To set the actual forum up only takes a few days at the most, but get the forums full of good content before you launch it can take longer. Also getting a forum up & off the ground can take years if your starting from scratch.
Attention: "role based name" email prefixes such as support, webmaster, info, contact, forum, service, affiliate, admin, traffic, partners, marketing, etc., for our member accounts are not permitted. They are acceptable for a vendor listing, but not for the member email. This is due to bulk email processors scrubbing them for delivery due to extremely high bounce rates. Please apply for membership using a personalized email prefix. Something like bob@xxxxx.com.
If we discover you signed up with a role based name we will give you only one message to change it. After 3 days your account will be removed if the email is not changed.