Somersoft - property investment forums (archived)

[Sim]

Somersoft operated from 1999 through to 2015 at which point it was archived and is now maintained in read-only form - https://www.somersoft.com/

The history of software used on the site:

• 1999 - 2001 hand built forum
• 2001 - 2002 Webboard hosted forum
• 2002 - 2004 vBulletin v2.x
• 2004 - 2016 vBulletin v3.x
• 2016 - 2020 XenForo v1.5
• 2020 - present XenForo v2.x

The site was recently migrated from v1.5 to v2.1 and we have deliberately gone for a minimalist theme based on the default with the only major change being the logos. This will make upgrades and site maintenance simpler to manage. The default theme is certainly good enough for our purposes.

However, we have gone to quite a bit of trouble to hide UI elements that are no longer necessary for an archived site with no new members or content, for example: "new posts", "what's new", "latest member", etc.

I even wrote a tutorial based on the work we did: How to archive a XenForo forum to make it read-only, along with an addon (Archive Site) which helps to hide some elements and perform other maintenance tasks such as removing passwords from user accounts and preventing them from resetting it via the forgot password form.

 

[Wajdan]

Your forum is very old. There are rare forums which dates back to 1990's. The history of upgrading and changing forum software is great. Howerver, I realize that with that much old forum there appears to be low traffic you receive or maybe it is because of type of niche your forums target. Source: https://cutewebstats.com/info/somersoft.com

I checked another website in your footer https://www.propertychat.com.au/ and I am impressed with the stats.

 

[Sim]

Howerver, I realize that with that much old forum there appears to be low traffic you receive or maybe it is because of type of niche your forums target

The site has been archived for the last 5 years with no new content posted.

At its peak just before it was archived, it had good traffic - but that has naturally decreased over time as the site has aged.

Either way, 3rd party stats sites are not very accurate - I wouldn't pay much attention to them, they are based on guesses, not on real data. Alexa site rankings are based on extrapolation of a small subset of data gathered from users who have the Alexa toolbar installed. I don't know anyone who has used that toolbar in over 10 years now - I didn't even know it was still a thing.

 

[Wajdan]

The site has been archived for the last 5 years with no new content posted.

At its peak just before it was archived, it had good traffic - but that has naturally decreased over time as the site has aged.

Either way, 3rd party stats sites are not very accurate - I wouldn't pay much attention to them, they are based on guesses, not on real data. Alexa site rankings are based on extrapolation of a small subset of data gathered from users who have the Alexa toolbar installed. I don't know anyone who has used that toolbar in over 10 years now - I didn't even know it was still a thing.

Thank you for your response. Sorry if my previous message sounded offended. I know third party websites are mere estimates and I was just more interested to know why it is dead (two decades old forum) which you have explained very well that it was archived.

I am about to purchase xenforo license and I am current user of vbulletin 4. Since you have used both forum software, How do you find xenforo over vbulletin? specially in terms of search engine rankings. I do have an unused vbulletin license but I would like to use Xenforo for my new website.

 

[Sim]

I am about to purchase xenforo license and I am current user of vbulletin 4. Since you have used both forum software, How do you find xenforo over vbulletin? specially in terms of search engine rankings. I do have an unused vbulletin license but I would like to use Xenforo for my new website.

You might notice the 12 year period where we ran this site on vBulletin v3.x - we were all ready to upgrade to vB v4, but started hearing reports about problems with the development and dissatisfied customers, so we held off upgrading.

I continue to see a large number of vBulletin based forums migrate to XenForo - I think it's pretty clear what the market thinks is the best choice.

I now run 8 XenForo forums - I'm extremely impressed with the solid architecture the devs have built for v2.x - it is very extensible and will serve as a solid platform for future development.

I don't think you will regret moving to XenForo.

 

[RallyFan]

You're the forum king Sim ... got lots of mileage as a guest on pchat/somersoft, and zoochat is amazing... I've been able to read and learn so much from it