What is your forum's outlook for 2018?

[Deleted member 6355]

My forum died soon after pushing my community to Discord.

What's the outlook for your forum? How do you intend to grow? How will you keep your forum community engaged?

 

[rdn]

after pushing my community to Discord.

Ow that's expected.
Few weeks ago I ban discord on my forum.

How do you intend to grow?

Deliver the best you can offer to your users.

How will you keep your forum community engaged?

Listen to your members.
What's needed to implement and remove the useless feature.

 

[M@rc]

My forum died soon after pushing my community to Discord.

Few weeks ago I ban discord on my forum.

Discord is a bad idea for small forums

 

[StarArmy]

My members started a Discord on their own and I eventually had to take it over for moderation purposes by making my own server and getting everyone to move there. Not that I really wanted one in the first place but I felt like I had to in order to "stay with the times" and it's been useful and helps the community stay active. This has had two effects:

1. My number of active members and posts per day are actually rising. I assume this is because Discord is on people's phones and starts automatically when people turn on their computers, so they're basically always online in my community. It's good to be able to stay on people's minds.
2. The forum-based chatrooms (chat by Siropu add-on) have died out because Discord is where everyone is chatting, and I will probably remove them soon and just point everyone to the Discord for chat.

My suggestion: When serious topics of discussion come up in the Discord, say "Hey, we need to make a thread on that so we can get everyone's input on the record." Use the Discord for light chatter and to point people to the forum "Hey, can I get your opinion in this thread?"

Conclusion: Based on the stats, my forum will grow in 2018 (note: it opened in 2002). My current big worry is that my current webhost will bother me when my XenForo database size surpasses 3GB and I will have to find a new host.