Has anyone noticed a decline in forums?

[Mendalla]

Most of the time, I just paste the link in the post and let it unfurl. Even if the site doesn't support unfurling, it will be rendered into a link once the post is posted. The only time I use the link button is if I want to embed the link, which is fairly rare.

And you can paste images as I just did this one. The image will be attached and embedded in a single operation. No attachment or even the BBCode Image button needed.

Xenforo's handling of both images and links is much better than many boards I am on.

So not sure why you think this is all so hard @Digital Doctor.

 

[djbaxter]

I'm puzzled by why many people seem to think it's an either-or thing.

I visit and post on several forums regularly.

I also post on social media, mostly Facebook but sometimes Twitter and occasionally Reddit (recently).

With the exception of Reddit, my posts on social media are totally different from my posts on forums. The two formats can coexist quite nicely.

 

[sbj]

Has anyone noticed a decline in forums?

Were you for the last 10 years in Thailand in a prison with no communication?

Yes, nothing is as it used to be. Basically any forum I used to visit doesnt exist anymore or the big ones took so much hit that you can't recognize them anymore. Even the XF community is not the same it was once. I see the same 20-30 faces in every thread.

 

[briansol]

Probably impossible.

Good idea though.

One other huge issue is ownership of the forum. It somehow should be shared between members, not owned by a guy who uploaded the xenforo files.

Why would I as the second member, just work for your board's benefit ?

The idea would be that an XF 'app' would be install-able by our users and give them this native functionality, just like installing the FB or IG app does.

In fact, FB and IG give you multiple options of WHERE to share it too in their ecosystem.

How awesome would it me to share the photo i just took to a 'new thread' or 'my wall' or 'insert NEW ... here'

 

[Mendalla]

Were you for the last 10 years in Thailand in a prison with no communication?

Yes, nothing is as it used to be. Basically any forum I used to visit doesnt exist anymore or the big ones took so much hit that you can't recognize them anymore. Even the XF community is not the same it was once. I see the same 20-30 faces in every thread.

And yet, one old classic forum still chugs on. forum.rpg.net is quite old and still pretty active. I joined way back in the noughties, drifted away for a bit, and then returned when they switched from VB to XF.

And one of my two writing boards is fairly active, though the subject is quite unapologetically sex and erotic writing and, as we probably all know well, you can't go too far wrong selling sex on the Internet. And most of the big social media tend to be a tad puritanical about stuff like that, so it's less of a competitor.

 

[jake87]

I'm puzzled by why many people seem to think it's an either-or thing.

I visit and post on several forums regularly.

I also post on social media, mostly Facebook but sometimes Twitter and occasionally Reddit (recently).

With the exception of Reddit, my posts on social media are totally different from my posts on forums. The two formats can coexist quite nicely.

This thread is about decline of forums from a forum owner point of view. It really doesn’t help that you can post photos on social media when your own forum is going bankrupt

 

[Digital Doctor]

an XF 'app' would be install-able by our users and give them this native functionality, just like installing the FB or IG app does.

Xenforo 3 should come with a downloadable smartphone app option. It will cost more but it's key.

 

[sbj]

@Mendalla

The question was if we noticed a decline in forums. Not if forums exist anymore. Sure, there are still many forums out there alive and live but if you compared their metrics to 10 years ago with today, it is a tragedy, really. Just oldtimers like us care about forums. The young generation doesn't own a PC anymore. They use their phones and apps. We are like the bad, dark, dirty, scruffy part of the neighbourhood. Sometimes a hidden gem. Rarely someone visits us, most likely when they are "lost" . They all go to the shiny neighbourhoods with their shiny big shopping malls and Starbucks.

 

[Ingenious]

The two formats can coexist quite nicely.

Do you mean for the same company/forum? That is, you can have both a forum and a Facebook group for example?

I'm wondering if starting a FB group would get me out there to a whole new (and younger) demographic. It could also help future-proof my community in case the forum continues to decline.

Do many people here run both a forum and a FB group at the same time?

 

[Mendalla]

Yeah, there's probably a generational component. My forum exists because people didn't want a FB group but the forum is all (with one or two exceptions) boomers and gen-X. I do agree that you won't see a lot of millennials and Gen-Z (my son and his partner are in this group) on forums. And that's fine with me. They do their thing on Reddit or whatever.

In my experience, forums have always been about niches. I have seen very few successful general forums. I certainly don't belong to any, though Wondercafe2 leans that way (oops, forgot Gemma's Idle Chatter, but it's niche in its audience I would say). So that's probably something the software developers are already wrestling with whether they say it publicly or not. Forums are a niche product that primarily serves other niche products (like erotica or rpgs).

The future of forums is probably not the host + software model but XenCloud or whatever they are calling it. Xenforo won't say that now, but to my eye it is where they will have to go. People are going to increasingly want a forum where they can click a few buttons and go to town, just like setting up a social media group. Hosted is just not going to deliver that experience. Too much work to get started. And even in the cloud, you are going to see things like adding add-ons by clicking options on a list rather than downloading and installing.

