Jake Bunce
Well-known member
I will just quote an old post of mine:
Jake Bunce said:
Watermelon
New member
I believe that they are only relevant alongside something like Game Servers and games themselves
tx_shooter
Member
I have been a member on various forums since 2005 when I first stumbled upon a shooting forum and became a member. Since then I have been a member of various forums as my interest and spare time allow. Now I own a forum that I bought from the founder because his interest and spare money would not allow him to continue it. So instead of him shutting it down he sold it to me cheap (and I got what I paid for).
The biggest issue at the forum has been original content and high quality posts. I have talked to a lot of the more knowledgeable members and asked if they could post stuff along those lines occasionally. I had to really work at it for almost a year but I am starting to see the rewards. The new member interaction is coming up, the members are becoming more active again, and there are more outside link backs on other forums where people are linking to our high quality content.
One of the biggest factors in spurring this has been forum events. I have been able to get the members active again by getting the events that started the forum going again. We now have 2-3 trips a year and that has helped with membership. The members are free to come along and the maps, routes, and pictures from the trip are available to members afterwards.
The biggest issue at the forum has been original content and high quality posts. I have talked to a lot of the more knowledgeable members and asked if they could post stuff along those lines occasionally. I had to really work at it for almost a year but I am starting to see the rewards. The new member interaction is coming up, the members are becoming more active again, and there are more outside link backs on other forums where people are linking to our high quality content.
One of the biggest factors in spurring this has been forum events. I have been able to get the members active again by getting the events that started the forum going again. We now have 2-3 trips a year and that has helped with membership. The members are free to come along and the maps, routes, and pictures from the trip are available to members afterwards.
Thomas Corbett
Member
Hi tx shooter,
it really is about keeping content moving and trying to instill quality content as you say. its also about trying to get inactive members involved. Some will always watch from the sidelines but some others suffer from confidence to post and get involved too. you need to find ways of teasing some people out of their comfort zone. once you do, you tend to have a greater community of regulars. Of course it all takes time and patience and there is no rushing it.
toto
it really is about keeping content moving and trying to instill quality content as you say. its also about trying to get inactive members involved. Some will always watch from the sidelines but some others suffer from confidence to post and get involved too. you need to find ways of teasing some people out of their comfort zone. once you do, you tend to have a greater community of regulars. Of course it all takes time and patience and there is no rushing it.
toto
thisisabraham
New member
Forums are not dead YET...
Until there are people who love sharing information, helping others, share interesting perspectives, ideas and answers; forums will remain thriving centers of activity. But as forums evolve, the mediocre ones will surely fall on the wayside. The best ones will survive without any hiccups. If you have a strong belief that you can create a forum that can engage and help thousands of users on a daily basis, then go for it. If you are good enough, in no time you will have hundreds then thousands of members who will prove that forums are here to stay.
The best incentive you can give your users is a place where the most relevant, meaningful and useful information is discussed. And that responsibility lies on you. If you succeed, the forum succeeds. It is as simple as that.
Until there are people who love sharing information, helping others, share interesting perspectives, ideas and answers; forums will remain thriving centers of activity. But as forums evolve, the mediocre ones will surely fall on the wayside. The best ones will survive without any hiccups. If you have a strong belief that you can create a forum that can engage and help thousands of users on a daily basis, then go for it. If you are good enough, in no time you will have hundreds then thousands of members who will prove that forums are here to stay.
The best incentive you can give your users is a place where the most relevant, meaningful and useful information is discussed. And that responsibility lies on you. If you succeed, the forum succeeds. It is as simple as that.
Thomas Corbett
Member
absolutely ...... as I have said, its down to the owner to keep things fresh and gauge changes in their particular field / market. They must lead their forum in the right direction and not let it go stale or outdated / irrelevant. I think some get it up and running, bring in the first influx of members then sit back and expect everyone else to keep it going. ........ no such luck ....... you have to work it and if you are committed enough, you wont see that as a burden. its meant to be something that you are passionate about.
tx_shooter
Member
I treat my forum like a second job/ investment. I try to set aside a couple hours each week to work on quality content and maintenance on the forum. But like was pointed out - the biggest issue is getting other users to post the high quality content that keeps the forum useful. I have also started browsing other related forums to mine to ensure my original content is not getting ripped off. Link backs is appreciated but other people trying to post content as theirs without credit is a problem now.
thisisabraham
New member
Very well put. It is the forum owner's responsibility to ensure that the discussions are hot enough to kindle the users' curiosity. After all, everyone has something to contribute to a discussion. Imagine there must have been 100 people who wanted to engage, but only 20 end up engaging. The owner has to take charge to convert the 'Maybe' crowd into active participants. The forum owner is the pilot of the forum, he/she cannot ever think that it will run on auto-pilot. The forum owner's passion/commitment is the glue that will keep the users together as a community in the long run.
