Few thoughts regarding to new boards around the 'net.

[Zaborg]

Hello,

(This is not a flame thread and don't take this too seriously)

There are tons, there are millions of boards (forums) around the Internet. Some are really old and some are new. Well, we all know that. But, as you can see, older forums are usually much more popular than the new ones. And I'm starting to think that there is just no more room for new boards.

It may look that I am whining a lot because I fail at advertising etc. Well, it's not about that. As a webmaster, I'm starting lose my hope to become successful with forums particularly. So maybe some of you could help me to find some motivation?

As you have probably seen, all forums start to look similar. All those "What is your favorite this and that" threads are really becoming annoying since you can find them on every single forum. And most of the new forums are based on such topics. I can understand that every forum needs some unique content. But is that enough?

People join forums if they need something. I don't really think that anyone would join any forum just "for fun". So, how to make that happen? Let's take general discussion forums, where people can talk about anything. Why would anyone join a forum like that? You can advertise as much as you want, they wont sign up nor post, unless you give them money or whatever. So, looks like there is no point to start a new board with this genre (yes, I'm whining because of my own forum). There is just no more room for forums like this.

Forums are quite unpopular these days, because they are starting to bore people off. And I think that it's caused by these social networks. They killed forums. Seriously. Congratulations to those older forums who managed to grow a nice member-base before the era of this social networking.

I'm sure you have all noticed that some forum styles are WAY TOO MUCH overused. Seriously, what is going on? Almost all myBB forums are based on some blue-black-white patterns (like an Estonian flag, lol). (Yes, I hate myBB). I think I have never seen any myBB theme which is unique. They all look the same. And as for phpBB forums... Oh God, this obsession of free Christian's themes will never end. BUT, I have noticed that people are using them less and less. 🙂

Yes, I'm not making much sense, these are just some random thoughts I'm currently having.
Feel free to blame me, hate me. I don't really mind.
And read the beginning of this thread again in case you want to reply, thanks.

Have a great weekend,
Zaborg

 

[MrJohn]

Everyone is entitled to their opinion mate. How do you think old forums got to be old in the first place? They all had to start some where.

 

[Nelson Noa]

Then why make a general topic forum? For a general topic forum you need a large database of members who can post general topics a general forum will become inactive with a low number of members.

How do you get more members, if your board is inactive? You don't! before you start a forum you need to join other sites of the same topic, make at least 10-20 friends who "like you" in a way of friendship, and I’m sure many of them will find things that they don't like in that particular site, thus you introduce your idea to a group of people "WHO YOU KNOW" and five to ten members will post in your site, because they know what general forums are all about, never look for webmasters to join your site they are busy with their own sites, find regular internet user. Search in arcade site, forum promotion is not the best way to find regular users for a general topic forum here you will find webmasters thus we are looking for money and jobs.

My suggestion is to start small then expand your ideas, this suggestions only works when your idea is not original, two years ago I was a member of the Naruto forum, I had so much fun in the site and made many friends my friends told me they didn't like something’s about the site thus I created my own board and they began to follow me and I had large forum back then, but I’ve grown and I’m looking for real projects.

I'm currently working on a "huge" project and using all my skills I will create one of the biggest Mybb custom script forum, mybb has ever seen, and I agree with your idea about Mybb many themes are similar thus I’m making something simple for my project yet unique.

 

[Zaborg]

Then why make a general topic forum? For a general topic forum you need a large database of members who can post general topics a general forum will become inactive with a low number of members.

How do you get more members, if your board is inactive? You don't! before you start a forum you need to join other sites of the same topic, make at least 10-20 friends who "like you" in a way of friendship, and I’m sure many of them will find things that they don't like in that particular site, thus you introduce your idea to a group of people "WHO YOU KNOW" and five to ten members will post in your site, because they know what general forums are all about, never look for webmasters to join your site they are busy with their own sites, find regular internet user. Search in arcade site, forum promotion is not the best way to find regular users for a general topic forum here you will find webmasters thus we are looking for money and jobs.

