Double traffic drop after moving from vB 3.8

Hello.
It's almost a year after I've imported my largest forum from vB 3.8 to XF and the most disappointment for now is a drastic drop of traffic if I could compare this week with a week a year ago: 22000 page views with 48000 pw on mondays.
I'm seriously thinking of going back on 3.8. But I'd like to find out if something was wrong during import or there is something wrong with redirection in .htaccess. Why it is happening? Any thoughts?
Thanks a lot!

How did ad revenue change? That's what matters, IMO.
 
People say the two don't compare but none the less Facebook groups are killing my forum no question about it and the decline really started about a year ago.
I disagree. The better question should be. What are you doing to increase traffic to your forums? Are you involved as an administrator? I see admin all the time complaining about how their forums are dying yet they spend weeks even months away from the site. What do you expect? You get out what you put in. FaceBook is not killing anything, in fact people are getting tired of FaceBook and their privacy violations. Cut yourself away from FaceBook and other social sites. On my forums you only have the option to login on my site, not with facebook or anything else. Your site is supposed to be unique why turn control over to another website?

You can still have a successful forum but it takes work and you must be willing to give it 24/7 and 110%

Another thing you might consider is to stop being so uptight and loosen the rules a bit. Let people have their say. Stop copying other admins rules. Stop thinking of yourself as a King and start thinking of yourself as a member.

Not saying you specifically but admin in general. Stop complaining and get out there and do something about it.
 
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Another thing you might consider is to stop being so uptight and loosen the rules a bit. Let people have their say. Stop copying other admins rules. Stop thinking of yourself as a King and start thinking of yourself as a member.

Not saying you specifically but admin in general. Stop complaining and get out there and do something about it.
This is probably worthy of a new topic somewhere as I have a lot to say about it from 10 years admining forums. Too many of 'us' admins seem to think we need to lock things away from our customers...
 
I disagree. The better question should be. What are you doing to increase traffic to your forums? Are you involved as an administrator? I see admin all the time complaining about how their forums are dying yet they spend weeks even months away from the site. What do you expect? You get out what you put in. FaceBook is not killing anything, in fact people are getting tired of FaceBook and their privacy violations. Cut yourself away from FaceBook and other social sites. On my forums you only have the option to login on my site, not with facebook or anything else. Your site is supposed to be unique why turn control over to another website?

You can still have a successful forum but it takes work and you must be willing to give it 24/7 and 110%

Another thing you might consider is to stop being so uptight and loosen the rules a bit. Let people have their say. Stop copying other admins rules. Stop thinking of yourself as a King and start thinking of yourself as a member.

Not saying you specifically but admin in general. Stop complaining and get out there and do something about it.
I've been averaging 60 hours a week managing my communities for the last 10 years.. I make my living on these forums and have for many many years. I think i make a fair judge of the situation since I've been around for long before Facebook got popular.
 
I disagree. The better question should be. What are you doing to increase traffic to your forums? Are you involved as an administrator? I see admin all the time complaining about how their forums are dying yet they spend weeks even months away from the site. What do you expect? You get out what you put in. FaceBook is not killing anything, in fact people are getting tired of FaceBook and their privacy violations. Cut yourself away from FaceBook and other social sites. On my forums you only have the option to login on my site, not with facebook or anything else. Your site is supposed to be unique why turn control over to another website?

You can still have a successful forum but it takes work and you must be willing to give it 24/7 and 110%

Another thing you might consider is to stop being so uptight and loosen the rules a bit. Let people have their say. Stop copying other admins rules. Stop thinking of yourself as a King and start thinking of yourself as a member.

Not saying you specifically but admin in general. Stop complaining and get out there and do something about it.

These are all great bits of advice. Everything here.

Truth is that keeping a forum growing means keeping your foot on the "gas" all the time. It's exhausting...not worth it monetarily. But hey, if you're crazy, go nuts.

The only forum I run now is a niche board that's purely for my and the members' enjoyment. I'm out of the forum business, really. It was too much work. I'm glad I'm out. It was a good experience, but I learned enough to know that it's way more work than it's worth.
 
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This is probably worthy of a new topic somewhere as I have a lot to say about it from 10 years admining forums. Too many of 'us' admins seem to think we need to lock things away from our customers...

