What has been your biggest forum challenge to date?

 

How did you overcome it?

I think my biggest forum challenge to date is getting everything behind the scenes done. I am by no means a technical person so sometimes I struggle at things like making medals or special name titles etc. Anything with graphics I pretty much hire people to do because I am really not good at it nor do I have the eye for it. Give me makeup and a face and I can do wonders but give me a graphics program and an idea and I can give you something that looks like kindergartener drew haha.

 

The posting and the coming up with ideas for events, contests etc. I can do. Anything graphics I need help.

Keeping the motivation in check at all times can be a tough challenge. Sometimes you feel like drifting off your forum due to a lack of motivation. This can often be caused by little activity from your user base, the feeling that you're the only one putting in the effort, and sometimes people will try and drag you down to their level and you feel like it's pointless catering to people who do not respect you as the forum owner.

I think my biggest forum challenge to date is getting everything behind the scenes done. I am by no means a technical person so sometimes I struggle at things like making medals or special name titles etc. Anything with graphics I pretty much hire people to do because I am really not good at it nor do I have the eye for it. Give me makeup and a face and I can do wonders but give me a graphics program and an idea and I can give you something that looks like kindergartener drew haha.

 

The posting and the coming up with ideas for events, contests etc. I can do. Anything graphics I need help.

I agree with you on this one. I'm not at all good with graphics. But you always have Fiverr and you can find designers there for a pretty cheap rate. If you use them enough, they'll usually take care of you.

Keeping the motivation in check at all times can be a tough challenge. Sometimes you feel like drifting off your forum due to a lack of motivation. This can often be caused by little activity from your user base, the feeling that you're the only one putting in the effort, and sometimes people will try and drag you down to their level and you feel like it's pointless catering to people who do not respect you as the forum owner.

I hear that, man. One thing I always tried to at least do is post one really interesting topic each day - even if it's just one post.

I think in all honesty it was the time I was asked to help out on what was then warriorcatsrpg.com (before it rebranded to feralfront.com and before it was sold to 'a developer' who converted the site from SMF to Woltlab and shut it down shortly after)

 

WCRPG was, at the time, the largest SMF installation ever as far as we know. At its peak, 90 million posts - doing 90k posts a day (some were 1 liners, though). And it had a bunch of custom code and janky add-ons from various places.

 

You must understand that all of these custom things were "essential". Everything was "essential". Even if literally only one person asked once, this would become "but my members will all leave if they don't get this". I don't believe it was ever true but Wynette was, shall we say, highly strung. It was a definite clash of personalities, but the site was struggling to cope with the traffic and I was asked to see if I could make it run faster.

 

It turns out I did - I found an actual performance hole in SMF 2.x (this was long before 2.1 was out) where a query would be run every topic view even if the result wouldn't be used (which was about 90% of cases), and stuff like that. It took a little while but we wrestled with some of the janky custom plugins that were never designed for that scale and made it run pretty good all things considered.

 

I suspect running the same code today on a current gen server with current gen PHP and MySQL would be less scary, but this was 2012 or so, we didn't have the massive speed-up of PHP 7 yet.

 

And of course, it wasn't my site so I was legit terrified of breaking anything because there was a lot of janky stuff in there that I didn't necessarily know about. But it all worked out in the end, at least at the time.

I think in all honesty it was the time I was asked to help out on what was then warriorcatsrpg.com (before it rebranded to feralfront.com and before it was sold to 'a developer' who converted the site from SMF to Woltlab and shut it down shortly after)

Sounds to me like this would be their response if I made a "What was your biggest mistake in your forum career?" LOL

I hear that, man. One thing I always tried to at least do is post one really interesting topic each day - even if it's just one post.

That's a good idea and could keep people coming back. I might try and start doing that, even if I suck at thinking of new topic ideas. I might have to use AI to help me think. :unsure:

That's a good idea and could keep people coming back. I might try and start doing that, even if I suck at thinking of new topic ideas. I might have to use AI to help me think. :unsure:

Another good thing is to reply to every post and use AI to help you if you can't think of what to say :)

Sounds to me like this would be their response if I made a "What was your biggest mistake in your forum career?" LOL

You’d think but they were adamant they’d done the right thing. Trouble is, after the guy bought it, not only did he migrate to Woltlab, he also gutted the content from 90 million posts to barely 2 million. People do not appreciate it when “their creative work” is gone like that. (The objective merits of such content are highly debatable, but from the writers’ point of view, practically passion projects.)

Another good thing is to reply to every post and use AI to help you if you can't think of what to say :)

Be careful with that though. As it creates dullness among your community. I’m in favor of using AI to get topic ideas, but I wouldn’t let it create an opinion I don’t have. If you lack the inspiration to create a reply, then personally I think it’s better to say nothing at all.

Another good thing is to reply to every post and use AI to help you if you can't think of what to say

I try and reply to a large percentage of topics on my board, but as Cedric said, if you can't relate to the topic then there's not much of a reason to post. I don't want a bunch of AI replies on my board that are from technology and not the human mind. For instance, I'm not much of a sports person, so I rarely post in the Sports forum on my forum.