My suggestion is to start small then expand your ideas, this suggestions only works when your idea is not original, two years ago I was a member of the Naruto forum, I had so much fun in the site and made many friends my friends told me they didn't like something’s about the site thus I created my own board and they began to follow me and I had large forum back then, but I’ve grown and I’m looking for real projects.

I'm currently working on a "huge" project and using all my skills I will create one of the biggest Mybb custom script forum, mybb has ever seen, and I agree with your idea about Mybb many themes are similar thus I’m making something simple for my project yet unique.

+rep from me for this reply.

Thank you, exactly what I wanted to hear. 🙂

 

[Acorn]

MyBB is still a relatively new software. It'll take some time before more innovation gives it that greater variety.

I never find a theme I like anywhere, so what I do is take an existing theme that has a good structure I can adapt and then I go into the CSS and graphics and stuff and do it up with my own colours and images. I feel that if one doesn't think there's enough innovation out there they should do some of their own innovation. It's fun, really 🙂 You might start out with some not so great themes but practice makes perfect.

My forum started out more specialist--being one specific kind of roleplaying game, then over time, especially last year into early this year, we tweaked its rules to be more generalist. We had grown big enough to do so, and were beginning to decline as a specialist forum because there were already so many of them in roleplaying and most people looking for a niche game wanted a smaller forum than ours; but there were far fewer generalist ones, so that is what I decided to do, and it was a good decision.

 

[master412160]

You'll notice it becomes less of a challenge when you got some friends who are into what you're starting a forum about.

If you got no one you talk to or chat to who is into what your're starting then you'll have a harder time establishing a active userbase.

It can have a big impact on the whole community to have some loyal friend members who are active then none of those.

 

[AnAccount]

Then why make a general topic forum? For a general topic forum you need a large database of members who can post general topics a general forum will become inactive with a low number of members.

How do you get more members, if your board is inactive? You don't! before you start a forum you need to join other sites of the same topic, make at least 10-20 friends who "like you" in a way of friendship, and I’m sure many of them will find things that they don't like in that particular site, thus you introduce your idea to a group of people "WHO YOU KNOW" and five to ten members will post in your site, because they know what general forums are all about, never look for webmasters to join your site they are busy with their own sites, find regular internet user. Search in arcade site, forum promotion is not the best way to find regular users for a general topic forum here you will find webmasters thus we are looking for money and jobs.

My suggestion is to start small then expand your ideas, this suggestions only works when your idea is not original, two years ago I was a member of the Naruto forum, I had so much fun in the site and made many friends my friends told me they didn't like something’s about the site thus I created my own board and they began to follow me and I had large forum back then, but I’ve grown and I’m looking for real projects.

I'm currently working on a "huge" project and using all my skills I will create one of the biggest Mybb custom script forum, mybb has ever seen, and I agree with your idea about Mybb many themes are similar thus I’m making something simple for my project yet unique.

Well, it's not as bad as three years ago, but general topic forums are still an over-saturated genre. I myself run one that celebrates it's first birthday on Monday. So I'd probably go for something that's not quite as popular. Of course, the only reason I chose general chat is because I enjoy forums that are laid-back and don't have too many rules.

 

[terryh]

I 100% agree with Zaborg. There's too many forums and too little users around the internet right now. Although it is the summer. I'm sure the population of the "foruming clan" will increase in the winter when there is nothing to do.

make at least 10-20 friends who "like you" in a way of friendship, and I’m sure many of them will find things that they don't like in that particular site, thus you introduce your idea to a group of people "WHO YOU KNOW" and five to ten members will post in your site, because they know what general forums are all about, never look for webmasters to join your site they are busy with their own sites, find regular internet user.

I agree with this even more so. The best way to promote your site is to earn a reputation on as many forums and websites as possible.

