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

The extension doesn't make a difference for SEO purposes, but only in terms of how the site is perceived by users.

.com is the best
 
mimezine said:
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?
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Hi,

I introduced a simple law in all the domain name forums that we took over = don't insult others (come happy and leave happy). The UK crowd didn't seem to like the idea (I have to be honest that I made some stupid human mistakes). In the dnforum case - the largest poster "tested" me with insulting posts, got deleted and there was no drama after that.

Insult free zone is crucial if you wish businesses to be safe at your forum - this brings you income (and, ability to maintain the forum and hire 1 or 2 devs) + the businesses (of your niche) contribute super valuable content > ordinary users are usually opinionated though have a limited and 1-sided experience, while businesses have tonnes of experience and knowledge they are happy to share in exchange for visibility.

It was a strange experience = from 1 side it tanked the leading forum (many members left and a new competing "anything goes here" forum-competitor was born); from the other - raised the dead global forum from the ashes, as businesses and users started trusted us that will be not insulted (the current leader forum does nothing when individuals and businesses are insulted = and this actually benefits us).

we are not X/Twitter that needs announcement that content is not moderated.. maybe it helps my niche specifically as users use our forums also as free marketplaces.

:) hopefully this makes sense :)

of course, your niche and case seems to be different... I would probably talk to gfy how they monetize and moderate their forum (they are doing a great job!).

.. on the value = $50k-100k at least for a dead-ish forum.. if a busy forum = $1mil min. .. with your numbers - you should be able to make at least $20-$50k/year with banners.

Congratulations on success!! H
 
smallwheels said:
On which foundation is this statement based? Plus, as you claim this universally: Does the country, language or audience of the forum not have any influendce - simply .com is the best?
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Hi there! To start off, it’s worth saying that any extension can work (.org, .net, .forum, etc.)—there are no insurmountable technical restrictions. However, .com is often considered the best choice for several strategic reasons.

Before diving into why, we need to make an important distinction regarding language and target audience:

  • If your website targets a specific national audience, a local extension is usually best. In Italy, for example, .it is preferred because it immediately identifies the content as being in Italian.
  • In Germany, .de is the standard.
  • In the UK, the go-to is .co.uk.
That being said, if your goal is to scale or reach an international audience, here is why .com wins every time:

  • Global Recognition: It is the most widely used extension in the world, making it ideal for a global audience.
  • Trust and Credibility: Users perceive .com domains as more professional, reliable, and established compared to newer or "niche" extensions.
  • Memorability: As the most common TLD (Top-Level Domain), people tend to automatically type ".com" out of habit. Using a different extension means risking "donating" your traffic to whoever owns the .com version of your name.
  • The Standard for English: It is the de facto standard for English-language sites and companies operating internationally.
  • Indirect SEO Benefits: While Google doesn’t favor .com simply "out of preference," higher user trust leads to better Click-Through Rates (CTR) and more natural backlinks, which indirectly boosts your rankings.
 
Ricsca said:
Hi there! To start off, it’s worth saying that any extension can work (.org, .net, .forum, etc.)—there are no insurmountable technical restrictions. However, .com is often considered the best choice for several strategic reasons.

Before diving into why, we need to make an important distinction regarding language and target audience:

  • If your website targets a specific national audience, a local extension is usually best. In Italy, for example, .it is preferred because it immediately identifies the content as being in Italian.
  • In Germany, .de is the standard.
  • In the UK, the go-to is .co.uk.
That being said, if your goal is to scale or reach an international audience, here is why .com wins every time:

  • Global Recognition: It is the most widely used extension in the world, making it ideal for a global audience.
  • Trust and Credibility: Users perceive .com domains as more professional, reliable, and established compared to newer or "niche" extensions.
  • Memorability: As the most common TLD (Top-Level Domain), people tend to automatically type ".com" out of habit. Using a different extension means risking "donating" your traffic to whoever owns the .com version of your name.
  • The Standard for English: It is the de facto standard for English-language sites and companies operating internationally.
  • Indirect SEO Benefits: While Google doesn’t favor .com simply "out of preference," higher user trust leads to better Click-Through Rates (CTR) and more natural backlinks, which indirectly boosts your rankings.
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AI slop
 
The problem I've experienced with anything besides .com/.net/.org, is it becomes hard to communicate it in any other form than a clickable hyperlink.


You can't verbally tell someone to go to "yoursite.forum", cause they'll look at you funny wondering why you said "dot forum????"

You can't easily brand it onto logos, stickers, banners, tshirts, etc, because just like the above - average users don't know your picture actually means to type "yoursite.forum" in the address bar of a browser.


If you do go with .forum, I recommend forcing everything to retain the "www." on the front of the domain. This helps clear up the above issues for end-users.
 
I don't think it matters except as long as your site is intended to primarily revolve around its forum community (as opposed to a site where the forum is an "extra" to the main content). Most forums use .com simply because they were founded long before .forum existed (If .forum was one of the first tld, surely there would be many more examples of it). Since .forum is a little longer, short domains are better so the overall domain is memorable.

I actually own a newer TLD - I have star.army - but I still use stararmy.com as my primary URL due to SEO concerns of moving and losing some or all of my link juice to the .com that has been around since 2002.
 
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haqzore said:
You can't verbally tell someone to go to "yoursite.forum", cause they'll look at you funny wondering why you said "dot forum????"

You can't easily brand it onto logos, stickers, banners, tshirts, etc, because just like the above - average users don't know your picture actually means to type "yoursite.forum" in the address bar of a browser.
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These are actually very good points and I'd like to add that a long TLD like .forum can be annoying b/c it takes a lot of space and this can cause issues sometimes on stickers, patches etc.. I would however still not buy fully into that:

haqzore said:
anything besides .com/.net/.org, is it becomes hard to communicate it in any other form than a clickable hyperlink.
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Clearly, .com is what is the obvious choice but in the given scenario the OP has the choice between a .com domain and loosing the actual established domain name then or another TLD while maintaining the existing domain name. .net and .org are well established, but not an intuitive or well to remember TLD for many as well. Obviously country domains are a better choice then in most countries apart from the US (and the old-schoolers know that .com stands for "commercial", so maybe for some of them not the obvious choice for a forum ;)).

Some other domains have become somewhat common as well like .eu, .io or .cc while indeed most of the newer more specialized ones like .forum or others seem to be seen only rarely. But in the end I still think in most cases the TLD does not matter too much as regular visitors will remember and most new visitors will come via Google anyway and there is afaik no ranking punishment from Google per TLD. Others will simply type the domain part into google, so possibly one can overthink the TLD topic massively.
 
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