How many forums should I open up with?

I see this question asked a lot on various forums across the web, and really, when your community is brand new to the web, its best to start off with a little amount of forums - such as 3, general chat, introductions, and perhaps; a news/feedback forum.

Why's that though? Because nobody likes an empty forum, and by starting with a small amount of forums, its easier for you to add new ones as your community grows.

What does everyone think?

 

I start out with whatever I think the general structure should be. Over time I add and delete forums based on member feedback.

My DJ board started out with about 10 forums and now has about 18 (excluding staff boards). At our most we probably had 30 or so.

 

I also start with just a few forums and expand on what's being discussed.
I'd do research on the niche I'm trying to build on and add a couple forums for that niche.. like with a webmaster forum I'd have a "seo/traffic" section as well as a "marketplace" for those to start using even if empty in the beginning.

 

Anything over 6 (not including hidden staff ones) is too much pending on the niche. On my admin forum, I started with a lot more but they were needed for the direction I wanted to go in... HOWEVER, I am know to post 200+ topics and posts a day so a forum with a lot of boards is not an issue to me to get them active.

The issue with many new forums having way too many boards is the mainly the type of boards. Like topics that relate to another board and stuff like that which will only confuse people on where to post what. Funny story and TRUE lol, when I first started making forums (proboards server 1 mind you ), I didn't understand what a new topic was, I thought you can only make one per board, so I made boards as my new topics, had one forum with at least 200 boards LOL!!!! That still makes me laugh, today!!!