 

[Zaborg]

Thanks for the replies, I was really worried that I might get flames from this only, I'm so happy to see so many great replies, thank you so much!

 

[TechWiz18]

This topic and it's replies have absolutely astounded my mind and made me think quite a bit about why some of my boards have failed and why one of my boards I had started with some good online friends had been a success to a point.

Cheers to this topic!

 

[DreamACT]

The only reason any of your boards fail is because you lack two things:

1. Energy to Properly Promote
2. Money

If you don't have either one you will not success.

 

[Zaborg]

The only reason any of your boards fail is because you lack two things:

1. Energy to Properly Promote
2. Money

If you don't have either one you will not success.

Why you need money to become successful with a forum?

 

[kavin]

The only reason any of your boards fail is because you lack two things:

1. Energy to Properly Promote
2. Money

If you don't have either one you will not success.

Why you need money to become successful with a forum?

Because unless you have frequent competitions, giveaways and other such things, people won't be much active.
A forum fails because the owner wishes it to become big and successful so quickly. Ofcourse there are few forums i had seen which grown rapidly (Eg: MarketSwag by The Elite). But that won't happen in everyone's case.
A couple of weeks back, i saw a topic on "What's going on" where a guy posted his Forum crossed 5 years. Its not as big as many 5 year Forums are, as his forum host closed in middle and he have to start them all again. But he still never gave up and now his site has a good activity.

You stated the reason why many forum fails these days... Its because there are a LOT of them. So obviously people would scatter around different Forums. To make people signup and stay, you need to be unique, patient and put a lot of efforts.

All you have to do is, think from a visitor's point of view, and take a look at your site. Ask a question, whether you will join and post in a site like this. If your answer is Yes, your Forum will become success one day.

 

[Nelson Noa]

The only reason any of your boards fail is because you lack two things:

1. Energy to Properly Promote
2. Money

If you don't have either one you will not success.

If you have the energy to properly promote, money is not necessary.

 

[DreamACT]

If you have the energy to properly promote, money is not necessary.

if you think you don't need to spend money to get your website where you want it to be, get out now. Your only going to get so far without paying for advertising.

 

[David]

Time to deconstruct 🙂

There are tons, there are millions of boards (forums) around the Internet. Some are really old and some are new. Well, we all know that. But, as you can see, older forums are usually much more popular than the new ones. And I'm starting to think that there is just no more room for new boards.

Yes and no. Yes because of logic. I can't think of a good, relevant example where the new forum has surpassed the older, developed forum, within the last 1-2 years. No because of what you are "apparently" seeing. Unless you have raw figures of the amount of new forums vs. developed forums, you really are making a prejudicial decision, probably based off FP, which would be poor practice.

It may look that I am whining a lot because I fail at advertising etc. Well, it's not about that. As a webmaster, I'm starting lose my hope to become successful with forums particularly. So maybe some of you could help me to find some motivation?

Maybe stop comparing your experience with other forums and FP, and focus on your own board. Once you compare, you are placed in a psychological downdraft where you think, "if they have that and they are successful, why am I not successful as well?" and so on. Motivation comes with success (ultimately posts/members), but members/posts comes with the motivation. It's sort of like the Samsara cycle in Buddhism; when you break into Nirvana (ie. the big forums on the net), you stay pretty much out of that cycle, and exponentially succeed. There really isn't a formula; luck does indeed play a role in it.

As you have probably seen, all forums start to look similar. All those "What is your favorite this and that" threads are really becoming annoying since you can find them on every single forum. And most of the new forums are based on such topics. I can understand that every forum needs some unique content. But is that enough?

Well, that's where discussion can come from. If you "only" focus on that, then I doubt you will do very well.

People join forums if they need something. I don't really think that anyone would join any forum just "for fun". So, how to make that happen? Let's take general discussion forums, where people can talk about anything. Why would anyone join a forum like that?

You may offer something else. There could be hundreds of reasons.

You can advertise as much as you want, they wont sign up nor post, unless you give them money or whatever.

