I need your opinion, your advice

[Silmarillion]

I still have a forum which has been running on vB3 since 2004. For many years I have only marginally cared for the community and have had a guilty conscience for a long time. The problem is that the forum only has very few regular users and I have never earned a cent with the forum, have never placed advertising or anything like that.
What do you think? Should I give it up, or should I invest a little more money and move it to XF2? What about the Theme? Can it be taken over without any problems? In 2004 I spent a few days with creating. The style is not mine. I took it over from another software and rebuilt it, adapted it for vB3. With my own modifications, of course. Or should I just use the logo and the color selection?

Fantasy-Foren

Forum zum Thema Fantasy! Diskussionen über Herr der Ringe, Harry Potter, Star-Wars und vieles mehr!

www.fantasy-foren.de

Would you invest ~ $ 400 again for this? It's just a hobby. And actually not even that anymore. But somehow I would not like to give up the forum after such a long time.

I look forward to your honest opinions.

 

[Max Taxable]

I say dump it.

 

[Silmarillion]

A tough announcement! But I want honest opinions.

 

[Max Taxable]

A tough announcement! But I want honest opinions

Well... I read your entire post and looked your site over, then also looked it up in the WayBack machine, and came to my conclusion. It wasn't just a kneejerk response.

BUT if you decide to go forward with modernization you should have a talk with @MySiteGuy about the migration from vB to xF, he's done that for many, many clients. He is turnkey, professional and very cordial to work with.

 

[kolakube]

But somehow I would not like to give up the forum after such a long time.

You don't need validation from us when you already know what to do. It won't be easy but if you do it because you want to then others may follow.

 

[Silmarillion]

@Max Taxable : Ken (MySiteGuy) moved a large forum for me just two months ago. So I already know him and have had very good experiences with him.

 

[Silmarillion]

What I've just been thinking about: I think if I really keep the forum and switch to XF2, then this time I would dare and carry out the move myself. The learning effect would of course be priceless. ^^

But I am still undecided. Let's see how the story will end.

 

[Seeker-Smith]

I just decided to rebuild a forum I closed in 2005. I bought a second xf licence and after a couple hours I was up and running. I have not yet opened to the public but will within a weak or so.Mine are hobby sites. Thankfully I do earn enough to pay my sit bills.

 

[beerForo]

What I would do is import it to XF, modernize the look, and email your members letting them know about the re-launch with new features. DO NOT email them until it is done or they will come look, see the old site, and never come back.

 

[briansol]

Moving to XF will likely help your natural SEO which can help bring in more users.

I wouldn't spend 400 on it, but a license is what, 160 now? that's really all you need.

 

[BassMan]

What I would do is import it to XF, modernize the look, and email your members letting them know about the re-launch with new features. DO NOT email them until it is done or they will come look, see the old site, and never come back.

That would also be my advice. Start clean. But if you'd like users to actively engage on the forum, you'll need to take care of it. It really depends on what you'd like to do with it.

If it's ok with you to just leave the forum to grow itself (and it won't grow just like that in that stage if you ask me), then I wouldn't bother with migration anyway. But with better forum software you can offer your users more. But still, with no new useful content, user activity, or staff engagement, I doubt there will be a success.

 

[Paul B]

Look at it this way - how many G&Ts can you have for $400 ...

 

[beerForo]

4 in Manhattan.

 

[Forcycle]

You have an old forum which has a fair amount of content, you have an advantage there. Have you tried to monetize it in the past?

I wouldn't invest $400, but buying a XF license and migrating over with a few theme customizations (or a reasonably priced theme) should be all you need. Could be worth looking into different options to monetize what you have if you can even if it is a few $ per month, at that point the XF renewals will pay for itself.

 

[Silmarillion]

@Brogan and @beerForo : please keep your composure and seriousness! This is not a matter of life and death. This is about more than that!

 

[Silmarillion]

You have an old forum which has a fair amount of content, you have an advantage there. Have you tried to monetize it in the past?

I wouldn't invest $400, but buying a XF license and migrating over with a few theme customizations (or a reasonably priced theme) should be all you need. Could be worth looking into different options to monetize what you have if you can even if it is a few $ per month, at that point the XF renewals will pay for itself.

As I said earlier, I'll save the money for the migration this time, yes...and try to do it myself. Then I need a style and Xenforo itself. That is a price range that is manageable and justifiable.

 

[Silmarillion]

Would you try to adopt the style to some extent? Or is the style no longer up-to-date? It is a fantasy forum.

@Russ has announced a kind of "fantasy style". And Xenfocus also has a few styles that would be suitable.

 

[djbaxter]

I recently did exactly what you are pondering doing — switched what was once a thriving forum (started in 2004) with good traffic that had now dwindled down to a small number of regulars from vB 4.2.5 to XF2.

Things (like certain addons but also some core features) were starting to break on the old vB site and of course I was still condemned to running an EOL version of PHP on the forum. What I did was ask for donations to offset some of the costs of converting and then on weekend plowed ahead and converted to Xenforo 2.

This was all rather recent. I have seen a few new registrations and some intercepted attempts at spam registrations which hadn't occurred for a while on the vB version but it's probably too soon to tell how much XF will invigorate the member base.

I've also been watching as Google reindexes the site and the new XF URLs start to populate the search results.

Visitor traffic has increased.

And AdSense and Amazon earnings which had dropped off to a trickle have both shown an increase already.

It's a labor of love rather than a financially-based decision but I'm happy I did it.

 

[djbaxter]

Would you try to adopt the style to some extent? Or is the style no longer up-to-date? It is a fantasy forum.

@Russ has announced a kind of "fantasy style". And Xenfocus also has a few styles that would be suitable.

It's not that difficult either with a PixelExit style or even modifying the default style to come pretty close to your old vB style - that's one of the great things about Xenforo. In my case, I didn't really try for an exact match — I was a bit bored with the old vB style anyway, to be honest — and I figured some changes to the look and feel were part of announcing that we have new software and a new look and feel so come and check us out.

Feedback from the members has been very positive, by the way, especially the responsive XF styles and being able to finally dump Tapatalk.

 

[Silmarillion]

Thank you for your thoughts and personal experiences, @djbaxter. For that reason alone, it was worth opening up this topic. There is so much that unites the members here. Above all, our common past. But that's history. Let's live in the here and now and look positively into the future.