Ever had someone copy your forum?

[Cedric]

Imagine pouring your heart and soul into building an online forum, only to find out that someone has blatantly copied everything—your domain name, layout, descriptions, and even the forum topics. It has happened to Forum Promotion more than once in the past.

How would you feel? Is this a form of flattery that proves your success, a ruthless act of competition, or outright theft of your intellectual property? What steps would you take in response, and how do you think this could affect the sense of community and trust in your original forum?

Looking forward to see your experience in this matter. 🙂

 

[zappaDPJ]

A few years ago Tapatalk scraped content from one of my forums, claimed it as their own and monetized it. They eventually took it down rather than face a day in court.

 

[PGen98]

It happened to me in the early 00s, it was pretty crappy, but thankfully rip-off sites tend to fail pretty quickly because mimicking a site is not the same as being successful in running one. Be honest, be yourself, don't use someone else's content or fake accounts or account activity, it gets you nowhere and only shows a lack of character.

 

[Page]

Not really, I mean at times they may copy and edit a little bit, I mean with gaming sites they are much of the same

 

[Shawn Gossman]

A few years ago Tapatalk scraped content from one of my forums, claimed it as their own and monetized it. They eventually took it down rather than face a day in court.

Seems like the only way Tapatalk has been able to be successful is by doing sketchy things.

 

[zappaDPJ]

Seems like the only way Tapatalk has been able to be successful is by doing sketchy things.

That's been my experience. I had it installed on a number my forums because at that time none of the main forum platforms supported smart devices. In fact some of them are still playing catchup in that area.

Out of the blue there was an update containing a feature that allowed Tapatalk to send promotional emails to my members. The option to turn it off was there but as shipped, the default was to allow emails to be sent.

This caused major issues with a couple of customer service forums I managed and resulted in the immediate removal of Tapatalk on all my forums. It was some while later that I started to find my content appearing on their site.

 

[Ravenfreak]

I've never had a forum copy mine, but I guess it means you're doing something right if someone is trying to copy your website. 😛 Still not a good look for the other people who are trying to copy your site, but it looks good on your part. I can imagine it must be a nightmare to deal with that though.

 

[Shawn Gossman]

That's been my experience. I had it installed on a number my forums because at that time none of the main forum platforms supported smart devices. In fact some of them are still playing catchup in that area.

Out of the blue there was an update containing a feature that allowed Tapatalk to send promotional emails to my members. The option to turn it off was there but as shipped, the default was to allow emails to be sent.

This caused major issues with a couple of customer service forums I managed and resulted in the immediate removal of Tapatalk on all my forums. It was some while later that I started to find my content appearing on their site.

I used Tapatalk during its first years. Back then they were just a good mobile addon for forums then they turned into a weird service that did a lot of sketchy things.

 

[zappaDPJ]

I used Tapatalk during its first years. Back then they were just a good mobile addon for forums then they turned into a weird service that did a lot of sketchy things.

It's not that dissimilar to what happened with Photobucket.

 

[Cedric]

It's not that dissimilar to what happened with Photobucket.

What happened to Photobucket?

 

[KyngzIndeyen]

Yeah, it's happened a couple of times - once by a disgruntled former staff member, and once by just a random troll.

Fortunately, both of them were short-lived!

 

[zappaDPJ]

What happened to Photobucket?

It literally broke the Internet.

Photobucket was either free to use or affordable @ $29.99 a year for heavier users so everyone used it. This was especially so when bandwidth and storage was still a concern for site owners. It help keep costs down.

Photobucket therefore had a huge percentage of the world's images stored on their servers. A few years ago they removed the free storage option and disabled third party linking leaving many millions of sites displaying the following image...



To reinstate your images you had to pay a minimum subscription of $399 a year which of course very few did. This left millions of sites with broken image links.

The obvious lesson to be learned here is to ensure that you always have ownership of your content. Never rely on another service for it.

 

[Cedric]

It literally broke the Internet.

Photobucket was either free to use or affordable @ $29.99 a year for heavier users so everyone used it. This was especially so when bandwidth and storage was still a concern for site owners. It help keep costs down.

Photobucket therefore had a huge percentage of the world's images stored on their servers. A few years ago they removed the free storage option and disabled third party linking leaving many millions of sites displaying the following image...

View attachment 50967

To reinstate your images you had to pay a minimum subscription of $399 a year which of course very few did. This left millions of sites with broken image links.

The obvious lesson to be learned here is to ensure that you always have ownership of your content. Never rely on another service for it.

Ah that’s what happened. Never knew the reason behind it. I used imageshack, sixpop and others, which also eventually disappeared.

 

[Dismal_Bliss]

Out of the blue there was an update containing a feature that allowed Tapatalk to send promotional emails to my members.

I remember that. And then another time, they magically created a "chat room" for my users without me knowing. It was a "courtesy" and it was "free" according to them, lol. I removed Tapatalk until they gave me the ability to disable the chat room.

 

[Nomad]

I have seen exact copy of my forum, the niche and the platform, even some categories and topics. But I don't think the person who created the site actually copied my site. For instance,you can see a lot of sites like Forum Promotion but they might not be the copy, right?

 

[Cedric]

I have seen exact copy of my forum, the niche and the platform, even some categories and topics. But I don't think the person who created the site actually copied my site. For instance,you can see a lot of sites like Forum Promotion but they might not be the copy, right?

FP had some serious copy cats back in the day. Not so much the last few years, but at some point everyone was jealous of the success FP was making. 😀

 

[Nomad]

FP had some serious copy cats back in the day. Not so much the last few years, but at some point everyone was jealous of the success FP was making. 😀

Yes, I remember one site, where I was also invited to become a staff. 😀

 

[Lavender.]

Yeah, It has happened to me twice. one of the forums is still going. Categories and the forums were exactly what I had word for word.

 

[Cedric]

Yeah, It has happened to me twice. one of the forums is still going. Categories and the forums were exactly what I had word for word.

Sucks to hear. How do they do? Does it book any success? We often feel like betrayed, don't we?

 

[Lavender.]

Sucks to hear. How do they do? Does it book any success? We often feel like betrayed, don't we?

Lat time I looked the forum was private. can see the categories but not the posts.