What is the best thing to do when you start a community?

[Snorlax]

I'm thinking about making a Pokemon community and i really dont know what or how to go about doing it. What do you think would be the best things to do for it. I saw a few options on here and contemplating my options. Guilded looks really really cool but idk if i want to go that route or just open a forum. Are forums dead? Should i instead do a wordpress and just use buddypress instead?

 

[TopSilver]

Either IPB or Xenforo 2 would be your best bet if your serious about starting a forum. Discord seems to be good for getting members and there's a few Xenforo add-ons to put the discord widget on the homepage to promote your discord server and forum at the same time. There is also something called widgetbot.io that is basically a discord chat on your site where you can embed your server onto the site. I personally use a chat add-on instead but some people like it.

 

[Snorlax]

Either IPB or Xenforo 2 would be your best bet if your serious about starting a forum. Discord seems to be good for getting members and there's a few Xenforo add-ons to put the discord widget on the homepage to promote your discord server and forum at the same time. There is also something called widgetbot.io that is basically a discord chat on your site where you can embed your server onto the site. I personally use a chat add-on instead but some people like it.

That's the issue though Im not sure if I want to start a forum though. I want to start a community but there's a TON of other options out there besides forums, forums are slowly dying unless you have something unique like this one with the shop to buy awesome products I dont see the biggest deal in making a forum versus something that has forums in it thats also chat oriented.

 

[Xyphien]

That's the issue though Im not sure if I want to start a forum though. I want to start a community but there's a TON of other options out there besides forums, forums are slowly dying unless you have something unique like this one with the shop to buy awesome products I dont see the biggest deal in making a forum versus something that has forums in it thats also chat oriented.

With that in mind you may want to look at making a completely public guilded server. Anyone can view anything on there if you have a public server, it builds SEO ranking and you can build back links as well. On top of it already having a decent bit. We have one for webmasters. If you use it completely public then it has almost everything you're looking for. Forums, live chat, calendars, events, and other stuff. There's even a built in bot maker so you can have welcome bots and everything custom made for pokemon if you really wanted too. It seems like a pretty cool concept imo

 

[Demon_skeith]

Forums are dying, but if you got the passion for them it can stand out and against the changing tides. Pokemon is very popular, so you got to figure out, on which ever platform you choose, to stand out among the rest.

 

[Snorlax]

Forums are dying, but if you got the passion for them it can stand out and against the changing tides. Pokemon is very popular, so you got to figure out, on which ever platform you choose, to stand out among the rest.

Yeah. This is why Im thinking of doing Guilded. Theres not a lot of people on it right now so it looks like it should be easy to establish something prior to it blowing up and from what I can tell from google rankings the older the higher chance of it showing up over others.

 

[Steven]

gather all of your friends and family members, have them post throughout the first month while you're advertising your forum.

 

[Demon_skeith]

Yeah. This is why Im thinking of doing Guilded. Theres not a lot of people on it right now so it looks like it should be easy to establish something prior to it blowing up and from what I can tell from google rankings the older the higher chance of it showing up over others.

If there aren't other pokemon sites on Guilded, then that could be your best chance. Still got to think what your site can offer over other established ones.

 

[Xyphien]

If there aren't other pokemon sites on Guilded, then that could be your best chance. Still got to think what your site can offer over other established ones.

Yeah, this is key! If you cannot offer something new and unique then people will tend to shy away from it as "why should I spend time registering and joining that if there's something else just like it with more people" or something along those lines. Sit back and make sure you think about what you want before hand and research what you can and cannot do with each program to reach your end goal

 

[Snorlax]

Alright thank you everyone. This helps a lot and I now have a lot of stuff to look over before starting!

 

[Demon_skeith]

Alright thank you everyone. This helps a lot and I now have a lot of stuff to look over before starting!

Wish you the best of luck, never hurts to be active on similar sites to see things work out or issues you can fix with your own site.

 

[sincerem]

Xenforo is the best option this days for those starting out with community online. Wordpress is an option too to build a forum, especially when you make use of the self hosted option, you can manually create a forum with it.