Aayush
Well-known member
This is a clear social play.
1. Do your SEO right.
2. Copy content through automation if you are lacking content and provide a link back because you're a good person and because Google doesn't like copied content. If you have like 200 posts, Google wouldn't be interested in your site, let alone users. You need to build a large topic base.
What I would personally suggest is extract all the content on your competitors forum, see whats trending and write on own spin off based on all the topics.
Once you have somebody participating, talk to them, ask them what is working and what changes would they like to see.
That should be the best strategy in your case.
Thomas Corbett
Member
A couple of hours a week ........ You lucky person. I'm on every day for at least a couple of hours and sometimes more at the weekends. Even when I am actually participating in my chosen hobby itself ( railway modding ) my computer is switched on and I'm constantly checking it and responding. I don't mind it one bit.
As far as copying content from other forums go, it's a no for me. Some of my members are members on various similar forums and I do get the benefit of what they find there as they bring up the discussion on my forum as well but I would not encourage the wholesale lifting of it. Everybody to their own but I would rather do the graft. Yes, discuss issues that you have read elsewhere and the occasional link where necessary ( usually for pictorial purposes , with consent ) but the whole point is to take a fresh discussion with your own members creating the traffic. Surely it's more interesting than folk switching between forums to read exactly the same article but with just a couple of additional posts against it.
Not critisism just my view. Again, I think it may be why some forums go stale. They maybe simply repeating their counterparts to much and allowing things to go stale. Bring on as many of your own unique takes and features as you possibly can to set you aside from the others.
Apologies if I've went on a bit.
Tom
As far as copying content from other forums go, it's a no for me. Some of my members are members on various similar forums and I do get the benefit of what they find there as they bring up the discussion on my forum as well but I would not encourage the wholesale lifting of it. Everybody to their own but I would rather do the graft. Yes, discuss issues that you have read elsewhere and the occasional link where necessary ( usually for pictorial purposes , with consent ) but the whole point is to take a fresh discussion with your own members creating the traffic. Surely it's more interesting than folk switching between forums to read exactly the same article but with just a couple of additional posts against it.
Not critisism just my view. Again, I think it may be why some forums go stale. They maybe simply repeating their counterparts to much and allowing things to go stale. Bring on as many of your own unique takes and features as you possibly can to set you aside from the others.
Apologies if I've went on a bit.
Tom
Shelley
Well-known member
Well guys. With facebook and other social networks going around, i wondering how creating a forum in year 2017 will work.
Is it still possible to succeed with a brand new forum? Do people still use forums often?
Forums, IMHO are still the best source to house your indepth information. whenever I google for a tutorial, guide or problem I'm seeking for it's far easier reading on forums rather than reading on facebook with a few words of a guide then a score of emoji's . Saying that, If I want to know what someone just had for their dinner, or what they had to drink then facebook is still king, you just can't beat facebook for useless dribble.
Specialist subjects imo are better suited on forums where they are neatly housed and not hidden amongst 99% of garbage that you really didn't want to find and/or read. Originality is what forums excel in with nicely layed out content.
thewallfacers
New member
shimspedy
Well-known member
sometimes it depends on the goal if your looking in making money from your forum may be in the future i think you have to spend money in order to make money too ... how by having an idea and putting it to work.. with the beauty of xenforo ... nobody resists joining your forum once they land on on your homepage in additional awarding your members can also attract more... that's just my thoughts and i have proved them on my forum
3rd AnGle
Well-known member
- If your forum is product/service related and it's a support system.. it could be successful. Some might called it "niche" but in reality that niche has to be some product related.
#TrueStory
dethfire
Well-known member
Google doesn't trust UGC where there aren't post rating controls like up down voting. They prefer Q&A sites because there is a single or best answer. Forums are just meandering discussions where finding good information is an absolute chore. The real question we need to ask ourselves is whether the next generation is going to want to use forums or will forums become the next usenet news group while the kids on their phones use snapchat etc.
Patagonian
Member
I think half the problem is that forum software hasn't moved with the times. Interfaces are much as they were 20 years ago and are barely any different from the old bulletin boards we had pre-Internet. Sure, we have nicer editing experiences and the ability to embed stuff, but beyond that, where's the real progress.
I had high hopes for Discourse at one time. They introduced a fabulous feature whereby posts and comments had continuation arrows rendering in the right hand margin of the thread. So for example if the post or comment mentioned another thread, there would an an arrow pointing out of the thread with the title of the referenced thread labeled beneath it. And if it mentioned two threads, there'd be two arrows pointing out and so on.
