How and Why did you start your forum?

I'm not really a webmaster but I have been an experienced forumer for a couple of years now. I thought of creating my own forum so I kind of need some startup tips and anything that you could possibly recommend to as a future webmaster.

It'll not only help me but aspiring webmasters as well.

Back in 2009, I was really addicted to Facebook. There was this game on it called Pet Society that I really liked, and that made me join the very first forum I joined (an official one). One time when I was in school, I figured, out of the blue, "why not have my own forum, where I can make the rules?". That made me go for a free host and that's how it went for the next couple of years

I started my forum, because it's my dream to run a poker business, and if I build a community of poker players I can send them to my poker site when it's ready to be launched. That's why I started it, and after that I discovered I like managing my forum.

I was searching for info years ago. The first couple of links were forums. This happened many times. If they had good info and traffic I would join. I started to get into it and after a while I was a member of 10+ sites. I was more active on some then others. But it was fun for me and it became something I wanted to build myself. I knew it was going to be hard work and take a lot of time. I put it on the back burner and thought about it many times but didn't start the process till last year. So that was over 7 years of waiting to pull the trigger on my own forum.

My forum has been open for just over 3 months now and it isn't easy but I'm having fun with it. I plan on starting two more down the road.

James

I wanted to test Xenforo

On a more serious note, I saw a 'vacancy' in the niche. While there are few established communities, there are many sub-par forums that appear over night and get lost as fast as they appeared. I thought there's enough room for a well thought community, with some good resources and the 6 months since we've been online proved me there was such a need and we can really give something to our members. We need to start sites to HELP people and provide something useful, the rest will follow

Have you guys experienced any setbacks? If so, how did you guys handle those things?