Need advice Restarting forum from scratch?

Cutting long story short, I was running a community that was growing slow but stead. But I did numerous mistakes as I was running it for the first time and finally ended up shutting down the community and damaging whatever brand value I created in the beginning. I took a backup before shutting down though.

But I really liked what I was doing and have decided to start a fresh. Subject is small niche where I think I have good opportunity to build medium size community.

With that, here are my key questions where I am looking for your advice.

1. Is it make sense to use old domain or start a fresh with a new domain? (Considering old domain may have lost its initial goodwill)

2. With a old backup I fear that community may look dead as backup is 8+ months old, and its better to start with clean sense. What to do?

Thanks in advance for your help

 

Forums are not what they was, personally I wouldn't waste my time anymore running a community unless using one to offer support for something being sold like themes e.t.c. There's a lot to be said why people are using the likes of Twitter and other free services such as Tumblr and Facebook more and more.

It not worth paying to run a site yourself in hosting bills, and the problems you usually have at some point running forums on rented host. The users-base isn't there anymore and I see some people putting a great deal of effort into their forums, such as Dojo who writes long articles and tries very hard to promote her own community. But on visiting it every now and then, I see little to nothing going on there. That's just one example, same with Admin Extra again these days, they had a boost in activity when installing XenForo from IPB, but since things are right back to before again. It's the same old story no matter where you look with most communities on the web (big and small), They are not worth the effort anymore, nor the cost running them.

 

Yep, forums are dead.

So why does mine grow 7-10% month over month?

Yesterday was my best ever single adsense day, I've also already beat last month in adsense earnings. Last month was my best ever adsense month.

New users register daily, This month has more visits and posts than last month already, last month was the best ever for visitors, page view and posts.

Yep, forums are dead.

BTW, I compete with both Internet Brands and Vertical Scope in my niche.

Twitter, Facebook and Tumblr do not offer the same things as a well run forum. Forums offer a lot still, they are not dead.

GTB, show me on FaceBook the articles on how to replace the lower control arm bushings on a MINI please. Facebook does not have this kind of thing. You can find it in personal blogs and community forums where it is then discussed. You can find links to blogs and forums on Facebook for these sorts of things.

Forums are still viable, I'm not deluding myself either. If you have a good niche that is under served there is room for growth.

 

Sorry Gnatster, GTB only comes out with that rubbish because HIS OWN forums kept failing. He blames it on Facebook & Twitter, conveniently overlooking those of us with successful forums.

Mine isn't growing but then it never really has. I don't advertise it. It'd be nice if it was a BIT busier but I don't have the time or resources to look after a massively busy site. If I did I'd promote it.

 

Mark, you really are full of #'$* at times. :poop:

How can you claim you don't advertise your forum, when your using all the major social sites like Twitter, Facebook, Google +, you even run a YouTube account and you auto sent threads into most those social sites. Don't talk rubbish!

1: http://www.youtube.com/user/bcforums
2: https://twitter.com/#!/bcforums
3: http://www.facebook....gid=45145704989

Talked more about it here: http://gtbblogs.tumb...ead-and-can-rip

 

The Youtube account has nothing on it.
The Twitter feed is followed by nobody.
The Facebook group has now members.

How would it? How would it be seen by anyone who isn't already a forum member?

I set those up to experiment with the medium that is all. The real way to do it would be take out proper advertising within Facebook, or do some sort of proper "viral" campaign. I haven't the skills, the money or the desire to do any of that.

 

What's that got to do with anything? Your still spamming twitter to try and promote your forum whether anyone is following you or not. The reason people don't follow you is exactly because of that, you don't use Twitter yourself for talking, you only use it to auto send threads into trying to drive traffic your forums way. To "Promote It".

 

How is auto-posting to a "corporate" account ever going to promote the site?

As I said, it was never intended that anyone would "follow" it. I'd rather people "follow" the threads by joining the actual forum.

I only want the forum to be active enough that it keeps going and isn't a graveyard, which it does. The odd new member is nice to keep it fresh and replace ones that inevitably leave (or die - had several of those lately sad to say). Other than that - why would I want to promote it? It only costs money, it doesn't make money.

 

Well, it looks like your still carrying on this useless experiment even after 12 months. You now have 14, 413 threads sent from your forum into your old Twitter account. Jeez Mark, so how long is this experiment going on for then, been going 12 months already at least?

Just admit it Mark, I proved you a liar. You do use sites to try and promote your forum! Just bow your head with shame and admit it!!!

LMAO!!!

 

The site has a presence on Twitter and Facebook, that is deliberate, but it's not to "promote" it, it's to keep up with social media trends. And that's it. YouTube was intended to be the same idea, but I'll be buggered if I can think of anything I could put on there related to the site. I suppose video tutorials on how to use the site would be nice, and I could embed those into CMS articles...but...(a) I honestly don't know how to do "video captures" and ( b ) I really, really can't be arsed!

 

Sorry I would also disagree that forums are dead. It completely depends on the genre of your forum and what you are trying to achieve with it. You cant have a decent thread conversation on the likes of facebook and twitter including images and attachments etc. I started my forum 3 years ago and is an active forum. How is that dead? LOL. Anyway this is not the topic for it, the guy asked a question.

