Seeking Advice: Reviving a Large Forum – Is a .forum Domain a viable alternative to .com?

mimezine

mimezine

Member
Licensed customer
Hi everyone,

I’m the former owner of a once-thriving online community that peaked at around 50,000 daily visitors. Unfortunately, the forum has been neglected for several years, and server performance has significantly deteriorated. I’m now planning a revival effort.

Currently, the forum is hosted on a subdomain, and I’m looking to migrate it to a new primary domain using proper 301 redirects to preserve SEO equity. Here's my dilemma: I own a premium and highly relevant .forum domain, but I also have a .com domain that’s less brand-aligned.

My question to the community is:

Does anyone here have real-world experience using a .forum domain for a major forum site?

  • How do .forum domains perform in terms of SEO, user trust, and brand perception compared to .com?
  • Am I risking long-term growth or credibility by choosing .forum over .com?
I’d really appreciate any insights, especially from those who’ve faced a similar domain migration or branding decision.


Thanks in advance!
 
I don't know the answer but my gut feeling is .com is best and has the most clout maybe? I haven't actually heard of .forum. If it's premium - maybe sell it?
 
There are only a small percentage of popular forums not using a .com (or their home country .com equivalent extension), .net, or .org.

There a plenty of lists online that illustrate this.

https://www.findaforum.net/Home/TopForums/
https://xenforo.com/community/threads/the-large-xenforo-forums-list.87974/#post-861167

People or still weary of unfamiliar/unpopular/new domain extensions and probably will be for awhile. If you have a .com that is somewhat relevant to your forum's topic I would use it, especially if it already has history.
 
It sounds like an interesting project that could be satisfying to achieve and rebuild. If the .com domain is less brand aligned then would it be possible to obtain a different .com domain - similar to the idea briansol mentioned. The name is important as well as whether it's .forum or .com. Maybe you could tell us the names, for some feedback and an outside view on what "rings"?
 
I personally will always prefer .com or .org.
I will never use a domain that is more than 10 characters; make it short so it's easier to type and remember.
 
Is the site is intended for people globally? I had one which was for any country on .com. And one which was specifically a Uk site, on .co.uk. Although I also like .org which sounds fairly neutral.
 
Alvin63 said:
It sounds like an interesting project that could be satisfying to achieve and rebuild. If the .com domain is less brand aligned then would it be possible to obtain a different .com domain - similar to the idea briansol mentioned. The name is important as well as whether it's .forum or .com. Maybe you could tell us the names, for some feedback and an outside view on what "rings"?
Click to expand...
The forum is located at https://forum.grasscity.com. We also own the domains grasscity.forum and izigrow.com. While no final decision has been made, we’re seriously considering moving the forum to a separate domain to resolve ongoing compliance issues that impact the e-commerce side of grasscity.com.


The forum has been online for nearly 25 years and holds substantial historical and community value. However, it has been severely neglected and is in urgent need of attention—it requires significant TLC to bring it back to its full potential.
 
My main question is likely also, in the current age of apps like tiktok en reddit, would it be justified to to direct significant capital to revive these forums rather than to make fully custom app for the niche community for cannabis culture . I'm just very unsure if with a standard fully functional xenforo with al possible add ons can attract enough new gen-z and, gen alfa en millennials as a audience.
 
mimezine said:
you don't see any disadvantages with .forum?
Click to expand...
I don't see any issues with it either. My big one has been a .net since way before .net was used much. But I also have a .wtf (yes that's a real extension and it means what you think it means) and I really expect .music to take off once they legal battles over who can issue it are over.

Search engines do not care what the extension is. To me saying you wouldn't use a site that has a .something-else on it is like saying you would not use a site that doesn't have SEO friendly URLs. Just look at the link for any product you want on Amazon. There is no way you can remember one of those. I care very little for what the address is.
 
The best one to use is obviously .com but I don’t see what the big deal is with .forum.
 
My advice is to stick to .com rather than .forum or .info or whatever you want to use
 
What happened to Mert? he was running that for a long time. We lost touch over the years

I would perhaps play on the words a bit, maybe grasstown.com, greenergrass.com or something like that to keep with a .com. no idea what's available.
 
briansol said:
What happened to Mert? he was running that for a long time. We lost touch over the years

I would perhaps play on the words a bit, maybe grasstown.com, greenergrass.com or something like that to keep with a .com. no idea what's available.
Click to expand...
Mert is doing quite well, alive and Kicking, see him often.
 
@mimezine hi, what did you go for? .. curious.. and, did you manage to revive the forum? .. we did take over a major forum 3 years ago that had gone down to 0-1 posts day and it is alive again.. took over another forum - was super active, though the soul died off after we introduced "no ****-talking about others" policy..

also, did you buy it, or just took over?
 
Helmuts said:
@mimezine hi, what did you go for? .. curious.. and, did you manage to revive the forum? .. we did take over a major forum 3 years ago that had gone down to 0-1 posts day and it is alive again.. took over another forum - was super active, though the soul died off after we introduced "no ****-talking about others" policy..

also, did you buy it, or just took over?
Click to expand...
Hi Helmuts, we are actually moving to grasscity.forum any week now, and from there on we will try to rebuild, we have preparing quite a lot , we are upgrading to a new style, latest xenforo in april may, from a functionality point of view that will help a lot, than the rebuilding realy starts, new content pillars, removing all the thin content etc. Curious to know what you mean with your policy change and why it affected it the community, also let me know if you can say what site you revived and which one went under. I’ve took over in a make or break deal with the old owner.

Also curious to hear in what kind of ballpark you all value a site like grasscity with 26 years of legacy and 22 million post, is it worth something at all?
 
Personally I think today the domain you use does basically not matter at all and the TLD even less, when looking at the SEO side of things. For real users it is nice if the domain in question is easy to remind (including not having a too long, barely used TLD), short enough to type comfortably, and for gaining new users it is probably helpful if the domain name does somehow relate to the forum topic and the TLD is not irritating (like i.e a TLD from an African country for a forum with an audience in Northern Europe) or driving people away. But basically it does not matter too much and in the end it is the content that creates successful ranking.

Given the history of your forum I'd probably go for the .forum domain, if it is not too expensive, as it preserves the former forum name to keep the existing audience unirritated. But then even that is not too important and they will get used to it in short time. More important: Don't forget to forward visitors from the former domain to the new one, whatever you go for.
 
You must log in or register to reply here.
Back
Top Bottom