Would be good to have a general topic here for talk about launching new discourse community sites, while there has been a lot of talk and topics about this already can make this one focused specifically about challenges of starting a new community site from scratch.
#1 challenge is what is the reason why new people would want to join, is there a benefit to them or the administrator, why try to recruit members?
Ideally a good community doesn’t need to do recruitment campaigns, if people can see there is a good atmosphere of discussion then they have an incentive to join so they then have opportunity to speak or write/discourse.
I had a few good members join initial sites have launched over about the past year, but have shut those down for now since there was not enough activity to justify keeping a discourse site running. I’m planning to re-launch a new discourse site within the next month or so, either hosted by discourse or independent server.
There are several great potential benefits of having a discourse site, but I have been surprised at how much resistance there has been to anyone I’ve talked to in person about this wanting to create and use a member account to communicate. One of the main benefits to me is that I don’t need to give out a mobile phone number for people to call or text wanting an immediate response, if they can send a message or create a topic with discourse then other people can answer questions sooner if they are online. I prefer not to carry a mobile phone if I can avoid that, and can’t handle people wanting to have important conversations thinking I am going to be able to write a good response with only thumbs on a phone that doesn’t even have a physical keyboard.
Anyway for launching an active community I would say generally most sites have a primary content creator which I can do more of have started making some video presentations can post those on discourse site so people can comment. Main theme is for architecture as in historic civic architecture, I only have an undergraduate minor degree in that field not a license to practice architecture so don’t introduce myself as being an actual architect. May be able to complete grad school for that within the next decade or two.
I can write more about general ideas for discourse, overall I would say this is a great platform but there seems to be some kind of irrational resistance within some folks who don’t want to communicate with this. That may have nothing at all to do with the platform itself but just for anyone who wants to launch their own site there are a few challenges to work through for that to work.
If anyone has comments about their challenges with launching a discourse community please feel free to talk about those here.
I just want to say that all the other “talk” that you mention is all there for a reason. They have a lot of tips that are helpful even when you are starting a new community site from scratch – and they do already deal with exactly some of the challenges that you mention here.
There are a couple of things:
content is king
try to model behaviour that you want to see — actively engage with anyone who posts on your site
it takes time for people to form a habit to regularly check your site
The best resources are these blog posts especially:
Content is king & Model the behaviour you want to see
Discourse encourages you to launch with a few topics and posts (I think around 5 topics and 30 posts)
Aside from videos — which do sound informative but can take longer to watch — there also has to be replies and posts which people can respond to.
If you have other 1-3 contacts who are also interested in the same things you are for your site, it might be helpful to invite them to your site. So they can also make posts and have conversations with each other on the site, which encourages others to do the same, rather than it just being a video commenting site.
What comes up often in your internal emails? Are there common themes that tend to come up again and again with your fans, customers, users, patrons, teammates, coworkers, subscribers? Try moving those discussions out of private email silos into your public (or private) discussion area.
If you find an interesting article on the web you want to discuss, quickly start a new topic by pasting a link into the topic title. Try it!
Have some open-ended getting to know you topics for people to share their opinions, experiences, stories, or pictures. An “introduce yourself” topic is always fun, and you should go first!
Where have you seen interesting, thoughtful discussions recently? Can you bring the spirit of those discussions to your site? Imagine what a model user you would love to see on your site would do – and then try doing that yourself. Invite friends or coworkers to post example topics and reply to them so visitors can browse the existing conversations to discover what your community is about.
Send personal invitations to your staff, power users, or friends, to log in early and reply to your initial topics to generate activity. Send one-click email invites via your Discourse invite page (it’s on your user profile page). You can also send bulk invites to many email addresses at once.
Generously like any and every post you enjoy! What type of content gets liked is a major part of your community’s culture. Set an example by frequently liking posts in the early days of your forum. Seeing liked posts also encourages people to reciprocate in kind, and come back for more.
