How do you prevent a forum from dying?

[Kirk93]

Hey all,

So over the past week, my month old forum www.confab-it.com has been dying; a lot of the active users aren't posting much, and I've noticed some users not even log in at all. I know we've only been going a month, but people don't help with promotion and my staff don't seem to want to do anything to help.

I had really high hopes for this forum even considering the fact it was my first attempt; I can't really afford to spend much more money and doing ads on Facebook, Twitter etc hasn't helped.

Does anyone have any advice?

 

[Commander]

I know the feeling, I think almost every forum owner does.
New forums are never easy to get off the ground as members want to be part of an active community. The paradox there is you can't be an active community without members being active. So, the question remains: "How do you get past this never-ending circle?". Be unique in your own way, keep at it (endurance is probably the most important thing), and offer incentives to get your forum off the ground. Eventually, as the forum builds up you may start to notice everyone being a little more active without having to be bribed. 😉

 

[VirusZero]

There are several ways to help keep a forum from dying... But they aren't perfect and may still fail regardless (there could be other reasons why a site is failing rather than lack of interest).

The primary way to prevent site death is for that site's staff to be active.

That means you need to keep posting new content... new topics (daily if possible). You also need to encourage your staff to be posting new topics too. And keep replying to topics too so that members have more to discuss.
If staff aren't active, find out why. Ask them if there is something going on in their lives (they could be just going through a rough patch... like their job picked up and is demanding more from them). If nothing else, ask them if they're still interested in being staff on the site. If they aren't then it's better to just demote them. But if they indicate are still interested in being staff, make sure they understand that this site has things that need doing and they, being staff, have a duty to ensure those things get done.
If they don't respond to your questions/concerns then you may want to let those staff members go (be sure to thank them for their time and effort) since if you have multiple staff that aren't doing anything it looks bad. Then, if you do let people go, focus efforts on making the site more active yourself.
(You may be inclined to start staff hunting right away... But ask yourself first if you really need more staff. If your site is just a few members, do you really need a full staff of like 6 people? If you have less than 50-100 members, you can make do with just yourself for staff.)

It may also be worthwhile to look at your site critically (or get someone else to) and see if there are ways your site can be improved, refined or changed. See which sections of your site are most used and expand on them as necessary. Conversely, if you have sections that aren't being used much see if you can fold them into other sections.
Perhaps a new skin may help the site. (If you can create a custom skin yourself, it may be worthwhile to do that for a unique appearance rather than some premade one by a relatively popular skin designer.)


You may also want to engage in post exchanges so that other members will register on your site (which having new members register looks good for you. It shows growth and activity.)

And you may want to look ahead on your schedule and get post packages to help get new content on days when you might be busy and really can't make many new topics/posts. (This way there is a fairly steady stream of new content coming in for people to post about.)

And keep advertising... Keep using twitter, directories, etc... get into a rhythm of updating them. Constant steady updates will attract more attention and keep more on your site than one huge burst of activity once a week.

Also, it's worth mentioning that new sites especially have a honeymoon period (typically 2-3 weeks) where the site is new and shiny and full of promise. But after that the novelty of a site being new wears off and the "work" part kicks in. This is natural and you're always bound to lose a bunch of members once the "new forum feel" wears off.

Overall keep trying, don't give up and just remember to keep expectations realistic. (Sites don't explode in popularity overnight. They take a fair bit of time and work to make popular. Months to years even...)

 

[Ash]

I think one of the most important bits is the look of a forum and I just think that your forum looks a bit dull. It needs for colour and I think that is a slight problem with Vbulletin. If you had gone with something like IPB or XenForo or even myBB, those forums enable you to have a colourful and customizable forum which attracts more users.

 

[Mr.Panos]

I redesign the forum 🙂

 

[Nathan]

Just be active yourself and make your forum unique to you and others.

If you as the forum admin/owner doesn't even appear active at your forum, why should others?

 

[Nebulous]

Forums dont really die, they just have inactive periods. Even the busiest forums slow down once in a while. Thats just a forum way of life. 😛

 

[Beverly]

Forums dont really die, they just have inactive periods. Even the busiest forums slow down once in a while. Thats just a forum way of life. 😛

I think a forum will die when the community owner stops caring about it; cause then the forum members will see and stop posting or showing up and just eventually leave.

