503 members, 568 if you count the bots. : )
I think we've done very well, given our circumstances. A couple years back, a forum called whywontgodhealamputees started having technical difficulties, due to lack of maintenance and a crappy service provider. At one point the forum did around 40,000 posts a month. It was created by Marshall Brain, the guy who does the How Stuff Works articles and TV shows. The site had videos and a lot of provocative content that kept new members coming in, plus the site was mentioned in some bestselling books about religion and was written about in major papers like the NY Times.
Technical problems and infighting prompted one member to start a new forum, and pretty much the entire membership transferred over. But just when things were gong good, the admin of the new site started doing some weird stuff, which drove people back to the malfunctioning forum with its constant crashes and data loss. And that's where IGI came in.
We created a second spin-off, only we didn't set out to bash believers, like the other two forums did. In fact, we even made them members of our staff. We didn't want to be an atheist forum, but rather a forum where believers and non-believers could participate as equals. But before we could get our forum off the ground, Marshall Brain returned to his broken forum, closed it down, and put a brand new, fully functional one in its place. It left us with a brand new forum, with an untried format, trying to bring together a divided membership scattered across two established and competing forums, while adding believers to the staff, when the former members were used to excluding them. We heard so many times that it we wouldn't succeed that it really had us worried.
A year and a half later, our little forum, without a massive, content rich site to draw people in, videos, or big named authors talking about us, we're still around. The first spin-off spun out. They went from a max of 1,100 posts/day down to about 60. Since IGI and WWGHA-2 started off, the other forum has averaged about 50% more posts/month. And that makes us proud. We do what we do on a shoe string budget and word of mouth. And for some reason that I can't explain, we're actually outpacing the big forum this month. We're the little train that could. : )
And to anyone out there with an idea for a forum, go for it. I recommend going to other forums, join as many as you can, and look at the rule sets, the forum features, the organization, and get an idea of what works. Then, work your ass off. If your forum is dead, don't sit around and cry about it. Let yourself be consumed by the problem until you come up with ways to solve it. And don't worry when your brilliant plans sputter and drop dead in front of you. Just keep thinking of new ways to draw people in.
Something that I learned in researching at other forums is that more than 99% of them die before they even get started. And even a lot of the ones that do get off the ground still end up failing. Dead forums littered all over the internet. Unless your idea for one is so unique and so in demand that people come looking you, then your forum will most likely die like all the others. Get your asses in gear, and good luck!
And if anyone has any questions about getting a forum started, come visit us at IGI. Our staff is friendly, and our members can tell you why they stick around.
http://isgodimaginary.com/forum