Actively seek the help of power users and early adopters in your community. There’s a built in feedback category titled “site feedback” for discussing organization and governance. Let your most avid users have a say in what your community does, how the site works, and what your community becomes.
It takes time to form a habit
You mention “irrational resistance”
It takes time for people to adjust when moving from their existing sources of information and any other platforms they use frequently. People have talked about it extensively around here – whether the popular software of the day is Facebook, Twitter, Discord or you name it:
Also another part is the “empty restaurant” effect where if a site looks empty, new people won’t want to join.
Think of categories as rooms, topics as tables, replies as conversations. Your goal, as the dinner party organizer, is to found your own successful restaurant with Discourse, a place where the entertaining dinner party never stops.
The worst thing you can do is open with a blank site. That’s like trying to get people to sit down at an empty restaurant!
To combat that:
Those initial topics are critical:
To further explain what your community is. The topics you see on the front page right now? These are the kinds of conversations that happen here. This is what we tend to generally talk about. This is what our community is.
To provide examples of the sort of content you want. To let everyone know that yes, topics like these are welcome on our site. Create more discussions like these!
To invite participation. Have some getting to know you topics for people to share about themselves, and some topics that are open ended and encourage replying with opinions, stories, or pictures.
Recruit friends, recruit colleagues, recruit power users, do whatever it takes to build out an initial solid base of content. Send out invites! You can’t launch your community without it.
Who’s here?
Leadership comes from the top. The presence of staff speaks volumes about whether your community is alive and thriving. Don’t just say you believe in this community, demonstrate that through your personal participation and enthusiasm. Lead by example. Reply to questions people have, help your community learn the ropes, gently guide and shape the community as you go.
If you are lucky enough to have celebrities on your staff, or in your community, take advantage of that! When someone notable – the owner, the sponsor, the founders, the developers, the artist, the author, the MVP – pops in and responds, that is a huge draw. It says this community is important because it’s on the radar of cool, interesting, busy people too! Even a little participation by celebrities goes a long way, so try to schedule that.
Half of any community is showing up regularly. There’s no substitute for simply being there, each day, every day. Welcome and respond to new users as they arrive. Listen to their feedback. Encourage everyone else to do the same over a period of months and soon you’ll have a core of regulars that form the heart of your community – maybe even a few members so engaged they could eventually become community moderators.
Imagine a restaurant with a bustling, visible, helpful staff, where the owner periodically checks in from table to table to make sure everyone is having a good experience. That’s the kind of place that, over time, earns repeat customers … maybe even fans.
That is true right, sorry if first post came across as rude somehow if that read like a statement saying the gigantic archive of massive other topic talks here about communities aren’t good.
There are a few general themes that are consistent main topics to talk about with any community, indeed exactly some of the same challenges mentioned for this topic.
I have read it mentioned that for a new discourse site to have a succesful launch there may need to already be some kind of a community group established, of at least a few people who have some interest in making public posts to start conversations. I didn’t have that with first sites I launched but had a few people join who did help with that.
The main contacts that could be great potential members for a discourse site for architecture are the university history professors, I could potentially apply for the history and theory grad major this month that requires a 10-15 page research paper.
There is a new history professor now teaching the undergrad winter history survey course I took 12 years ago which used to be called Roman Gothic Renaissance Architecture, name has been changed to Medieval and early modern architecture covering buildings from 700 - 1750 A.D. The old course was mostly focused on European churches and some mosques, but now has a broader scope including Hindu temples in Cambodia. The other courses are ancient history in Autumn and modern history in Spring for the undergrad course series.
Publishing research papers on a discourse site can be helpful especially if any members consider talking about old buildings to be a worthwhile pursuit and not just boring and uninteresting. Not sure if any folks here at meta are much interested in old buildings or not, haven’t seen any other sites show up in discourse discover with a search for architecture:
The other main potential use case for launching a new discourse site I have is for construction company, which was officially launched in 2022 with tax license from the state (Washington) but work has been kind of slow last few years with small scale projects.
