I used to run phpBB, then vBulletin, then Vanilla, before finally working with others to write our own. I always ended up running a few forums from the hosting/technical perspective, and then ending up admin/moderator on them... I wanted a way to host many forums multi-tenant in a dirt cheap way, with simpler tooling, a better UX, and with things like events built-in (not in a separate and bad calendar).
As I knew cycling the thing I did was reach out to cycle clubs and groups and just say "I have this thing, if you want to use it you can". I stopped promoting it when I got to 10 forums, but still get a new one apply every month or so. They take a long time to grow, but nearly all of them do grow because they're led by people who really care, and I give basic advice on how to make communities work.
I used to run phpBB, then vBulletin, then Vanilla, before finally working with others to write our own. I always ended up running a few forums from the hosting/technical perspective, and then ending up admin/moderator on them... I wanted a way to host many forums multi-tenant in a dirt cheap way, with simpler tooling, a better UX, and with things like events built-in (not in a separate and bad calendar).
As I knew cycling the thing I did was reach out to cycle clubs and groups and just say "I have this thing, if you want to use it you can". I stopped promoting it when I got to 10 forums, but still get a new one apply every month or so. They take a long time to grow, but nearly all of them do grow because they're led by people who really care, and I give basic advice on how to make communities work.