Likewise with anything in life.

So, looks like there is no point to start a new board with this genre (yes, I'm whining because of my own forum). There is just no more room for forums like this.

Your premises/arguments do not logically lead to this conclusion, though. Theezy started a general discussion board about 1.5 years ago; whilst he had an established reputation and memberbase, he still defied odds and is now over 200,000 posts large.

Forums are quite unpopular these days, because they are starting to bore people off.

Evidence? Statistics from reliable research? Personal experience is very, very, very isolated. I highly doubt your web searches during your life even count for 0.1% of the total web searches in history, so exactly what are you referencing to?

And I think that it's caused by these social networks. They killed forums. Seriously. Congratulations to those older forums who managed to grow a nice member-base before the era of this social networking.

Yes and no. Yes, I agree with you that social networks dominate the Internet. No because they don't provide long discussion, especially on niche topics. Could you make this "thread" on Facebook and get people responding efficiently, with long answers? Could you go on Twitter and discuss domain names, whereas on Digitalpoint, it would be with ease? Also, FP was started in 2007 with FreeForums.org. Look where it is now.

I'm sure you have all noticed that some forum styles are WAY TOO MUCH overused. Seriously, what is going on? Almost all myBB forums are based on some blue-black-white patterns (like an Estonian flag, lol). (Yes, I hate myBB). I think I have never seen any myBB theme which is unique. They all look the same.

Importunately, this is a very arrogant response, no offense. Have you seen at least 1% of all forums on the Internet? I highly doubt that, so how can you judge if a theme is overused? Maybe you've only seen 50 forums and 40 of those use the same theme. 40 is a very minute number when you compare that with every single forum on the Internet. In fact, it doesn't even represent 0.01%, by your first comment. What you should have said is the forums you've seen have had a significant amount of themes being the same. Considering this, you may have seen a forum with a theme you've never seen anywhere else before, whereas I've seen it at least in 50 forums. From your viewpoint, you've seen a somewhat unique theme; from my viewpoint, it can be considered overused, assuming your logic. So really, if you move away from this subset of users that use these themes, and completely disregard them, you won't feel as if you are using the same theme as 100 other people.

And as for phpBB forums... Oh God, this obsession of free Christian's themes will never end. BUT, I have noticed that people are using them less and less. 🙂

Same as above. Again, you are really focusing on a very small section of Internet forum webmasters. There could be thousands in South Africa who have never seen a Christian theme; where's the obsession there?

Feel free to blame me, hate me. I don't really mind.

I don't blame you for feeling this perception, but people really need to stop feeling so confused and start moving beyond their experiences at FP and making a rational, global judgement on exactly their amount of web presence and understanding of the nature of forums.

Why you need money to become successful with a forum?

I think what DreamACT is trying to say is that you're far better off with money than without money; in fact, I'm willing to say your experience would be binary opposites, especially when you come to a point where your forum becomes static.

 

[Fait]

Money Doesn't always cut it Ive seen some fairly active Proboards forums

But like kavin said you need to be Unique & Paintient I did change My Ideas (From A webmaster to Geneal forums so on...)

I went back to my Old Forum Nintendo Addict Which Has crossed 1 Year (Back In March) But im still hanging on after all those issues Ive had with it From People Hacking It to A huge loss in Activity etc (still the same Database from 1 year)

 

[Zaborg]

Well, my first post was a bit negative and not really clear, but that was my goal. I wanted to make people talk and get some better answers and gladly, it worked. 🙂
I got my answers, thank you all 🙂 I'm not going to answer you back, I respect every reply and I'm not going to ruin them with my shallow opinions.

(As weird as it may sound...)

 

[David]

Money Doesn't always cut it Ive seen some fairly active Proboards forums

But it gives you probably the best chance possible. Money vs. no money. Surely one would opt into the money option.

 

[Zaborg]

Got any tips how to invest money into forums? Honestly i have no idea since there are so much scammers around...