I was wondering if there is a 'right time' to launch a mini bb forum...

should it only be launched after a site is well established and already gets many visitors a day?

or should it be launched and viewable in the very early stages of a sites birth?

Obviously if a site already is established and has many daily visitors then the percent of those who will go to the forum and fill up the postings is quite high...

But if a site is starting from scratch, I wonder if it is a bad idea to already make the forum available...as the low post count may discourage people and make it look dead?

Then again, if a forum is starting from a zero base... then even a small number of postings or discussions will generate more pages which will slowly improve rankings and visibility which will attract more visitors...

I would start forum at your earliest convenience (that way your site's going to pick up faster in search engines). You can always be the first to post so that your forum is not empty ;).

I would recommend to plan your site in whole at the very beginning, too. Every forum starts with zero posts, so it's up to you to "emulate" visitors first and make a discussion with yourself :-) You won't get hundreds of posts per one day anyway.

Yes, that's correct what Paul says. There's nothing worse that could put your visitors off than badly-designed or buggy site.

If you specializing in some field, you can attract visitors from other forums by advertising yourself as a specialist ready to answer all the questions. That's how I did and in 1 month I had about 500 posts and 50 users (in 1 year I had 10.000 posts). Links from other forums will also add some weight for your site for search mashines.

Moony
you can attract visitors from other forums by advertising yourself as a specialist ready to answer all the questions - well said and that's exactly what miniBB is designed for! Thanks a lot.