Peter Davis - Why does he want to buy your forum @petertdavis

Here is our latest interview and it's by Mr. @petertdavis, Thank you for your time on this.​

I apologize ahead of time for this image, if anyone wants to make a better one, please do. ​

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• I see the "I buy forums" link in your signature on some forums, do you buy these for yourself or do you buy them for other people? – Both. I’m very particular about what forums I add to my own portfolio, and have averaged one or two purchases a year for the past several years now. I’ve also enjoyed assisting others in finding and acquiring forums. It can be a really fun business if you understand what you’re getting into. I’ve moved a lot more toward only working on my own forums over the past couple of years. I still enjoy working with other people helping them acquire forums but the one part of the business I didn’t enjoy as much was selling. Especially helping other people sell their forums. I’m happy to give people advice, of course, but it’s often the case that a person wanting to sell their forum sees value in it that very few people, if anyone, can see, and the time a broker would need to invest in finding just the right buyer is almost never justified by the paltry fee that you can earn.

• What are your thoughts on vbulletin 5 – I’m disappointed so far. I was one of the ones who jumped in blindly with the vBulletin 4 pre-sale, and now wish I hadn’t. I seriously doubt at this point if I would ever purchase another vBulletin license. I think there’s still some life left in vBulletin 3.8, but, I do not recommend to anyone to buy a new vBulletin license.

• What are your thoughts on xenforo – I think it’s a great software, but it feels incomplete to me. I really hope that they can pull it together and get back to work. I’ve already begun the process of moving away from Xenforo though. I moved one of my big boards (MassCops.com) over to Xenforo, because at the time I took it over it was experiencing some serious technical issues, but a lot of the membership would just like to go back to vBulletin, and we’re seriously considering moving back to vBulletin 3.8 now.

• Will you upgrade or import any of your sites to these platforms/versions? – I’m really torn right now about which platform is the future for me and my forums. I wish things were as clear to me as they were five years ago when vBulletin was the best thing since sliced bread to me. I’ve been putting a huge amount of time the last few months into learning about other platforms, though, like IPB and Vanilla. Everyone should realize by now that vBulletin and Xenforo aren’t the only platforms to consider. I’m really beginning to like working with the people at IPB now too, they seem to be getting it right a lot more than anyone else is now.

• What is your day to day life like? A 9-5 job? Is your job web based? What is your daily life like, are you able to pretty much come and go as you please any restrictions? – It’s a mix of working on my forums, doing consulting work, and taking care of my two young kids. There is no typical daily routine for me, and I like it that way.

• Do all your forums you own and work out have a personal meaning behind them. - Well, I like to work with communities of people that I can understand. Not all of them are subjects that are part of my personal life though. For example, I recently took over a community for law enforcement professionals, MassCops.com that I mentioned above. I have no desire whatsoever to be a police officer, but I understand and respect what these people do and am proud that I can serve them in this capacity. Others do have meaning to me personally. For example, back in Spring 2011, I bought a history forum, Historum.com. When I first started with web-based businesses it was because I was doing a PhD program in history. I was about half way done with the PhD when it occurred to me that building websites (I wasn’t totally into forums by then yet) was a whole lot more fun than academia. I really enjoyed the research, and study of history, but not so much the departmental politics, paper shuffling, teaching, and job prospects. So, I was really happy to take over Historum, and the site has more than doubled in size in all metrics since I took over running it. I also recently took over another history forum, with a focus on military history, Militarian.com, which I’m having a lot of fun building.

• I have seen you post a few times about Cointalk, I think you said it was your first forum and one of your biggest? Can you go into a little detail about how that site started and where you'd like/d to see it in the future? – I started CoinTalk.com in 2002. For a number of years previous to that, I was a regular participant in the Usenet newsgroup for coin collectors, but by 2002, unmoderated newsgroups had become so flooded with trolls and spammers that it became necessary to find better solutions. I started out on phpBB, but in less than a year ended up moving to vBulletin. Unfortunately, it’s become obvious that vBulletin is not going to be part of CoinTalk’s long-term future. So I’ve also been looking at ways I can better serve the community. I’m looking closely at both Xenforo and IPB for it, but haven’t made a commitment either way yet.

• What do you use for SEO on your forums? Do you use vBSEO? or Friendly URL'S? What techniques do you use for XF? – I regret using vbSEO, wish I never had installed it. Wayne Luke was right, and he told me years ago not to use it. It seemed like a great idea all of those years ago when it first came out, and it probably did help get sites indexed and bring in more organic traffic. Right now, however, it feels more like an albatross hanging on my neck, and has been the root cause of many forums being compromised.

• Do you involve social networking with your forums? Do you think that it is easily achieved to integrate social networking within forums? – I haven’t done much in regards to this. Some of my forums have a Facebook page, but they don’t get used that much. A lot of the members of my forums are the type of people who really place a high value on their privacy (for example, people who are talking about high-value coin collections don’t necessarily want to put a roadmap to their house on the web), so I don’t see as much value in integrating social networking as other forum owners might.

• If you could emphasize on a couple of things for new webmasters wanting to build a forum what would you tell them? – Many people starting up their forum focus too much on the software, the design, icons, smilies, and other little details like that. What so often gets missed, though, is that it’s the people that matter. I’ve seen so many successful forums who just use the default forum skin, and a ton of beautiful done forums without a single active member. Whether a new forum makes it or not is totally dependent on the ability of the person(s) launching it to recruit and engage members.