I try and reply to a large percentage of topics on my board, but as Cedric said, if you can't relate to the topic then there's not much of a reason to post. I don't want a bunch of AI replies on my board that are from technology and not the human mind. For instance, I'm not much of a sports person, so I rarely post in the Sports forum on my forum.

I suppose that makes sense.

 

However, if you get any new members who post a topic and never get replies, they'll leave your community in most cases.

 

Those are the topics that I would focus on the most - the no-reply ones.

 

If you don't resonate, ask more about it as if you want the member to help you understand it more or teach you about something new. People love to do that, as well. :)

If you don't resonate, ask more about it as if you want the member to help you understand it more or teach you about something new. People love to do that, as well.

That's true that people love being asked questions about subjects they're knowledgeable about. That's partly the reason I own a resource board, I can attend to people's questions and offer my services to people less knowledgeable than me in fields that I am knowledgeable in. It can be a good feeling to talk about subjects you have a passion or keen interest in. Questions can be a great way to keep members coming back, but there are also those you find disappear and leave the question unanswered.

I have been running forums since 2017 and the biggest challenge for me is always bringing in organic activities. I cannot get members who voluntarily joins my forums and remains active on the forum. Most of the members on my forums are either form post exchange or from posting packages I buy from promotional forums. I also have paid posters.

Keeping the motivation in check at all times can be a tough challenge. Sometimes you feel like drifting off your forum due to a lack of motivation. This can often be caused by little activity from your user base, the feeling that you're the only one putting in the effort, and sometimes people will try and drag you down to their level and you feel like it's pointless catering to people who do not respect you as the forum owner.

 

It can be difficult to stay motivated at times. It is natural to feel unmotivated, especially when activity in your forum is minimal. In order to offset this, contact your active members and encourage them to participate more, as well as inviting others to join the website. Consider providing rewards or incentives, such as special titles or badges, which will motivate them.

Another good thing is to reply to every post and use AI to help you if you can't think of what to say :)

I’ve seen some forums using AI chatbots to respond to user topics, and I think that’s a disconnected way to build an online community. It sets a bad precedent for the community as well. I believe this method won’t help the community in the long run and could alienate the entire forum-building process, especially since it removes the human element that makes communities thrive.

I agree in using AI for getting topic ideas for within your forum categories are okay. It's using it as a basis for responses can lead to a lack of understanding from your members or even yourself as the reply wouldn't be from you and you wouldn't remember its context.

 

Thinking the biggest challenge is getting organic traffic and membership into the forums which is a unique niche (in my opinion.)

Finding the motivation to come up with new posts and keep things running has always been my biggest challenge when owning forums. I'd like to think I'm doing a bit better at this, but I know I can do better with posting new content on my forums. I think I get overwhelmed at times and get cold feet. I've been this way my entire life though.

The biggest challenge for my forum was getting players to play my daily poker game and buy-in. It was hard to get our game to start up everyday, and continue to grow the community.

 

I think I finally got a good balance, and things are moving along smoothly.

I think my biggest hurdle is keeping the forum active and keeping people coming back to the forum.

 

I am working on some ways to help with that. What do you guys do to keep your communities active?

My biggest forum challenge will be when our site was attacked with massive spam. That time I didn't know that I could. wipe all the posts made by the spammers in just one click. So, I was struggling to delete the post one after the other and It took me days. Omg! Very terrible experience. They created a lot of fake accounts and posts all over our site.

I agree with you on this one. I'm not at all good with graphics. But you always have Fiverr and you can find designers there for a pretty cheap rate. If you use them enough, they'll usually take care of you.

Ah great advice thanks! However, thankfully enough I've found someone who can help with graphics. I appreciate you telling me about Fiverr though!

My biggest forum challenge will be when our site was attacked with massive spam. That time I didn't know that I could. wipe all the posts made by the spammers in just one click. So, I was struggling to delete the post one after the other and It took me days. Omg! Very terrible experience. They created a lot of fake accounts and posts all over our site.

Dealing with spam is one the worst things that we have to deal with as forum owners, especially when they're able to run rampant. Have you implemented better spam protection systems after this? What methods have you taken to help you against spam?

Okay so new challenge has arised! lol

 

My biggest challenge so far has been trying to get OG posters on board before launching the forum to the public. I really want to create that welcoming, active vibe right out of the gate but finding people who are willing to join and actively post on a niche forum before there's any visible activity has been a bit of a mission.

 

It's tough convincing people to jump into what essentially looks like an empty room and start talking, even when they love the concept or community niche. So far, I haven’t fully overcome this obstacle yet but I’m working on it!

 

I'm experimenting with a few things like:

• Reaching out to people I’ve connected with in similar communities and explaining the vision of the forum
  
• Offering early access perks like featured member spots, or the chance to win $50
  
• Asking friends or peers to help kick off a few threads even if they aren’t from the exact target audience just to get the ball rolling
  
• Posting a "Coming Soon" teaser thread with a signup form so I can build anticipation while quietly building some content in the background
  

I’d love to hear how others have tackled this stage! How did you get that initial spark of life into your community?

It's become easier to grow my forum as we've become bigger. My current challenge is optimizing my site for revenue, so we can sustain growth for the long haul, and turn into a profitable business.