I'm working to build a forum for a niche segment. User acquisition is not a problem, I already have social groups with 15K active users/day. I thought it would be good to get HN ideas and feedback in the process so I can avoid pit holes and plan the path right.<p>1. What framework did you chose?<p>2. How to tackle Content moderation and maintenance?<p>3. How to monetize? Ads or Sponsor referrals or other ways?<p>Any other things to consider, I'm not foreseeing?
1. I run a Discord server for people immigrating to Portugal.<p>2. Transparency in moderation is key. I have as few rules as possible and keep them as unambiguous as I can. This scales fine (I have moderated larger communities before). For my current community, I have a channel where I discuss the circumstances around each ban or muting. This is really only possible because of the size of the server—if it becomes too difficult to continue doing so, I will cease, but I will make sure to inform everyone in the server so they are aware.<p>3. I have not monetized the community at this time. When it gets larger I plan on forming relationships with vendors (such as language teachers, immigration lawyers, or rental companies) allowing them to run paid server events or sell services while paying me a % of earnings.
I once had a forum on the back of a digital product (plans to build something.) It was really cool as people would post build logs, community helped everyone, lots of pics, etc. It was fun. And the business was/is a side hustle where I spend about 2 hours a month but make enough to send my kid to college.<p>But some trolls and people who REALLY cared about non-important parts of the product (to me) started posting a LOT. So I killed it off over needing to maintain it and deal with the 1/100 rude person. Just too much work and stress. The real value was maybe SEO at the time, but since Google sank all forums, probably doesn't matter that much.<p>So I'm curious to see the answers here!
Yeah, I run Wario Forums as a community for a very specific and somewhat underrated video game series (<a href="https://warioforums.com" rel="nofollow">https://warioforums.com</a>). To answer the questions:<p>1. I use XenForo. After vBulletin went down the tubes, I discovered XenForo as a replacement, and have found no reason to switch to anything else.<p>2. Generally, the moderation isn't too much of an issue, since I have a fair few anti spam measures set up on the registration form, including questions specific to the forum topic, plus a dedicated team of moderators and a niche subject matter. The odd troublemaker that gets in will get banned quickly enough anyway.<p>Maintenance is a little tougher, but the software doesn't get that many updates all things considered, and they've been painless so far.<p>3. You see, for me monetisation isn't really a priority, so I just have a few ads and a paid membership system, and leave it at that. The site exists because I think it needs to, not because I see it ever becoming a business or self sustaining.<p>But if you do want to monetise, then it depends how big you expect it to be. Ads pay terribly, especially for community sites (probably because places like Facebook/Twitter/Reddit/etc offer a better deal there), so you're probably going to want a mix of donations and sponsorships if you want to keep the lights on. The former alone is good enough for a small forum or one with a very loyal community, the latter is probably a necessity if you end up needing dedicated servers or cloud services like AWS to keep it online.
Yes, I run <a href="https://rangerovers.pub" rel="nofollow">https://rangerovers.pub</a> which I started because the mods on the US-based Range Rover forum were overbearing and obnoxious. I was having a conversation with someone I knew from the US forum in a pub in Glasgow, and the fateful question was asked - "How Hard Can It Be...?"<p>Not that hard, as it turns out.<p>I use FlaskBB, which I picked because it uses Python and looks modernish, and appeared to be quite resistant to the usual forum exploits. I could go into painful detail about the exact stack but let's just say uwsgi, Postgres, and nginx behind Traefik for SSL termination.<p>I have a few well-known and trusted users who are mods, and it seems reasonably spam-free. Every so often I go through the database and remove "obvious spammers". It's been largely maintenance-free, beyond keeping exploitable libraries patched.<p>I did run Google Ads for not-logged-in users for a bit, but it was a pain in the arse and made a whopping 40 quid a year so I stopped. It costs very little to run anyway.<p>Edit: I haven't seen the number of "Guests online" that high before. Thanks for your assistance with load-testing!