Case Study Glitchfeed.net - a case study

[Al]

Is it possible to launch a new forum in 2025 and for it to be successful?

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I'm no stranger to forums. I've been involved in creating, managing, and contributing to them for something like twenty-two years. Twenty-two long, hard, years. I've seen forums when they were the place to be - pre-social media - and I've seen forums post-Reddit and post-Discord where their influence has waned considerably. Social media has a lot to answer for, right?

We're all mainly here because we have a forum, right? Some fresh, some established. Each in a fight for survival against the behemoths of Reddit/Discord/Facebook/X and others. It's hard enough if you have an established community or vast sums of money to throw at paid posting. But is it possible to launch a forum now and make it a successful one? No community, no audience, no money(?), nothing in the advertising budget. Just a dream, hard work, and a little bit of creativity. Well, let's see.

I thought it might be good to track the development of this project somewhere, and Administrata seemed like the perfect place to do it. I'll keep this thread updated on how we're doing, what we're doing, the successes and the failures. So let's start with what we have so far:

https://glitchfeed.net - Gaming • Culture • Tech

I wanted something which captured the things that I am interested in without just being a game forum or just being a general forum. I thought that focusing on three distinct sections would work out well. Three is always a good number (two is never enough and four is too many!). We have a gaming section (obvious), a culture section (think fandoms but also media, music etc.) and a tech section (technology news, the future, gadgets and hardware). Generic enough to give everyone something to talk about, but not too generic - if you know what I mean. I've always thought that general discussion forums are the easiest ones to get off the ground as pretty much anything goes. I wanted to channel that ease of posting but at the same time give the appearance of being niche.

So far there is only me and I'm doing my best to make the forum look nice. Visually appealing websites keep people on them long enough to get a flavour for what's going on. I'm also starting to put some seed content down. We have sixteen main sections ignoring off-topic and official sections. I want to have at least five posts in each section - so I'm working towards 80 posts pre-launch.

Let me get your feedback on the concept. And let me know if you have any questions or if you think this is a good idea or not (forum and the case study). I'll be back in a bit.

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[InMyOpinion]

I love the passion and honesty in your post. I can tell this is something you've thought about for a while and it's amazing that you're taking the leap and bringing GlitchFeed to life, especially seeing as though forums really have to fight for attention. It's really inspiring. =)

I'll be totally real with you, I'm not big in gaming or tech, I mean I play Mario Kart & Mario Party on the N64 every once in a while, but other than that I'm not really gaming, so this isn't really my niche. However, I do love forums, and I love seeing people build something from the ground up, and I especially love when people can create spaces around the things they are passionate about.

The 3-section approach makes a lot of sense and I think it helps give it personality without boxing it in too much. Plus, I think your plan to seed content going before launch is such a smart move as the early groundwork really makes a difference.

I'm actually really excited to see how this develops, and I'll definitely be following your updates. Even though I may not have the most relevant feedback on tech stuff I am definitely cheering you on!

Excited to see where this goes

 

[Ravenfreak]

I love the name of the site! As a huge gaming nerd and forum nerd you know I'm interested in your new forum! I'll definitely be joining whenever it opens up to the public.

 

[Al]

Slowly but surely getting there. Looking at opening the doors next week. Let's brainstorm!

What should I do for the first week to encourage growth? One idea I had was to offer premium membership for free for life for the first X number of members. As I said above, trying to do this with "no money(?), nothing in the advertising budget" so handing out cold hard cash to encourage sign ups is off the cards. Also planning on doing this without paid posters. Post exchanges are okay, but I'm not going to pay for posts. Let's stay real.

 

[InMyOpinion]

Ooo I like that you're looking for outside ideas because honestly sometimes coming up with ideas for your own forum can be difficult and it's easier to come up with ideas or thoughts when there are many people thinking about a subject and also, it'll help also help you get feedback on what members want and are looking for on that kind of niche.

Anyways, here are some of my thoughts that I think may help encourage growth without having to put money into it. One thing I really really enjoy on new forums are founding members perks, that could be lifetime premium for the first x number of members, maybe create a "founding member (or maybe Founding Glitch" badge or user title. For some reason I really love going on forums and being able to know who's been there since the beginning and who has helped shape the community.

Another suggestion is something I see a lot, is possibly doing posting packages exchanges or buying posting packages on forum administration sites about 3-5 days before the launch date so there is a lot of threads/posts to reply to and it looks like your forum is active from the get-go. I'm actually thinking of doing this myself and I hope it does help encourage new members to want to post and be part of the community.

One thing that I've also seen help activity and get people to join/post is having a launch party thread. Just a place where members can come say hi and possibly even a small introduction.

Possibly think of a contest or event that you can have for when the forum launches. Some of the contest/events I've seen that have worked in the past are best intro threads, a "Threadstarter Supreme" if you will. Most helpful user (or "Helper Core" if you want) or possibly user who's created the most quality content ("Core Upload". Members tend to love events and contests and sometimes some competition is fun and adds great valuable content on your forum.

Something I'm thinking of doing for my forum open-door event is to create a referral rewards encouraging members to refer other people to the forum. Their reward could be anything from a custom banner or badge. Possibly even think about creating a "Hall Of Fame (Or Leaderboard Archives") or Referral Legend" (Signal Spreader) where you can recognize members who are referring a lot of solid & active members. One thing I've noticed on forums is that members LOVE to be recognized and acknowledged.

In addition, you can create a signature that members can use to put on their signatures on other forums/sites so it can help you advertise. I've seen it work for some forum admins.

One thing that I find very important to have on a forum is to have a "How did you find us" thread so you know what advertising avenues are working and which aren't.

I hope these ideas help even if you don't implement them, it may help you with ideas on what you can do on your forum. I wish you and your forum all the best and look forward to when the forum gets launched.

 

[Ravenfreak]

I also think the badge for early members could look a bit glitchy, to match with the name of the forum! I think it'd be cool to see. When I first opened my forum, Free to be us I had a "Early bird" group where the first few members who joined got placed in the group and they had their own hidden lounge.