How long did it take you to get your forum where you wanted it? Did you have a clear vision from the beginning or did it evolve over time? What challenges did you face along the way and how did you overcome them?

Some of us may have had an easy time building our forums and achieved our goals quickly, while others may have faced more obstacles and taken longer to reach our desired outcomes. But no matter how long it took, the important thing is that we kept pushing forward and never gave up on our vision.

So, let's share our experiences and insights with each other. How long did it take to get your forum where you wanted it? Let's learn from each other's experiences and support each other on our webmaster journeys!

 

[Shortie]

I remember when I had Chat Addicts from 2009 - 2017, it was a forum I randomly created with no real idea of where I wanted it to go, and just went with the flow. Slowly it built up and was quite a busy general chat forum with activity daily and I was very happy with that. I am still gutted that I had to close it in 2017 due to the sharp increase in the hosting costs at the time.

With the forum I have now, Promotion Addicts, it is still a work in progress and I do have some kind of vision for it but at the moment, taking things slow.

 

[Tracy]

Yep, I run my site, I get to post on it, and it's available for others to join if they want... that is honestly ALL that I require out of my site. Yes, I could be serviced by a simple WordPress install in several facets... but it doesn't offer the ability for others to freely participate.
The simple fact is.. unlike many.. I am not chasing users/posts (and not saying anything negative to those that do, but I simply don't care whether others participate - only that I can get data out to others)... I simply enjoy having somewhere to post my data, and allowing others to participate if they want to.

 

[ClicketyKat]

My goal for Christianity Haven didn't quite get to where I wanted, but it's been open 8 years now and we have organic discussions, have members returning daily, so I'm very happy.

Crafter Craze was a flop. I expected more from my crafting friends and people online who do crafts. They wanted Facebook Groups, not a forum. Noted.

Promotion Future is doing better than I honestly imagined! I used to work in Advertising/Marketing in Chicago back in the late 80s/early 90s and we used to run Focus Groups to get feedback. So, I did that before our Grand Opening and wow, we got 30 sign ups in a matter of a week or 2 weeks? I can't remember. I was floored. The survey results were really good and I recommend going this route for anyone wanting to open up any type of website.

 

[Tracy]

Crafter Craze was a flop. I expected more from my crafting friends and people online who do crafts. They wanted Facebook Groups, not a forum. Noted.

I could see, depending on the type of "craft"... if they used patterns, where a forum with a central repository (say in the case of XenForo, their XFRM) making patterns available could be a pull.

 

[Ravenfreak]

I've finally reached the goal of merging a few of my communities into one. There's no reason to have multiple forums that have similar niches anyways. My next goals are to make a Facebook page for my community, shut down the pages that were for the other communities and figuring out why the forum loads slow sometimes and other times it's fine.

 

[Tracy]

Facebook page for my community

If using XF...stay away from Twittercrap... I'm not sure if it's XF (doubt it) or TwitterCrap (most likely) but if you share posts with images in them, it seems that the images "disappear" from your feed after a bit.. but not the same issue with FaceBook. Seems that Elon is REALLY driving TwitterCrap into the ground.
On the TwitterCrap feed they show a blank image.. but you click on it... and miracle of miracles... the image is shown.

 

[Cory]

I generally have 10+ log-ins a day, some posts and ever so often I'll get a new member or two. I think that's a pretty good accomplishment for the goal of my forum; to provide resources for the specific forum software and offer forum support and code requests along with it. The fact that there are generally 10+ log-ins a day and people don't post much probably means they're at least using the resources of the board, which is the primary focus anyway. I think I've met my goal at this point for the most part, but I want to continue to grow and offer everyone their one-stop shop for coding related to the forum software.

 

[kolakube]

I have similar goals as @Cory and feel that I have achieved what I wanted with my forum: a place for discussion and support about my products.

A support forum is a bit of contradiction; on one hand you want activity but that activity might be bug reports and support tickets which can take time. I can say that having a public support forum makes me care that much more about quality control as all the flaws are out in view. Private support is the bane of my existence, for better or worse as I want as much open discussion as possible about my products. I am not a large company but have had a huge support forum in the past and still never needed to offer private support.

My goal has been achieved so now I am looking to grow it.

 

[Cory]

A support forum is a bit of contradiction; on one hand you want activity but that activity might be bug reports and support tickets which can take time.

I know that feeling, mainly being a part of support forums and resource forums for most of my forum life. I have plenty of discussion forums on my board, but not really that community spirit where many people participate and actively engage with one another. That could be considered a flaw of my board, but as long as I put my primary focus on the resources and not the posting activity then I think I'm doing something at least partially right.