I think a person needs inspiration, concept art, a coder, and a graphics designer. lol XD

But one also needs active members.... <_<

Well, as many of you know, I'm about to release Resist The System. With this, I wanted to make a forum to discuss music much like the old Outside the Wall. I agree that you have to have a vision. You need an idea of what it will run like, look like, be structured like. Above all else though, you have to actually be interested in it. I see loads of people make design forums just because they are popular. That isn't the way to go. You lose interest and it fails. With me, music if pretty much my life. A music forum was an easy choice for me to make.

I've made 4 small forums before. Each with a little success. They failed for that exact reason- I just wasn't interested in them.

First you need the inspiration to do the forum. if you dont have the inspiration for it, it may not go anywheres. Then a vision, get some idea on what it may look like.. get a note book or type it up. throw ideas around. Then go from there. I think the forums that take there time to open will do better in the long run. They have the chance to get things set up, make the forum look nice etc... once the insoiraton and vision comes then everything else will start to fall in place.

True- I hate it when I see every 2nd person openin a GFX/CODING forum even though most such admins can't either code or draw

SZ's an interesting tale when it comes to that. We've redone quite a bit with v1. The coding was originally slow and inefficient, quite detestable to me. The design was quite nice, but a few optimizations were needed. Joe and I kinda rushed it and through it together. It's strange, but SZ eventually pulled itself together into a power house of the design forums. Some people said our design was only rivaled by that of Zanmato/Zenith Design.

If you're creating your own forum, you do need to be dedicated and have time to commit to the forum. Lots and lots of time. And when SZ opened, Joe and I both had that, along with plenty of dedicated members and staff. Unfortunately, now that my activity has dropped, SZ's dying slowly. But that's another discussion.

If you want to create your own forum, you need to make sure that you can accumulate members to your site that are willing to give activity. Planning does need to go into the creation of a site, and the more the better. You can plan too much, but it doesn't happen often.

Basically, you need to know what to do to create a strong community around your website. How that comes together is in the hands of the creator.

Well said. A related thing I've often mused about is what a forum is/should be based on. In case the topic is too specific, you will run out of gas faster than you imagine. In case the topic is too broad, you will have a hard time keeping it all going. So the clever middle-line needs to be walked on - not many can do that very well or consistently so.

You need to have dedication and actually want to invest time into making a message board. You might suck at doing so, and then might need help from others, but the biggest thing is wanting to continue to work on it. If you feel like giving up, cut your losses and don't go through with it.

Yup I agree.

The problem arises with that when you're way into the forum's life span. What do you do then?

Anyways, another thing I thought about is (since Slip mentioned the topic thing), what should an admin do if one topic of the forum draws more attention than the other? I've yet to find a solution to this problem, as it plagues SZ's graphics section.

lol.

Why not open up a proper skin database like DX5? ppl will love that I'm sure.

I've often thought about another thing. All these coding/gfx forums -- they try to cover just about everything - how about just doing one thing -- as in a coding forum only having 4 coding boards and a gfx forum only having 3 gfx boards?

ya... i think a major improvement would be changing the premade graphics database, into an actual database like the code index... and yes. I know what your going to say. You'd have to give headers/footers to the mod of that board. Well, either trust your staff, or figure something else out

When i created DX5 (DX5 Designs at the time) it was pretty much nothing, Just another noob attempt at a design forum.. But i was still dedicated to it to the max.. I had like half the forums total post count because i would start up alot of discussions and topics.. I got an idea one day to transform the forum into a full blown skin community.. We did that and we headed straight to success.. because there werent many (if not any) places with that type of genre.. I've seen quite a few attempts of people copying our set up and theme and they failed right away.

So with that said.. You need to really brainstorm a unique idea.. Just because you see a real big board doesn't mean if you decide to make one just like it, it'll grow to be big. It most likely wont.. You need to create a board theme that isn't whored out. Even if you want to create a GFX forum.. Find a unique thing to provide.. Like SSD does with Art.. SZ does with Coding.. DX5 does with Skins and your forum will probably grow to be something.

Everyone has pretty much covered it.