That's right. I made a photography forum very successful by making it the "anti moderator" forum, so to speak. No heavy handedness. Few rules. In fact, if you find a bunch of ******** moderators on a board running around making rules and banning people, you know you can start a forum by being unlike those children, who have no real understanding of running a community that anyone wants to be a part of.

I always chuckle when I come to a forum and the first thing I see is the "rules" or "admin" board right up front, with a bunch of stickies about behavior and expections.

Then I leave. Haha. Idiots. People (especially in the United States, land of the, ahem, free) live with enough stupid rules and regulations in their lives. Everything from background checks to privacy-violating piss tests. They don't come to an internet forum because they are dying to adhere to more rules. Or put it this way: the ones who do love those rules are jerks--part of the problem--and you don't want them around.
 
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Why it is happening? Any thoughts?

Another thought: People don't like change. You might know that xenforo is leagues above vbulletin and that continuing with vbulletin is a dead-end, but users don't give a rat's ass about the technology behind a forum. They do care when things change, though, and they usually don't like it. It's another complication in their lives, which are already complicated enough. Unless you have a lot of really sticky users, dedicated and with some skin in the game somehow, your changing to xenforo (or anything else) might just be enough to make them click somewhere else--or go eat some popcorn in front of the television, which could be more gratifying than trying to figure out the new ways of your "upgraded" forum.
 
Another thought: People don't like change. You might know that xenforo is leagues above vbulletin and that continuing with vbulletin is a dead-end, but users don't give a rat's ass about the technology behind a forum. They do care when things change, though, and they usually don't like it. It's another complication in their lives, which are already complicated enough. Unless you have a lot of really sticky users, dedicated and with some skin in the game somehow, your changing to xenforo (or anything else) might just be enough to make them click somewhere else--or go eat some popcorn in front of the television, which could be more gratifying than trying to figure out the new ways of your "upgraded" forum.
I agree with you on many points. I think it's a mistake to integrate yourself with Facebook and other social media. I want nothing to do with facebook and neither do my users. Forums are made for posting and nothing more.

Articles, blogs, galleries, etc.. are bloat and a waste.

Just my opinion of course but if you want to be Facebook close your forum and start a group there.
 
I always chuckle when I come to a forum and the first thing I see is the "rules" or "admin" board right up front, with a bunch of stickies about behavior and expections.

Without any written rules you really leave yourself open to all sort of abuse with no way of containing it. I do agree about the heavy handed moderating as I am not up for that either. We have a set of rules but the biggest issue we have and need to moderate are threads posted in the incorrect forum areas. Otherwise everyone just seems to know what is expected of them and mostly I don't think anyone even reads the few rules we do have :D
 
@mono were you using the thread tagging system on your vB 3.8? If you were, granted you have lost a lot of traffic. XF by default doesn't come with a thread tagging system, this means that all of your tags.php?tag=content links indexed and well ranked in Google have been lost.
 
Do you admit that software change could cause a double drop in search only because Google do not tolerate it?
Software change will always see some fluctuation in traffic, normally for the worse initially, though it should recover if the page is lighter and more friendly to Google. I did mine when XF first come out, seen a drop, then recovery within months... increasing ever since.

It wouldn't matter what software you change to, the simple fact of changing your pages code is enough for Google to think your entire site has changed, thus they drop you down. The best thing you can do is to align the page layout near the same as the prior software as possible... along with the same amount of messages per page, threads, so forth.
 
You can't really compare one day a year ago fairly to today. Look at an overall average of that month compared to this month. By comparing one day.. You have things that come into play to consider.. Where you getting more robot traffic then... Did you maybe have a topic that was "hot" that day.. Are as many members still interested in your site a year later.. Is the content still fresh to keep them browsing longer...
 
Adding to some of the recommendations, I'd look at your internal linking and clean up older vBulletin URLs. Granted, you've got redirects in place, but Googlebot will appreciate direct links within your internal navigation. It should provide for more efficient crawling. You can use a tool like Xenu Sleuth (free) or Screaming Frog. I use Screaming Frog and absolutely love it.

With all of Google's algorithm changes, it could be anything and not necessarily XenForo or increased movement to Facebook.
 
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