I would say if you fancy starting it back up then do so. The only real way you are going to know for sure is to try it. I would start with the old domain because you may get a couple of people come back to the forum. Although I would ask yourself why it failed the first time, and if there is chance of that happening again try to figure out how your going to avert that before you start.

 

@GTB, really appreciate your kind words. It's indeed HARD to establish a forum, but in our case the niche is also difficult. And with the so many 'now we start tomorrow we close/sell' guys who can't really get their forums past the 3 months mark, any other new startup is seen as 'not serious'. So we're not only dealing with a tough niche, but most people actually don't trust us and don't believe we'll be here in 12 months time, which I very much plan on doing

Anyway .. back to the main topic.

If there's a shred of interest from your members, you can re-start the forum on the old database, but mind you, there will be a gap in the posting time and you will NOT have too much activity anyway. I have tried doing this with a forum of mine and it didn't work. So I chose to strip it down and restart from ZERO. Not really working too well, since I have a lot of work for my web design clients and my newest forum, but there's some action and it will steadily grow.

Forums are surely not easy to run nowadays, but I wouldn't call them dead just yet

 

I saw you was interested in the AX sale yesterday, along with Brandon and AWS after reading that thread posted on AX. What made Lisa pull the plug the same day on the sale, don't get why she did that after tweeting she's had enough of the Admin Niche now. Would have thought she'd jump at the chance getting 3 interested people quick able to sell it? But was a bit surprised to see AX go up for sale in the first place.

Back on topic, people like Mark.B claim to have an active forum and will argue with me about it no end trying to defend them. But it depends on what you call an "active forum", what your definition of one is. BCForum is about 8-9 years old he runs now, yet only averages around 5-6 active members online. That for me is NOT an active forum by any stretch of the imagination, more like a community only just ticking by. And that's usually the same story spotted with most forums, even large ones! People can link to this and that forum saying "look that one does well". Well of course your always going to get the odd one doing good, never said you won't. But for the large majority of forums out there that's just not the case at all.

If an 8-9 year old forum is only getting 5-6 members online at most, as is the case with BCForums run by Mark.B after all that time something is wrong. It's more like a forum surviving just about by the skin of it's teeth! If a person is happy to accept that thinking they have an active forum, so be it - but it's not my idea of being worth keeping one going. It's not like he's running a new forum picking up pace, it's an old one and knows that's about as good as it will ever be now.

It makes me laugh when reading people say they run an active forum that's doing well, then visit their site and lucky if seeing they have more than 2 members currently online there. I mean, are they living in a fantasy world or what, do they carry a white stick? Or is it just a case that their forum standards have dropped (so low now), that they'll even call a forum active and very successful with only 5-6 members online at most? And to think you might be paying for VPS hosting each month for that, pathetic in my book and no reason to carry on running a community!

For example, I can make a post here on AA or AX before, and it might be 2-3 days before even reading a reply made. That's why I'll post mainly on official forums now like XenForo for some proper discussion and how a forum should be activity wise, can't be bothered taking part on other forums in discussion knowing it may be days before replies are spotted. I suspect that's been a huge downfall with many forums and why members start to lose interest in them later, because that's not really what a community is about or why they originally joined it. That's more like how a Blog functions!

This is why I'm running a free Tumblr Blog now, I don't expect to see daily comments made, not even weekly comments and that's perfectly fine by me. People do expect that with a blog - unlike a forum which needs daily activity to function proper or end-up being "tagged" a dead community not worth joining or posting on.

 

Well, let's start by keeping it simple. Mine is many magnitudes more active than yours ever were.

That statistic is not even remotely accurate, there are 12 as I type this. The only way you'll get an average of five is by including the overnight hours of about 2am-6am, there is nobody online then as it's a mainly UK based forum.

As I have said MANY times, I am NOT trying to grow the forum and I am perfectly happy with the level of activity. I do not have either the staffing resources, the time resources, nor server resources to run something massively busy, that is not what the site has EVER been intended to do.

It is perfectly busy enough thank you, and frankly the way you repeatedly try to portray it as a failure is becoming disturbing - it is *massively* more successful than *anything* you've ever done, so who exactly are you to start passing judgement on other people's efforts?

 

I know what ya's mean. Only 29 active on mine at the moment its terrible. I mean I know its a niche forum but would expect more than that LOL

 

And your forum address is? :doh:

Or do you even run a forum at all? :shrug:

 

Mark, I've been visiting your forum the odd rare time for a few years now. I'm not blind you know, can see how your forum does in general. Which is "terrible" for a community that's now 8+ years old. Just saying.... because it's true!

Your just using that as a lame excuse! How can you say (paying for VPS hosting) each month, that your happy with only a handful of members active on your community. What a load of TOSH!!! All forum owners want as much activity as they can get, that's why they run a Forum Board software in the first place designed for it and not some Blog instead. Your very easy to wind-up Mark, because you BITE like SNAKE the first minute your own community is mentioned.

Well that won't be hard. I don't run a forum board, I'm running a blog. :nana:

 

GTB, my site is a HOBBY site. I don't WANT masses and masses of activity. I could handle a little more, but not much more. I don't have the resources, the money or the time.

 

OK, having lots of members online would require more moderation and time spent covering it as a whole. Anyway, I'm only messing with you, I was pretty much the same myself before truth be said, lost all interest with the idea of having a big forum for pretty much the same reasons. Viewed mine before as a small Hobby board and never looked at it as being anything more than just that in the end.