What's the most important thing when starting a forum?

[Shole]

For me it's the function of the forum, what do you want it to be?
A heated debate forum over fandoms?
A place for support?
Just a chill zone?
That's for me the important thing. After that you know your target base and you can easily focus on growing your forum.

 

[Jason]

It would be keeping spambots and hackers out. However, that's not very tough to do if you know how. My early experiences with forums were a nightmare - which due to my immaturity, got me thinking spambots were real people.

 

[Kane]

Niche and goals, both are very important. If your niche is not interesting, you may not be able to attract a lot of members. If you are not clear about what you want to achieve with the forum, or let say if you are unsure about your forum goals, your forum will never succeed.

 

[saoussen5766]

It would be keeping spambots and hackers out. However, that's not very tough to do if you are know-how. My early experiences with forums were a nightmare - which due to my immaturity, got me thinking spambots were real people.

You have to install stopforumbot extension if you are xenforo or vanilla or install captcha if MyBB or PhpBB. Also, the time between 2 messages is one minute. Additionally, users with low than 50 messages are manually approved.

 

[BrolySSJ]

I think that for me the most important would be how the forum is going to be managed and what systems can be put in place in order to remove and reduce the spammers.

 

[Kane]

Deciding between paid software and free software is also very important while starting a forum. If you want to start with a paid software you might have to spend around $300 (domain, hostin g, subscriptions, add-ons), you will have to renew ever year and it might cost you money