So I think forums will exist in some form, but it will not be what we see today. It will be cloud-based and probably tied into social media. Is that a bad thing? Not necessarily. I am sure there are some old grognards somewhere who still curse web forums for replacing USENET and BBSes. I don't think that was a bad thing. Web forums are far more accessible than either of those. Social media-based cloud forums will be more accessible, in terms of ease of starting and running one, than current web forums. So that's probably a good thing unless you're following an economic model predicated on hosted + software. Then the real problems start coming out.

Short version: Forums like my Wondercafe2 will be around for a long time, it's just matter of how they are run and hosted. They could be on social media or in a cloud-based system. I doubt, however, that it will be software running on a host for too much longer.

 

[Faust]

I would say that forums must be nowadays more easy accessed from phones. As someone mentioned above regarding sharing stuff on forum, I do highly agree. I run a small photography forum, and is not as I was expected. Users tend to share images on social media sites because they are just few clicks away. When on forums is way more click, plus people aren't used with sharing photos on forums.

No matter how hard I tried to make the forum user friendly, people are different, especially young generation, there is not way they will be active on forums.

I would definitely agree that an app is something crucial here. And might change the turn.

 

[Mr. Jinx]

Xenforo 3 should come with a downloadable smartphone app option. It will cost more but it's key.

That sounds nice, but will this ever work?
I mean what about the custom add-ons, will they work with a generic XF app?
For example Tapatalk is a very nice app, but there is no way that it will work with custom XF add-ons.

 

[Rhody]

One of my forums is now 23 years old, and added over 1500 new registrants in the past 13 months. (about 9515 total, 1.1 million posts, private niche for a business industry) Banner ad sales are actually at an all time high, but I agree with all the above that Facebook is really kicking our butts. (in spite of FB being terrible for searches or organization of content/subforums) More than 20 members of our forum created their own private FB groups for the same niche, and took a good deal of the membership's new posts, so it is incredibly fragmented. It's all about the instant gratification/notification, and the ease of uploading photos without having to resize them first, etc. FB handles that well.

I also noticed a huge shift from desktop visits to mobile visits, in the past 4 years. Mobile devices represent most visitors now. The push notifications and mobile design shift are great, but I think there is probably still room for improvement.

I would love to see suggestions and ideas as to how we can remain relevant, and I think this is a great topic!

 

[Mendalla]

I would definitely agree that an app is something crucial here. And might change the turn.

Combined with easy-to-use cloud hosting and software, sure. Basically an app plus a turnkey backend. I am not sure that an app alone will do it, though. The ability to easily spin up and configure a forum such that you don't need to understand FTP or cPanel or whatever would go a long way. Fact is, my forum would be unsustainable if two people left, me being one, because we are the only ones who understand stuff like that. Had we not stepped up, Wondercafe2 would be an FB group because that's something everyone can handle.

 

[Faust]

Combined with easy-to-use cloud hosting and software, sure. Basically an app plus a turnkey backend. I am not sure that an app alone will do it, though. The ability to easily spin up and configure a forum such that you don't need to understand FTP or cPanel or whatever would go a long way. Fact is, my forum would be unsustainable if two people left, me being one, because we are the only ones who understand stuff like that. Had we not stepped up, Wondercafe2 would be an FB group because that's something everyone can handle.

I don't think that I will want something self hosted, as my forum has over 120 addons and that's not an option for me at all. Plus, I like to manage everything myself.

 

[Paul B]

an app is something crucial here

my forum has over 120 addons

The two are mutually exclusive.

I've been seeing the same threads for over 10 years.
I expect I'll be seeing them for the next 10 years.

 

[Digital Doctor]

That sounds nice, but will this ever work?
I mean what about the custom add-ons, will they work with a generic XF app?
For example Tapatalk is a very nice app, but there is no way that it will work with custom XF add-ons.

Custom addons wont work with the app.

And that's fine.

Mobile is different. Not every feature is needed on every platform.

 

[Mendalla]

I don't think that I will want something self hosted, as my forum has over 120 addons and that's not an option for me at all. Plus, I like to manage everything myself.

I am not talking about folks like us. But there are a lot of people who could probably benefit that don't have our skillset or interest in poking around in the guts. Give them an easy way to get started and a selection of styles and they'll be happy.

And that's probably a good chunk of your audience for an app, too. Personally, I am happy with PWA or even just using a mobile browser.

 

[Faust]

I am not talking about folks like us. But there are a lot of people who could probably benefit that don't have our skillset or interest in poking around in the guts. Give them an easy way to get started and a selection of styles and they'll be happy.

And that's probably a good chunk of your audience for an app, too. Personally, I am happy with PWA or even just using a mobile browser.

Agree, but not everyone will be happy to pay monthly subscription when they can have a group on fb.

 

[Mendalla]

Agree, but not everyone will be happy to pay monthly subscription when they can have a group on fb.

It has to have something you don't get on FB. Like privacy and control over your data. I see Zuck and crew are trying to argue once again that Apple increasing privacy controls on IOS is a bad thing. That kind of "all your data are mine" attitude is precisely why I left FB, likely never to return.

/Rant

More seriously, that is the biggest problem. Even a cheap, turnkey forum will have to offer some kind of compelling benefit over an FB group. In our case, it was that FB couldn't thread a conversation worth s--t in 2014 and people preferred to read threads in a traditional forum style. Not sure if that has improved since or not. Probably not.