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my advice is to try and create a website that has useful resources, and attach the forum to that. It's going to be tough to grow a forum that isn't attached to anything else that draws people in these days

and try to keep the number of forums as small as possible, especially at first, so activity isn't spread out over 12 dead categories

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Decent advice. I originally intended for a homesite, but as I was considering what to put on I realized I would have to conjure up a lot of content for it to be worth it. For now I think it's simply easier to just have a forum, if the demand grows for a homesite I can always add that at some point.

I've actually already cut down the number of forums to what I feel are the manageable and topical ones, I think it should work for now. It's all improvised anyway, I'll see what the demand is over time and remove or add subforums as appropriate. I'm open to community feedback as well.

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