Back in 2002 while living in Sheffield as freelance web developer, I spent an afternoon online trying to find a recommendation of a good pub for Sunday lunch in the Peak District.
I was surprised by the lack of any place where people could come together to discuss the city.
Part of my 'day job' at the time was working on a couple of US based discussion forums (relating to cooking and fitness, of all things!) so I decided to use my skills to create a forum for Sheffield.
It was a very much a hobby site back then, using some free forum software and spare space on my work server. However, as the years passed our user numbers started to snowball and we went from a handful of new registrations per week to hundreds.
These days Sheffield Forum has over 100,000 registered users and receives, according to Google Analytics, around 400,000 unique visitors every month. It's now one of the biggest forums of its kind in the country.
Leeds an 'ideal choice' for forum
A couple of years ago we had an increasing number of topics on forum from people in neighbouring cities, asking if we could set up a 'Sheffield Forum' for their city.
At the time my focus was purely on Sheffield Forum and rolling out much-needed features such as a classified ads area and a business directory.
However, earlier this year when Sheffield Forum passed the 100,000th user mark – I decided to look again at taking the concept to another city. Leeds was a popular request and, being Sheffield's biggest neighbour, seemed like an ideal choice.
A guy called Chris Fowkes had set-up Leeds-Forum.co.uk back in 2005. I approached him with the proposal to take over his forum and merge it with the LeedsForum.co.uk name that I had previously registered. This was agreed upon and took place back in July.
Keeping the forum in order
Since then I've implemented some of the functionality and design features from the Sheffield site and started to work on hard on 'spreading the word'. The forum also has its first moderator, Joe Stenson, who volunteers in his spare time to keep the forum in order and to help out new users.
As with the Sheffield site (which has over 25 volunteers), the success or failure of Leeds Forum is really going to come down to its users - I simply provide the platform and purposely stay out of the day-to-day decision making and operation of the site.
The site is free to use (it's supported by advertising) and I'm really hoping that Leeds Forum will develop in to the same kind of useful resource that Sheffield Forum is.
As you might imagine, running these forums takes a lot of time and these days I work on them pretty much full time. As a one-man company both sites are operated as businesses, but obviously due to their nature they provide a good, free, service to the communities they serve.
If you have any ideas on how to 'spread the word' about Leeds Forum, or if you would like to set up a free forum for your club/organisation, then please contact me at mail@leedsforum.co.uk.
Guest blogger Geoff Bowen is the man behind Leeds Forum and Sheffield Forum.
What do you think? Have your say in the comments section below.
