FragSwitch: Hosting Tutorial: How to start your community - FragSwitch

This week’s Hosting Tutorial will give you the information you need to start your community, what you should consider when starting and methods for you to get it off the ground.

First choices
Communities thrive when its users have something in common. The most popular sites we have seen have been centred on a single topic, as an example, Web Hosting Talk is based on (you guessed it) web hosting. Choosing a topic makes it easier for people to identify with your community, it also makes it easier for you to market your community to perspective users. Having a central topic for your community does not mean you cannot have a general discussion area, whilst a central topic helps to gain new users, general areas can help retain users.

Your next choice should be your community’s name and brand. Branding extends beyond the logo, to the colour scheme and general “feel” of a site. Time spent here to make your community unique will be worth it.

After you have your name, you’ll need a domain name. There are plenty of domain registrars out there, a Google search will turn up dozens, and some web hosts will also do it (although care should be taken to ensure that you are the legal owner of the domain). Short, memorable domain names are the best choice to keep users coming back.

Finally, you have a choice of hosting. There are literally thousands of web hosting providers [at time of writing], some will be very cheap, and others will be more reliable. There are two key things to remember here: there are no unlimited hard drives [at time of writing], and you get what you pay for (try to consider support wages and server costs here). It’s also worth considering what you will actually need for your community. If you’re just starting, shared hosting is fine; you won’t need a cluster of servers for 10 users.

Getting your community off the ground
Once you’ve gotten your shiny new community up and running, you’ll need users or that bill coming out of your pocket is going to start asking questions.

There are many ways you can attract users. Like a company, the best form of advertising is through word of mouth. Asking friends to pad out your forum statistics isn’t a bad idea, an active forum is a more encouraging site to a new user than one that hasn’t seen posts in months.

Once your site grows a little, getting some helping hands in the form of moderators and administrators will help keep your site on track. Be careful here though, a wrong decision can cost you members. Also worth a look at this stage is advertising or a donation button to help cover your costs.
Hopefully this has given food for thought, if you have any questions, comments or suggestions, feel free to send us an e-mail!