Forums that NEVER have been posted in

So i just recently joined a forum dedicated to microsoft surface and it seems like a pretty nice community and all but but there are some forums that have NEVER EVER been posted in....

Again the site is geared towards surface tablets and that is where the majority of the post are, however they have forums for other windows 8 pc and tablets...cool.

except they've never been posted in.....it's like 10-20 empty forums on the board and it looks like this site has been around for awhile now and not just a new forum.

And it's not just this forum...there are plenty of forums that i've joined that have empty forums....

on my own forum, if i add a forum and it hasn't at least gotten 100 replies in a weeks time i go ahead and just trash it...all the forums(we have 70 forums) on my site are there because members want them....i don't add forums simply in the hopes that it may bring new traffic(which i presume a lot of these sites add those forums for these reasons alone) because if you have a new category/forum on your forum you need to actually post something there to generate content.....

and empty forums on an active forum stand out big to me....does this bother anyone else when they see that? I have to at least have ONE Thread in that forum. For some reason it bugs me to see empty forums on someone's site.

 

I won't even create a new forum unless there is a few pages of content to move into it.
Dead forums make forums look dead.

 

this!

 

If you start a website, open as few forums as possible before opening more and more.

It can look a lil' empty, but it needs content.

 

I just started a forum so I am going through this exact situation. There are so many topics I would like to cover but I know that I need to get traction first. What do you think is a good number to start with? 3, 5, 10 forums?

 

I normally say around 9 overall. Combine areas if you need to and put content into each section daily. Once your forum is more active and full you can then expand the sections.

 

Thanks for the advice!

 

I think it would be a good idea to start off with 4 forums and grow from there. As long as you can populate those forums and seed them with content, you shouldn't have any issues. I'd recommend 5 to 10 new threads a day for a new community. Sometimes even up wards to 20 threads a day if you have other posters posting as well.

 

If it's a brand new forum, I don't mind some relatively empty subforums. I think the admin should at least post a few new threads him/herself if he wants any activity in a forum, though, so to see one completely empty is a bit off-putting.

 

I would never join a forum like that, because it tells me that the forum owner is not dedicated to building a community. They should at least create a few threads in every section to get things started.

I expect forums with owners like that to disappear within a few months, because they'll lose interest in their forum.

 

I swear there is a similar thread but after some searching I just can’t find it.

Anyways.. In the other thread it was more about helping fellow forum owners by joining and posting on their sites to help create some content. This is the only reason why I would join a forum that had empty categories. Even then, most of the admins I hang out with would already have a few post on the site and had been working on that before even making the site public.

 

Some of them are test forums...

 

I fully agree. This is what I did every time I've started a forum with many subforums. Some of them never took off though, so I just deleted them. I don't think anyone even noticed

 

How do the admins not post in the forums first?

 

I only create new forums when there is demand for them