Discourse or other forum platforms can be good to maintain public record of official communications and also improve overall communication between clients and the general public, but only if people use the platform in the first place. For now may make more sense to hold off on launching a discourse site for that until company is more established with larger scale projects.
Okay as someone who was one of the folks who has joined your ventures. I will give some feedback & recommendations
You need to build a community. It is not like the movie “Feild of Dreams” where people will just come if you launch a site.
As you have mentioned you have an Undergrad in Architecture but not a full architect papers.
Create a flow chart to work out your plan. With your degree have you kept in contact with some of your former classmates? Maybe they might be interested in helping this venture. As an added plus they are also potential sources of content.
If you choose a decent plan with a free mail server you can setup a VPS for very small fee. Iirc with my current vps that could be under $20/month not counting domain name.
Take your time work on figuring out what theme may best suit your needs.
For a category start maybe start with a Blog style Category with a group access for starting topics. In the beginning for this category set it up so you are the one that creates topics until you have other ppl to create architectural blogs. (blog style theme component a good recommendation)
Take sometime and do some research as you did when taking the course. And even use papers maybe that you wrote in school.
With self hosting you can use the RSS feed plugin to pull content from YouTube sources and more.
Keep things simple and add as you go. Have a general category where ppl can create topics.
For business purposes maybe a category with sub categories for your business use. Private Topics plugin can be a good fit for clients to post in to get say quotes and other private queries). Having a category with a portfolio of job pics before & after with clients permission is also a good way to help drum up business by showcasing your work.
Biggest thing is having patience to get there
As @bloomexperiment has said those other topics do have a lot of good info. Imho I believe you’re more looking for help refining your plan/approach with advice if how to get to where you want to be.
It takes time to get ppl interested and having trust to join up. Mega platforms can be easy as they are the devil ppl know. Be it FB or Reddit or…
Some might be squamish with a new site.
If I sign up how much junk/spam mail am I going to get?
How is this sure going to use my info? Are they sharing my email with 3rdparties? Etc…
The #1 challenge I had was in initial outreach to people I know was just lack of interest in using the platform in the first place, may be because as a new site without much activity looks sketchy and suspicious so most people’s initial response to my elevator pitch about that was just no, that sounds boring, or something else they wouldn’t say out loud.
Is important.
These are also important insights, believe there is an option to not require e-mail for sign up with discourse? Can’t remember exactly how that works if that is not a supported feature and there is more risk of spam accounts with that.
Thanks for being a member and volunteer moderator when site was in staff-only mode. The discourse hosting is probably best option for me since don’t have tech background but that was exciting to be able to launch site on virtual server with digital ocean. Am considering trying different hosting provider or other platform besides discourse for forum.
You’re very welcome. Yes a hosted plan maybe best. As with self hosted; you need to be comfortable with command line updates/upgrades if both Discourse and the OS. As well as be able to troubleshoot a failed rebuild.
My big suggestion though is work in creating content in the mean time. So when you are ready to launch again you have content to seed. Like make it say in word create a folder with pics you might want to upload with putting Filenane in your word blog posts.
Right content is critical of course, thanks for sending message wrote back to you about that.
The best content for a discourse site believe is discourse itself, which requires multiple people to generate in writing a back and forth dialogue. I can write more but usually for this kind of a platform don’t want to publish more than a few paragraphs at a time and wait for response before continuing.
Anyway with the topic of launching new sites, best use-case for that seems to be already established communities who wish to improve communication. The platform has great potential to help with that especially when there are communities experiencing poor communication, or disagreements and/or misunderstandings.
Those can perpetuate for a long time until/if people express their perceptions in a public manner such as a discourse site or public meeting where there is opportunity for others to respond and people actually consider perspectives other than their own, which unfortunately doesn’t always happen too often.
