Help with new UK forum categories

[aZooZa]

Hello people!

I'm considering starting a forum which will have its main subject matter broadly addressing life in the UK.

I think I need to be conservative with regards to the number of categories I start with - maybe eight?

I'd really appreciate input here. I'm thinking broadly (but no particular order) like this:

Life in General
Business
Health
Politics
Religion
Law
The Arts
Science
Education
Travel and Tourism

Opinions MUCH appreciated, and thank you in advance!

 

[Kaleido]

Weather.

 

[aZooZa]

Weather.

Thanks for that. I might add it as a sub-category or use a widget

 

[Paullas]

Domain Names

 

[rob]

I have run a couple of forums for a number of years - and dead sub forums always look terrible, and the subtopics naturally split off over time.

IMHO I would start with the main thrust of the forum, then an 'Offtopic' or General UK and can have the above as perhaps the meta text for it.

Forums feel harder now to get going with social mode embedded although I think they are more valuable, if you fancy documenting how you do it somewhere it could be of wider interest! Good luck

 

[seemly]

Adding to what @rob mentioned, I think at first there needs to be an element of narrowing down the initial focal point of the site.

Going in the direction of something like promoting remote working in the UK would naturally allow the promotion of travel and tourism.

With travel and tourism now part of the discussion, this would lead to the promotion of locations, which would mostly cover the arts, science, and history.

With tourist attraction subjects now promoted and widely discussed, law, politics, and business become discussion points for potential digital nomads, running their businesses remotely and internationally. Pieter Levels (https://twitter.com/levelsio) has a decent portfolio of sites around this subject, providing pretty granular data on the benefits of locations, cost of living, weather, et al.

Health(care), business, and education will follow.

Obviously, there may be other ways to sow the seeds of initial interest and traffic, but working backward often shows the most logical paths.

 

[websaway]

Yes always seen a future in this way for the domain
Matters
health. matters money.matters etc. etc.
But you know a forum in such divisive times is going to be a headache to control. I love debating but opinions offend and that's something that is hard to get along with.Good luck.

 

[Adam H]

Seen many, many "general" forums over the years and few last in comparison to niche specific forums ( some do though when managed properly ), Niche specific forums like dedicated politics or religion alone with related sub topics do alot better and give you a better scope for monitisation, ideally a topic the owner has an indepth knowledge and enthusiaum for, those are generally the forums which do well. General "all topic" forums are harder to promote, more time consuming and used to attract only really people that want to have a say in everything but are experts in nothing. ( So the facebook and twitter warriors of today )

Forums in the original sense of discussion boards like this, are low earners in comparison to blogs or content sites covering the same topics, esspecially if traffic levels and traffic quality are compared. They take more time and require people managing. In all honesty ive still got a handful of forums which I threw online after selling off my big forums some 5 - 10 years ago. But they will probably never actually be forums, they sit collecting dust, lack of time and lack of empathy and/or baby sitting time needed for the easily offended folk now days is going to be a real time intensive practice. There are better more rewarding things to build now than forums unfortunately ( in my opinion obiously ).

 

[JMI]

How do you get over the old age self fulfilling prophecy of:
while zero start users = zero new users do while loop

 

[Adam H]

How do you get over the old age self fulfilling prophecy of:
while zero start users = zero new users do while loop

The same way it's always been done. Either buy existing forums to merge, or spend months talking to your self creating multiple accounts and discussions and/or pay for contributors while also marketing. Slowing down bogus accounts as real people start to contribute over months and months. Either that or throw a shit tone of money at it.

 

[aZooZa]

A huge 'thanks!' to all who have replied. I think that on balance, I'll shelve it. Many valid points to consider above, which have put me off this approach.

 

[Helmuts]

The same way it's always been done. Either buy existing forums to merge, or spend months talking to your self creating multiple accounts and discussions and/or pay for contributors while also marketing. Slowing down bogus accounts as real people start to contribute over months and months. Either that or throw a shit tone of money at it.

 

[Helmuts]

A new forum is uber-difficult to start these days.. huhhh.. you need to build a community.

the problem with starting a forum these days > there are not enough community members who engage with quality replies in a short time.

also, your competition isn't just other forums > don't forget about facebook groups, linkedin groups, clubhouse, discord and others..

still, if you manage to create 1 that is active > it will be awesome!

all the success!!
H