Reviving a forum

So many of us have been hacked in our time - I was running what I would consider a pretty successful forum - it officially opened on Jan 01 2009 and had about 500 members, 20k posts and was growing quickley about 10-20 new registrations a day...

... And then I was hacked - after spending just on a month rebuilding it and fixing it all up and improving security etc I am now floundering - the site has been reopened for a month and have only 30 registered members, three of which are continued posters while others come in a chip in once a week or so.

I was wondering what some advice from you guys would be to encourage people to come back, to encourage new registrants etc I have a referral competition with over $600 worth of prizes but no one seem's to care - I try to post everywhere I can about it yet nothing seems to work.

Any suggestions to revive it? I am in this for the long run and am willing to try everything!

:shrug:
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How are your rankings for your keywords in Google? Are they good and are the search terms searched often?

 

Where did all the people go? Did they not want to stay involved after the rebuild?

Number one lesson here is have good backups. But that does you no good at this point. But I'd try my best to contact the people I used to know from when there were 500 people. And ask them to do the same.

 

StateDOG has a good point here. Did you try to contact the people that were part of the site before to let them know that the site was back up and running? Perhaps, if they understood that the site was hacked, you may need to reassure them and let them know what steps you have taken to enhance the security. Along those lines, could it be that some of your members may be concerned about the security of their personal information after the hack?

Hope those thoughts are helpful.
RR

 

Do you have the old e-mail address list?

 

Have you send email to all of them stating the site is reopened with lot of new prizes

 

Maybe you should ask the members to contact any other members they knew, or people who would be interested in the forum.

 

Thanks for all of the feedback - one thing that has impressed me after all of this feedback is our members are slowly becoming more popular however i have watched the website statistics and more and more people are still visiting the website.

And for a site like mine forums are not the main focus of the network - it is the website the forums are just there and so seeing the last couple days with 3000 unique visitors a day to the actual website i am actually pretty happy with it.

Some people dont have time for forums so dont go there, others just want their news and go.

 

You hit the nail right on the head.

This, in my eyes, is one of the more daunting tasks that we (as forum administrators) have to deal with. Providing visitors with strong content is crucial, but doing so out of a discussion-based environment can be a risk. Let's say that Bob builds and manages a website that is based off of a strong, content-based foundation. Because of this, he receives a substantial amount of traffic and has reserved a reputable "standing" in his niche of choice. After a few months of success, Bob decides that he'd like to add a discussion forum to his already established, content-rich resource. After doing so, he finds that the forum receives very little traffic - the content provided via the original website is still receiving this steadily.

Simply put, if you've already established a website that has proven to be an entertaining and reliable resource to visitors, it can be tough to manage a successful forum in addition. What we do is not the easiest of tasks - time, effort, and dedication are needed... at all times.

 

First of all - poor Bob.

Second, have you ever seen a site that adds additional content after the forums are established? Based on what has been discussed here I wonder if by adding "static" content to a forum site will the activity on the discussion boards decrease?

Thoughts?
RR