I want to start a forum, but how?

Check out phpbb or vbbulletin (google search).

This forum used Vbulletin. Buy a copy, get a hosting, register a domain, install the script, etc.

Here's the tutorial vBulletin Tutorial - vBulletin installation
put some contents, make some incentives so people will be loyal and active, make a contest and market it all the way.

It is not a challenging task for your to build a forum.
You see, there are many popular forum open source softwares and you can download them, then to upload the software to web hosting.
But speaking of web hosting service, I guess you will have to purchase a high-quality hosting plan (such as VPS hosting).
At the same time, it is not an easy task to promote your forum even if you have built it completely. That is to say, you'd better make a detailed plan to make the best of your resources at hand to promote it.
Good luck!

It is really hard to get people to post to your forum and if the niche is wrong, it can be a waste of time. I have had many forums, some have failed and some have not.

You are saying you are new, then don't even think about owning a forum except if you have loads of money to invest.

In my experience, to have a forum with members,posts,topics daily you should

- Have very good SEO Skills
- Much money to invest
- Provide something different from other forums on your niche, (ie WF has provided amazing quality and free stuff for War Room members, and non-war room members as well, something that will beat the other big and small forums on the same niche of your forum, on every signle niche, there is a big forum, and you have to have some amazing idea that will provide your members better stuff than the other forums.
- Make a plan , how much topics and etc do you expect daily.
- Have a good friend/partner that will help you out in starting it.

I would suggest you go make a blog, and once it reaches the 1k per day mark, make a forum on that site , but I mean www.site.com/forum , and on the main page link to that forum, you will get few posts/members/topics daily... but you need more than 1K I guess.

But I've tried to run many forums, and I always failed, and we all hate failing.
Now I am more experience, have a partner, have all the required stuff that I mentioned above, and I will start a forum in about 10-15 days or maybe in 2 months when I sell my site(or earlier if I sell my other site).
I am going for Vbulletin, it has top plugins and etc, easy to use, but admin panel is messy.

You should make sure you are 200% ready to start a forum.

A word about promotion...

Sometimes it's easier to have a group of potential forum members standing by, ready to help you launch your forum. As such, it's a good idea to build a niche list FIRST... and then "launch" your forum to this list (and elsewhere).

See, people don't want to post to a quiet, ghosttown-like forum. And because people aren't posting, you end up having a ghost town. It's a vicious cycle.

So build a list of folks who'll be likely to join your forum. Then create a pre-launch event by building anticipation for the opening of your forum. You may even run a contest for things like best posts. You'll also want to make a few thought provoking posts to kick things off (so that members have something to reply to when you do open).

In other words -- for best results, start your forum with a bang.

cheers,
Becky

I agree with you Hagel, starting a forum with a big bang is the best, the most common mistake I know with people new to internet marketing, the internet webmastering and etc, is that they start a forum thinking it's easier then a blog, but in fact starting a forum is a really tough challenge like duia, you should have a crew, run contests, and there are so many stuff, the best thing for a new guy is to start a nice clean blog with few posts, work on getting traffic, even small amount of traffic is good, and later on after 1-2 years , after he/she becomes more experienced and understands the challenge of getting traffic, posts, and etc on a forum, then he should start a forum if he/she thinks he/she is ready.
But I would also suggest if you start a forum, hire about 15 different posters, use $100 on the posts, which will bring you about a thousand posts, then the forum will look that's it growing, people will join, post, and you should be there to help, bring topics(VERY IMPORTANT) , and reply.

Be prepared to do a lot of work to create a successful forum. Building it is the easiest part. Getting members and posts and moderating it are the hard part. I've had a couple and don't want any more. Too much work for too little gain, unless of course, you build a highly successful forum like this one.

Sell an info product that relates to your niche. Build a list of customers, then once you have a sufficient number of people on that list -- THEN launch your forum.

One thing about the WF, make a post, you'll get tons of advice. Sometimes, you'll even get your question answered.

The facts (as you state them). You are a Newbie. You want to start a forum. A "Best" way is subjective, what is best for you, only you know.

The fastest, easiest way is to get a free forum and start learning how they operate.
Use google, search "free forum software". Why Google? Because they will often issue a warning about a site that might be harmful to your computer.

Anyhow, spend an hour going over the sites, looking at forums that have been created with this type of software. They all have directories and you can look at forums that might be similar to what you want to do. A peek at the competition, so to speak.

I have NO affiliation with any of these, although I've had or been on forums for over 16 years now and have used almost all the software out there.

Choose one which most fits YOUR project. But to get started, go get a FREE forum, try to get a few warriors to visit it and post, so you can learn how to manage and operate a forum.

Here is just ONE free forum site to take a look at, as stated, Google and do some research.

netForums.us - Free forum hosting. Create a free forum / messageboard

And here is a directory for that site. Look for a forum with active members, most aren't, so look for some that have at least 20 or more members. You have to be able to manage 20 before you can handle 100,000 (the Warrior Forum).


Board Directory - Free Forum Hosting

Once you have spent an hour looking over the various FREE sites, then you can get started.


Also, most of the popular HOSTING companies offer forums in their basic package, often with Fantastico installed, it is a push button operation. Hostgator hatchling is a cheap hosting provider with forums ready to be installed in this package.

gjabiz

PS. And NOW for the advice. Start FREE, then when you feel comfortable NEWBIE, then spend a little bit of your money, OK?

Some forum scripts: MyBB, PunBB, Simple Machine Forum, phpBB, Phorum.