If you are a writer looking to grow a lively community around your writing, Author Buzz UK might have exactly what you need.

You can create a free forum and enable email updates to subscribers to keep them informed on the discussion going on. In this article, I’m going to talk you through the simple steps to create a forum.

First, you will need a (free) account

It should go without saying that you need to be logged in to make a forum. This is because spammers love trying to get stuff onto the site. I do not have enough hours in my day to purge the kind of spam that anonymous forum creation would cause.

Fortunately, accounts are free. There are no paid upgrades because everything on Author Buzz UK is free. Your data is safe and secure – no one is selling you and your to anyone else.

Step 1 – Go to the groups page.

Find the groups page. Click here if you missed the other link.

At the top of the page, you will see a link that says “Create a Group”. Give it a click.

Step 2 – Fill out some details

Give the group a name and description so that other people can understand what they will find inside. Some of our members use this to make fan groups for authors that they like. I suggest something based on your writing/author name.

Step 3 – Settings

This is where you can set privacy levels, control who can invite others, and set the default email rate for updates to your group members. If your group might get busy, I suggest daily or weekly digest.

Step 4 – Tick a box

Unless you want to setup an entire blog, I suggest you skip the create a blog option. But if you want a blog, grab one too. Blogs are great for feeding news into your group. If you already have a blog or news feed, also skip the make new blog section. There is a page for bringing in your headlines a bit later.

You should now be on the Forum tab. There is a tickbox.

Tick the tickbox by clicking on it.

Optional Step 5 – Add your headlines to the group

After adding a photo or public image, comes the option part where your news, blog, and/or upcoming events news feeds can go.

Feeds (RSS and ATOM) are ways to syndicate your headlines to other sites. On WordPress sites, your feed is found by adding /feed to the blog URL. WordPress also features per-category feeds too. These are good when you only want something like book news or appearances to be added to your group.

Your headlines will generally only update when someone visits or browsers your new group. This way, only active groups appear on the front page.

You can always come back to add and remove feeds at any time.

All that is left is to add your cover image.

Congratulations on your new group and forum. Let your readers, supporters, and fans know about your group. If you want, you can appoint moderators to help you run your forum.

Here is an example of a group with a forum and headlines – our help and support group. If you need support setting up your own group and forum, this is where you will find it.

As you can see, bugs and support requests are relatively rare these days. Feel free to post your help and support requests as you need to.

Hopefully, you will soon enjoy running your own fan group and forum. I look forward to seeing what you make.