I originally wasn’t very keen to start another forum since I know how hard it is to get one up and running. However there are a few regular comment makers at this blog that offer feedback and have opinions so I think it’s a good time to test to see whether we can keep a forum running. One of the most important factors to get a forum off the ground are the regulars and in fact it’s usually the regular handful of contributors that account for most of the topics and conversation.
I’m really counting on Chris Pund, Benjamin Riches, Hermann Klinke, James, Jason, Alborz, Simon, Will, Ed, Matt (Plusone Marketing) and the other regular visitors to this blog to help get the Entrepreneur’s Journey forums off the ground. At the least I expect an introduction post about you and what business you currently work on…that’s an order folks!
Of course I welcome any other visitors to come take part in the forum community as well. Since this blog is about entrepreneurship and Internet business it’s safe to assume that’s what we will be talking about in the forums as well.
The forums are available at http://www.entrepreneurs-journey.com/forums/ and also have their own tab at the top of this blog. I’ve deliberately started off with very few forums following my own guidelines on how to build a popular forum community. If the forum takes off I will expand the number of forums. If it goes nowhere I will delete it. It’s survival rests in your hands.
The forum is running Invision Board 2.0 trial edition which is no longer available unfortunately since Invision started charging for their forum software and only offering a pretty pathetic free license (200 users maximum is not going to cut it!). Regardless it’s a great forum software that I have used for many years so am very familiar with it. Unfortunately I’m not familiar enough with stylesheets yet and because I tried to combine the blog style with the forum style there are two conflicting stylesheets telling the code what to do. Consequently the header doesn’t look quite right yet but the forum functions fine and it’s functionality that counts.
So get busy folks! – Enter Entrepreneur’s Journey Forums
I am already registered
. Is there a feed for Forum entries? I don’t think I have much to write for in an introduction. I am just a .NET Developer from Germany who wants to start his own business at some point in time.
Hi Hermann,
What you just wrote would be enough of an introduction but no pressure, you contribute if you feel you want to.
Ahh the power of RSS. Unfortunately this version of the forum doesn’t support RSS, it is too old.
Signs are not good for the forums staying around so far. I’ll give it a week or so but if it’s clear people don’t need another entrepreneurship forum I’ll delete it. An empty forum doesn’t look good for my blog
I am not a big fan of Forums anymore, a good example of a WORKING forum is whirlpool.net.au, mainly because they haev some 100,000 users and have been around for like 8yrs.
New forums hardly take of anymore because people prefer different methods of communication.
No Al, new forums don’t take off because there are bigger and better forums out there that target the same markets. I think there is plenty of room for new forums provided they are unique, have a large enough market to support them AND the are promoted well.
Plus time and patience. Man, if only you could buy patience…
Hey there Yaro,
To be honest with ya, I think it’s going to be hard to get this up and going. As you said – there’s nothing worse than an empty forum.
I, myself, am a member in 4 business-related forums (I lurk at about 5 others) that have thousands of members, and there’s just never enough hours in the day to do what I want with them.
Unfortunately it’s a numbers game too: there are two types of forum members IMHO. 1) the dedicated forum member who simply loves the interaction and posts and posts (in the minority) and 2) forum members who get involved but essentially are there to market themsleves (the majority).
It all depedns on what you are happy to achieve with it: a membership of say 200 (like a social network) or in the big leagues: 2000+ members.
Also, from friends in the forum field, I know that it’s a very time-consuming job managing/moderating a forum.
Personally, I’ve thought long and hard about setting up a forum myself in the past – but I decided against it: too much risk for little reward.
Sorry if this all sounds too negative – and there’s nothing wrong with closing it down (it takes guts to admit something has failed and to act on it)
After all that, good luck
Yeah, not having a feed might kill it
. No seriously, I don’t go to any website or forum that does not have a feed, because its to hard to keep track of them.
There seems to be a bug in your forum: “2 User(s) are reading this topic (1 Guests and 0 Anonymous Users)”. I didn’t know that 1 + 0 = 2.
wow…thats one heck of a demand there. dont get me wrong, i was pleased to be named first in your list, oh holiness of blogs!