Guide to Running an Online Forum

Many people want to run an online forum. Most believe it to be as easy as opening one of the free forums found online and letting it run itself. This isn't generally true. First of all, there are thousands if not millions of forums online. Why should anyone frequent yours? Of course there are those who want their own forum as something of an ego boost. Not a good reason. If one thing is going to beat the tar out of your ego it's owning a forum.
I've owned my own forums as well as moderated the forums of others for over 10 years. In those 10 years I've pretty much seen and heard it all. All of my forums are still up and running and running well. I decided to put together this little guide to running an online forum so that those without any experience in this area can benefit from what has worked and what has been a total failure for me. At the end of the guide I'll show you how it all fits by telling you about one of my oldest forums.

Decide on a Focus to your forum
You have to have a target audience. The human race doesn't qualify as a target. You need to be a tad more specific. Some go for a local forum, say a specific town and allow it to develop topics as the community shows an interest. There are a few that are targeted towards religion, with specific areas for each religion to chat and interfaith areas were all the religions meet up and post messages.
The possibilities are endless, but it does require some thought.