Same for incoming links. So, for example if this thread was mentioned elsewhere, there'd be a hyperlinked arrow pointing in.
It was brilliant and folks loved it because you could spend ages following threads, real threads, not just comments in the same thread. But they removed it overnight when they introduced the scrollbar on the right hand side. A real shame.
It wouldn't matter of course if more forums (Fora?) had extensive, well documented client and, or server APIs, but they don't.
Anyways, below is where I am with my Rude community. Still in dev and waiting for an Algolia plugin to be developed. Algolia is like ElasticSearch but much more resolved and lightning fast. Click on the Algolia link above (desktop or laptop) if you have time and check out their IMDB demo. I will have similar on the home page, showing the last X posts across all subjects. Users will be able to drill down in milliseconds to their area of choice, or type in a keyword. Search can be saved as default so that when the user next visits, they will see their choice of posts rendered in front of them. Well that's the plan if the devs deliver the goods.
Below is a car thread with a gradient dropping down from the header. It adds some atmosphere and will accelerate, parallax like, off the top as the user scrolls down the page. It aims to make the forum a little different and folks that have seen it live, really like it.
Below is an extension that I added that allows hundreds of different websites to be embedded. It's client side (on doc load), but works very well.
I had high hopes for Discourse at one time. They introduced a fabulous feature whereby posts and comments had continuation arrows rendering in the right hand margin of the thread. So for example if the post or comment mentioned another thread, there would an an arrow pointing out of the thread with the title of the referenced thread labeled beneath it. And if it mentioned two threads, there'd be two arrows pointing out and so on.
Same for incoming links. So, for example if this thread was mentioned elsewhere, there'd be a hyperlinked arrow pointing in.
It was brilliant and folks loved it because you could spend ages following threads, real threads, not just comments in the same thread. But they removed it overnight when they introduced the scrollbar on the right hand side. A real shame.
It wouldn't matter of course if more forums (Fora?) had extensive, well documented client and, or server APIs, but they don't.
Anyways, below is where I am with my Rude community. Still in dev and waiting for an Algolia plugin to be developed. Algolia is like ElasticSearch but much more resolved and lightning fast. Click on the Algolia link above (desktop or laptop) if you have time and check out their IMDB demo. I will have similar on the home page, showing the last X posts across all subjects. Users will be able to drill down in milliseconds to their area of choice, or type in a keyword. Search can be saved as default so that when the user next visits, they will see their choice of posts rendered in front of them. Well that's the plan if the devs deliver the goods.
Below is a car thread with a gradient dropping down from the header. It adds some atmosphere and will accelerate, parallax like, off the top as the user scrolls down the page. It aims to make the forum a little different and folks that have seen it live, really like it.
Below is an extension that I added that allows hundreds of different websites to be embedded. It's client side (on doc load), but works very well.
Last edited:
PumpinIron
Well-known member
I started my forum (https://wranglertjforum.com) in November of 2015. It's now just under 3 years since I started it and my forum has grown to 7500 members, has the number one ranking on Google for a number of "Jeep Wrangler" related search terms, and it has incredible user interaction on it.
Consider that my forum is a niche, as it focuses on a sub-model / generation of Jeep Wranglers. Had I focused on a bigger subject, I'm sure it could be a much bigger forum. But the point is, this forum has grown beyond comprehension for me. I've got people reaching out to me left-and-right to advertise on it as well.
I also happen to own / admin the Jeep Wrangler group on Facebook that has nearly 60k members. I uses Facebook as a means of promoting the forum, and while not everyone from the group joins the forum, I can tell you that it works out really nicely! Facebook also offers me another platform to monetize on in terms of affiliate links I'm always posting in the group.
So yes, you can start a forum in these times and have it be successful, you just have to work for it. I've put so much time and effort into my forum that it's literally become a part time job (no joke).
Consider that my forum is a niche, as it focuses on a sub-model / generation of Jeep Wranglers. Had I focused on a bigger subject, I'm sure it could be a much bigger forum. But the point is, this forum has grown beyond comprehension for me. I've got people reaching out to me left-and-right to advertise on it as well.
I also happen to own / admin the Jeep Wrangler group on Facebook that has nearly 60k members. I uses Facebook as a means of promoting the forum, and while not everyone from the group joins the forum, I can tell you that it works out really nicely! Facebook also offers me another platform to monetize on in terms of affiliate links I'm always posting in the group.
So yes, you can start a forum in these times and have it be successful, you just have to work for it. I've put so much time and effort into my forum that it's literally become a part time job (no joke).
oO5 Dynasty
Well-known member
% agree.And I think you are nuts. No way that statement is true.
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