How to Start Forum on a Website

Get a Domain

The first step in setting up a forum is to get choose your niche. All website creation online is dictated by niches. You must decide what you want your forum to be about, and who your target users and audience is. Once you have all of that figured out you will need to procure a domain name. A domain name is the address of the site, i.e. - www.example.com. You can either go for a regular domain like "www.example.com" or if you are looking to add a forum to an already existing website of yours you can set up a sudomain such as "www.forum.example.com".

Get a Script

Once you have your domain setup figured out, you are ready to look for a script. There are many great free Open Source scripts available for download across the web. phpBB is by far the most popular and most used forum script available. To set up your script, you will need a basic knowledge of FTP and databases (which we will save for a whole other Hub).

If you would rather take a lesser "do-it-yourself" approach and don't mind spending a little more money you can buy a script, and nine times out of ten the company you buy the script from will install it for you as well.

Promote

After your forum is set up and tweaked just the way that you want it, it is time to go find some members. Finding members will not be hard if you are adding the forum to an existing website. If you are starting from scratch, you will want to go to the place where your target audience is and convince them to join you. Various other methods of promotion such as advertising and Search Engince Optimization might also be necessary. Ultimately, the success of your forum will depend on how much time, effort, and energy you put into promoting it. Remember, the Great Wall wasn't built in a day. Have patience and work hard, and hopefully your efforts will pay off.