When did you start your community?

[DawPi]

Hello,

while browsing the list of providers on the IPS website, I noticed that many people mentioned when they started working on IP.Board. I don't think it's particularly important, but I'm more focused on the sentimental aspect.

In the past, there used to be another support forum for IP.Board in Poland (which was later absorbed by my forum). I found my very first post related to IP.Board, which I published on December 26, 2005, exactly. Since then, my life has been filled with passion, challenges, and incredible emotions related to IP.Board. It not only provides my livelihood but also brings me a lot of joy and satisfaction.

How about you?

[V0RT3X]

Hi, Invision Community says: JOINED September 6, 2018.

As for forum software, I started with wBB2, then vBulletin 3+4, XenForo from pretty much day 1. However, I was so disappointed with XF2 that I switched to IPS. vBulletin and Woltlab were not alternatives anymore (which is probably what anyone who knows vB5 and the last Burning Board releases would say).

[Ryan]

I don't currently run a community (don't really have time at the moment, though I would like to get back into it at some point), but I've been running communities on many different platforms since 2003.

[MissB]

On 9/1/2023 at 2:42 PM, V0RT3X said:

However, I was so disappointed with XF2 that I switched to IPS.

Same thing here. And I am very glad that I left xf as it is as good as finished imo. Anyways, after I left xf I started a community and coded for Woltlab for a while and at the start of the coronavirus pandemic I started to use Ipb and I never looked back. It's the best forum software imo. It has a great staff and community as well.

What I love about the Ips staff is the way that they interact with the community and how they keep us in the loop with the developement. You don't see this at other forums. 

And regarding the community, what I llike the most is how helpful it is. 

Edited September 23, 2023 by MissB

[Nomad]

I created my first community in 2017, it was a support forum for the writers on my blog. The community was only available for the contributors of my multi-author blog. The community was powered by WordPress. My first stand-alone community was created in 2019 and this community was also built on wordpress. The first proper community software I used was SMF and I used SMF to build a community in 2021.

[Shortie]

My first community was created in around 2005, it was when I first started dabbling in building and running a community so I was quite new to everything and of course, it's to be expected that your very first time starting a community would not be the successful one. 

It wasn't until 2009 that I started a community with a goal and a plan and it was a general chat forum, I worked on it for over 8 years but unfortunately, had to let it go due to hosting costs sky-rocketing and I chose to choose another path and move away from community building for a while. 

 

[Square Wheels]

My oldest one, 20 years ago this month.

[Dilip]

Long back. Early or mid 2000s

[JoelR]

On 1/11/2024 at 8:26 AM, Square Wheels said:

My oldest one, 20 years ago this month.

Wow congrats!!  

[Maria]

I created my first community on wordpress a long time ago, however, my community was short lived. That's because I did not know how to bring users and activities on my community. However, failure taught me a lesson if you do not have skills to bring members on your community, never start a community.

[JoelR]

On 2/6/2024 at 8:51 PM, Maria said:

I created my first community on wordpress a long time ago, however, my community was short lived. That's because I did not know how to bring users and activities on my community. However, failure taught me a lesson if you do not have skills to bring members on your community, never start a community.

I've become a strong believer that launching a community is one of the last things to do in your preflight checklist.  

What I mean by that is there is so much prep work that you should do in advance:

• Assess the size and scale of your overall audience
• Become a trusted voice or leader
• Identify an audience that will either follow you, or identify an existing audience that you can uniquely tap into
• Identify what value your community can uniquely offer

And THEN launch a community.  To compete on the modern web, you can't build forums and then expect users to join.