No one likes to come to a new board which has 100 forums and over half of them are empty, it just doesn't work out well. Keep it simple, keep it easy. Make some more general forums to start off with, you can always expand later. An example is you have a Gaming forum. You dont start with a category for each console, or a forum for each GAME.. That's just silly. No No: Code: `Xbox 360 `- Xbox 360 Games `- Xbox 360 Clans `- Xbox 360 Discussion ` PC `- PC Games `- PC Clans `- PC Discussion Yes: Code: `Platform Discussion `- Xbox 360 `- PC You can ALWAYS expand later, start simple, and grow the site as your community grows.
RE: [TIP] Keep the number of forums LOW That's a great idea. Not to mention the fact that I have seen so many dead sites with empty forums just because of this reason. Though, if you have people who are going to fill them for you before you release your site to the public then thats fine, but most people dont utilize that strategy. Also, when you buy the domain for your site make sure your main forum is included in it. Like your example Xbox360 and PC you should have something dealing with them in the domain name. I would probably suggest using Xbox360 in the domain name on that one
RE: [TIP] Keep the number of forums LOW I agree. Gradually add more boards on popular demand or when your forum gets bigger and requires it. Too many new forums these days open with so many different sections that is gets confusing as HELL, lol. I usually stay away from the forum because of the confusion as do a lot of people. Don't get me wrong though, when I first started I did it too and I learned from my mistakes.
RE: [TIP] Keep the number of forums LOW My smallest forum only has two boards (Plus announcements, introduce yourself, and general chat). Having less boards also increases the number of threads per board, which makes everything look more active.
RE: [TIP] Keep the number of forums LOW Empty forums look bad. 5 or 6 forums with 20 posts each looks worse than 2 forums with 100 posts each.
I often review forums for people and tell them they have too many categories, especially new ones. They could easily combine their categories, so they might have 5 categories each with 100 posts in. But instead they choose to have 20 categories, each with 5 or so posts in and some empty - it makes the forums look even more dead than they are.
Yeah, not only will most threads go unanswered, but if you give people that many choices, only some forums will get any use and it will be much more spread out (less of a community and more of groups). Most people don't want to use the XBox 360 forum for more than one thing, so why give them specific options?
Yeah I don't like going to forums that have about 20 sections, and only 4-5 are regularly posted in. On my forum I just have what I think it absolutely necessary for the topic of my forum.
