Anyone use a different term other than forums or community?
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Mendalla
Well-known member
I might steal that. What are your royalty rates?
FTL
Well-known member
Ah yes, that takes me back. My first experience of forums was when ExtremeTech started in 2001 and I was hooked immediately. The site looked very different to today, as you can imagine. I gave up on their forum when they changed the software to some abomination that ruined the experience. About 10 years ago plus, they retired their forums completely, making an announcement about it. Dunno why they did that. Still a decent tech site, though.
ExtremeTech
ExtremeTech is the Web's top destination for news and analysis of emerging science and technology trends, and important software, hardware, and gadgets.
www.extremetech.com
Forsaken
Well-known member
This is also my experience over multiple communities I run or own. People under 25 do not recognize the term forum as much, and people over 45-50 (who are not usually involved with internet or technology) are also confused.AgreedI have my own proverb: if a chicken crosses the other cheek to get into a glass kitchen he won't smell what the rock is cooking.
Your response is just so quintessential to the entire idea of lagging behind. "I'm right, you are wrong, but why won't anyone visit my dead forum" lol
Im not saying /forums is wrong, but the term is not commonly understood. The overwhelming majority of people will not click on a forum these days, all other variables constant. But using links, titles, landing pages etc with terms like community and social, people will understand.
I have seen the exact opposite, and even when I was offering services (and I'm sure Mike C has experienced it to a larger extent than most people here given the number of customers he has retained) that the trend for at least the last 10 years has been that forum has been less common vernacular and community has become more common. There is obviously still areas where there are standouts, and if you are already established as one you are going to see more traffic for forum, but that is not going to be the case for anyone newer.
You can also just use Google Trends and see how things have changed over time, and it is obvious that within the next few years (5, 10 at most) forum will be even less common.
This also does not mean forums are dead (as I'm sure someone will bring up that debate as well), but that forums are changing. It still doesn't mean that XenForo needs to be Facebook and Reddit, as that's still a stupid thought
.
ForumFan
Well-known member
My forum is 6 months old. "Discussion," "site," "community" don't even make an appearance (not once) in the keywords used in queries landing on my site. But, "forum" does.
Forsaken
Well-known member
How much traffic, what type of site, and how have you branded the site?
Of examples I can use off the top of my head:
Site A (5 year) I mostly see community, with a small smattering of forum. This is also linked to a large Discord server, and when we tell people to look on the forum we get asked "what is a forum/where is the forum" in the age groups I mentioned previously. There are also a lot of non-Native English speakers.
Site B (10 years) has never branded itself as forum or as community, and just as its own thing. Community has trended upward for search results, and forum has declined significantly over the last 10 years. Previously it saw a lot of traffic as forum.
Site C (1 year) again has never branded itself as a forum or community, and sees more traffic regarding community than forum. It has a bigger focus on articles and information, but primarily content is based around the forum.
There are a number of sites I am also active on to help with (mostly paid positions) and those have mostly seen the same trend.
Mr Lucky
Well-known member
But why should they? Hardly surprising - I doubt anyone would use those terms in a search. Nobody is suggesting otherwise are they?
ForumFan
Well-known member
But, "______ forum" is a keyword being used to land on my site. One of many. But, it is one of them.
In the last month:
Forum stats:
Branding comes from a variety of actions / activities. So I'm not sure which you're referring to. But, my short answer is yes.
I have a good domain name / forum name, which has keywords in it. That helps. I also have occupied a space that was vacated by another very popular niche forum that was suddenly shut down. So, that helps. I've promoted my forum on other forums that are peripherally related.
ForumFan
Well-known member
That's a lot of forum specific reasons as to why forum would be a leading search term.
Well... it is a..... forum.
Shazam!
Mr Lucky
Well-known member
No surprise there, my post above was regarding the other search terms you mentioned, ie "Discussion," "site," "community". I think it goes without saying that forum is bound to be a keyword that will render search results for a forum. Those others as I said are possibly not great keywords for a search of a forum, especially site given that applies to every website.
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ForumFan
Well-known member
The point being that, yes... people know what a "forum" is and use the term frequently. More importantly, they actively seek them out. My Google Search Console reports are evidence of that.
Forums aren't dead. There was a time when big tech social media sites (like FB) put a dent in forum activity. But, that pendulum is swinging back now. Big tech is falling on its own sword as we speak. Forums are coming back in a big way.
To borrow loosely from Mark Twain:
The reports of forum death are greatly exaggerated.
rickhz
Well-known member
Message board.
TPerry
Well-known member
actually he's kinda right. Most of your younger group have a minimal knowledge of what a "forum" consists of. It's simply us hold farts that are more familiar with it.Suit yourself. There are none so blind as will not see. Have a good night.
TPerry
Well-known member
First system I had was an 8086 XT and used DesqView on little miniscribe HD.
Moved up in the world when one of my users donated a SCSI card and a 40MB SCSI hard drive (think it was a MiniScribe also, had to have it rebuilt before I could use it but was cheaper than buying new). Moved over to OS/2 and Maximus from a DesqView QuickBBS setup. Ran a 3 line system on that OS/2 Maximus/Binkley setup.
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My first system was an HP with NO disk drive (not a personal computer but a desktop computer for the lab at at work). It used cassette tapes as the storage medium, for backup, and for chunks of BASIC code which by swapping in and out of RAM allowed us to actually run statistical analyses like analysis of variance. 
Mendalla
Well-known member
The C64, my first personal computer, came with one of those cassette tape drives out of the box. A 5.25" floppy was an add-on. Later there was a small hard drive (10MB or something like that).My first system was an HP with NO disk drive (not a personal computer but a desktop computer for the lab at at work). It used cassette tapes as the storage medium, for backup, and for chunks of BASIC code which by swapping in and out of RAM allowed us to actually run statistical analyses like analysis of variance.
ForumFan
Well-known member
Yep. Had one of those. The C64 was considered quite the advanced machine at the time.
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