How to Start an Online Discussion Community

Choose a specific community topic. If you plan to manage the community yourself, pick something that you are knowledgeable about and interested in. Because there are already so many online discussion forums available, it's best to serve a well-defined niche. For example, "Buddhist Republican Forum" will probably work better than "Religion & Politics Forum."

Select a hosting provider. If you get some webspace and a good bit of experience with web development, you can set up your own message board using a software package. Or many hosting providers now have automated tools to install forums for you. If you are unable to set up your own hosting, you can use one of the remotely hosted forum services such as EZboard (now Yuku), or Proboards which offer forums on sub-domains (with the forum hosts name in your address), but many prefer to have a forum at their own domain (example.com), which many hosts now provide. Make sure to get a good host because you don't want downtime. Get good community software so that you can satisfy all of your communities wants and needs.

Create your forums (discussion areas). Ideally, you want 5-10 separate forums, each dealing with some aspect of your community topic. For example, you can have a "General Discussion" forum, a "Science" forum, a "Political Discussion" forum, etc. Try not to over-categorize. Ask yourself if each subforum you add will make your community better by facilitating new topics or if it will detract by spreading content too thin and forcing the users to search for content they are looking for.

Advertise your community. If you have some online friends with similar interests, send them a quick e-mail to let them know about your "grand opening." If you have a website, announce your new community to your visitors. Whatever you do, avoid "spamming" (advertising to strangers without permission). Spamming will ruin the reputation of your community before it has a chance to get started. You can also add your community info on your profile as signature. When you post, people will see.

Select moderators. Each separate discussion forum within your community should have its own moderator. The moderator keeps the discussions fresh by starting new topics and removing inappropriate content. Community users who are knowledgeable about the subject matter of the forum and willing to spend a few minutes a day helping the community grow will make good moderators.

Manage the community. You and the team of moderators should agree on some basic rules of conduct (such as "no personal attacks"), and enforce them. Occasionally, you may need to ban a disruptive user from your community in order to prevent problems.

Make strategic alliances. Exchange links with other communities with similar interests in order to grow your user base. As your community increases in size and activity, you will have more opportunities to create strategic partnerships with other websites.