What are things you do prior to opening up a forum?

[Xyphien]

We all think the grand opening is the most important part of a forum, however, it's the opposite in most cases. What you do prior to opening up your forum can be one of the most important. From content, to getting hype made for your forum.

What are somethings you personally do before making your forum public?

Spoiler: My personal routine

When I first make a forum, I do the basics first. I get some starting content up, ones that are engaging and the community can easily talk about, discuss, and have civilized criticisms. I make sure the forums graphics, and everything is running smoothly, and everything is fully functional prior to making it live. And one of the things I try to do the most, is get a small hype forming around the website. Going on communities, and discussing about the new and upcoming website, showing teasers, and unique things that other sites do not offer. If someone even things "That might be cool" it gives them some incentive to actually visit it upon release. I find that doing this will increase your initial rush when opening up the forum. You'll get more people who register per view than you would otherwise from what I've found.

 

[Ash55]

I like to get a lot of content on my site and to have everything ready as well. Simple things like ensuring all the plugins work and having all the right sections created is extremely important. I try to get some users on the site as well before launching to ensure there is enough content for visitors to read and take part in

 

[Juneberry]

I didn't make as much hype as I should've, but I worked hard to have it designed with the style and plugins I felt were important to begin with. I'm fairly new to this, though, so I also relied on help from friends who are webmasters (including my forum's host)- I got a lot of mixed messages, to be honest! It was hard to decide which tips to focus on, but in the end, I found getting certain things like the theme, BBCode I felt necessary to have considering my site's focus, and other related plugins that were more important to start with than others.

 

[Chase.]

I tend to make a big hype. Nowadays it's far more difficult than used to. But still, a good hype is a good preparation. Also setup some advertisement topics at the same time.