• How many hours a day on average do you spend on your forums? - On most days it’s 8 to 12 hours, sometimes more. It really depends on what the kids are doing. On days when they’re home with me it’s a lot less (though I keep an iPhone with me so I can get notices if something needs doing quickly). It’s more a work of passion and I spend a lot of time behind the scenes tinkering.

• Do you do most of the work or do other Administrators/ Moderators? - It really depends on what work. When it comes to tech stuff, I do. But, most of the admins and moderators on my forums post more than I do, and I’m ok with that because I never wanted to have a forum that revolved around me or depended on me to keep discussions going.

• From an Administrator and Webmaster point of view where do you see forums go wrong? - By taking a myopic view of the ecosphere of the web. I often hear people complaining that “forums are dying” or something of the sort. What they really should be saying is “I’m not successful as I want to be with my forum” and try to address the main issue rather than ranting nonsense. I don’t know, and I don’t know if anyone knows, if forums are growing at the same pace as the web in general, but they’re far from dying. And, people should understand that forums aren’t just what runs on vBulletin, Xenforo, IPB, phpBB, and the usual suspects. Look at some sites like Reddit, Quora, and Stack Exchange. These sites are forums, they’re huge and growing very fast. They look a bit different than mine and yours, even simpler really, but they are forums. In some ways I think the forum software industry may have let us down by going for bloat instead of going for ease of use and sites like those are great examples of that.

• I see that you are not running any IPB forums; do you think it is a good choice for a forum? - I actually am now. I started out with converting one of my dead projects, Bullionist.com, over to IPB. I’ve been using that as somewhat of a development project, to learn. Next, I moved over a forum that my wife and I started as a non-profit, spedpac.org. Most recently I moved over one of my small, but growing projects, Preparationist.com. I’m waiting for some improvements with the converter before I move over my next batch of forums. And, I’m spending a lot of time leaning IP.Content and finding out what it’s capable of and making plans of new features that I can offer my members when I’m fully comfortable with IPB.

• If you had to use a free board software which would it be? - Probably Vanilla. I like the suppleness of it and it has a good integration with Wordpress. If I were planning to start a community with a Wordpress front end and a forum, the combination of Vanilla and Wordpress would be a top choice. I’ve always liked the look of MyBB too, so that would be a consideration. I know a lot of people like phpBB and SMF, but I have not had good experiences with either of them.

• Do you spend much time a day on your forums and others like vb.com? Sure, I spend a lot of time on forums. I don’t spend much time on vbulletin.com anymore though. There are some forums I do visit on a daily basis though, other than my own. There’s one that’s a private forum just for forum owners, which I consider the best resource available and rely upon the advice of people there a lot. I also visit some travel forums, as I really enjoy traveling with my family (and travel will probably be the topic of my next forum, if I decide to start another one of course). I’ve been spending more and more time on IPB’s support forum recently too, as I try to ramp up with them. But, for the most part I spend my online time on my own sites.

• What are some of the toughest challenges you have faced being an admin and would suggest to newer admins to avoid or help? - Really the toughest challenge to a newer admin is brining their forum to critical mass. I see so many people starting up a forum when they don’t even have a single buddy they can invite to help them get discussions started on their forum. These people should be starting a blog, not a forum. There’s nothing wrong with starting a website about your interests, but if you want to start a forum you have to be able to invite people to your forum who are going to participate in it with you. You can’t just go on an admin forum and ask “how do I get new members” and expect that to work for you. Over the years I’ve experimented with a number of different ways to launching forums, and have found a few things that work fantastically well, but posting on admin forums for help isn’t one of them.

• Where do you see new forums go wrong? - With too much focus on the software, and design, and not enough focus on the people. There are countless forums out there that have gone on to great success simply using the default install of the forum software. The flip side of that coin is that there are countless forums out there that have done beautiful jobs with custom designs and failed to gain a critical mass of members. I’m not saying I don’t appreciate good design, but it’s not critical to your overall success.

• If you could emphasize on a couple of things for new webmasters wanting to build a forum what would you tell them? - First, don’t spend a lot of time worrying about what other people think of the software you’re going to use. I’ve seen far too many people on the various admin forums posting threads about what software to choose, and they only listen to regulars in those admin forums who not only don’t have much experience and shouldn’t be giving advice in the first place, but come off as shills or at the minimum as people with an axe to grind. The best way to figure out what forum software to use is to first of all, take a demo of several of the best ones, and second of all don’t listen to the terrible advice you’ll get from people in admin forums. At the very least, consider the source of the advice. Most of the advice given regularly on admin forums is really, really bad and will not only be unhelpful to you but probably waste your time and money as well.

• Are there forum topics you’ll stay away from, or how do you pick and choose what sites to make an offer on when buying? - I wouldn’t get into anything that is illegal, or adult content (porn). I also avoid gaming forums. The best approach, in my opinion, when buying a forum is to focus on ones that fit nicely into a portfolio. Maybe you can find some synergies among a small portfolio of websites that a single one wouldn’t have. For example, if you owned a forum for Boston Red Sox fans, you might be interested in buying a forum for Boston Bruin fans. And then one for New England Patriot fans. You’d be growing your appeal to advertisers who wanted to reach the Boston sports fan market. Plus, you’ll be able to cross-promote your websites as a high percentage of your Red Sox fans are going to like the Bruins and Pats too, and vice versa.