Each of us, as community owners, had to start somewhere, and along the way of learning how to build up and run a community, we have made mistakes and even not been aware of some things we were doing wrong, or even missing out on doing when we started our first community.

What is one thing you wish you knew before you started a community? Have you learned from any mistakes?

Trying to copy a successful forums approach in the past when times have moved on and things that worked back then just don’t work today

On Oct 18, 2026, Jigsaw said:

Trying to copy a successful forums approach in the past when times have moved on and things that worked back then just don’t work today

This is one I see many community owners fall for, and I will admit I have done it myself in the past.

Things really have changed a lot over the years, and I really feel now that focusing on my own ideas and such is much better than trying to copy the success of others.

I wish I knew more about onboarding before I started.

I think my forums would have been a lot bigger and better with proper onboarding back in the day.

I wish I’d known how much patience it takes to build a community. Getting the site up and running is one thing, but helping people find it, feel welcome and want to come back takes time. I’m learning not to expect it to happen overnight and to focus on making each person who does join feel included. Small things can make a big difference 💜

I started my first community in 2017, it was a part of my multi author blog, it wasn’t opened publicly. My first open forum was created in 2020. I wish I knew it cost money to operate a community. Prior to running forums, I only had experience with blogs and blogs didn’t require any investment apart from domain and hosting, but community needed investment for a lot of things