 

[Vernard]

You prevent it by never giving up, trying new things, & remaining active yourself. Like stated previously, nobody wants to stay active on a forum where the owner himself has given up.

 

[bunniefuu]

I think a forum will die when the community owner stops caring about it; cause then the forum members will see and stop posting or showing up and just eventually leave.

IMO, that is 100% true. My experience too. I gave up several years back when ezboard lost half of our post content. Walked away from it for a few years... and so did 3,000 other members. It did die. It's not about the staff at all. It's about the owner. You have to be there every day. You have to post there every day. You have to talk to yourself every day. And it really, honestly takes a TON of time... which brings in patience is virtue. And I mean like months to years. I will also say in all those years I've never made any money off my site- rather I've lost money lol. I do it for the only simple fact of, I absolutely LOVE it. I love being there, I love that it's mine. Passion is important. Get rich quick crap will NOT get you there or last a lifetime.

The best advice I can give from my 12 years of running a forum is really only boiled down to one golden rule... perseverance. Don't give up. You might talk to yourself or one other member for months and months and months and right before you get to that point that you want to give up and quit, is the moment right before it happens. Most people never stick with it to that exact moment though.

 

[Shiny Star]

Yup. I know the feeling of that too. What I tend to do is get friends to join and post, that can either be online or real life friends. The thing is with them is because they like you and stuff they are willing to come back to your site without you even having to nag them. One week of inactiveness isn't that bad, I'd get worried after a month long period of it. Make at least two topics daily at the start and once loads of people start visiting, you can reduce that to once a week or whatever.

3,000 members walked away? ^ That is impressive. I guess because once the main guy has gone, not much progress can happen.

 

[bunniefuu]

Oh why yes! Over 3,000 to be exact!! hahaha and now, you would notice that only a small handful have returned. It was really busy and a lot of fun back in the day! It almost became overwhelming to not only me, but the staff of 30 or so that I had back then. It was crazy!!

It's weird really, that I actually just love 5 people as much as 3,000. With fewer people- better friendships are made... more people and you tend to get lost. In any case, not sure how impressive that really is, but thank you.

Oh, and I will also say though-- I actually did not slow down my amount of posts when there were more members. I really just posted every day as much as I wanted (which I'll be honest, it was always a lot more than just 2 a day and still is).



It also depends on your subject, or niche content for down periods. Also, summer time is a huge drop for most forums.

 

[THF_Martin]

With forums you are going to have up and down stages. Your most active users will leave at some point and so on. Prepare for that. What you need to do is start an equal amount of content per day, do exchanges and give some basic rewards to try and get people interested. The start of a forum will be a really bumpy ride.

 

[Beverly]

IMO, that is 100% true. My experience too. I gave up several years back when ezboard lost half of our post content. Walked away from it for a few years... and so did 3,000 other members. It did die. It's not about the staff at all. It's about the owner. You have to be there every day. You have to post there every day. You have to talk to yourself every day. And it really, honestly takes a TON of time... which brings in patience is virtue. And I mean like months to years. I will also say in all those years I've never made any money off my site- rather I've lost money lol. I do it for the only simple fact of, I absolutely LOVE it. I love being there, I love that it's mine. Passion is important. Get rich quick crap will NOT get you there or last a lifetime.

The best advice I can give from my 12 years of running a forum is really only boiled down to one golden rule... perseverance. Don't give up. You might talk to yourself or one other member for months and months and months and right before you get to that point that you want to give up and quit, is the moment right before it happens. Most people never stick with it to that exact moment though.

I love your enthusiasm for your forum and how you are so enthusiastic about being a forum owner even after all these years and without financial compensation. I'd love to feel that about my forum again. I think I will need to start a new forum to get that feeling back.

 

[Yudistira]

Be active and don't stop advertising on other forums/sites.

 

[Tunechi]

In my opinion, you have to spend at least a few hours a day on your forum posting and advertising it.

 

[Migi]

Owner being present in a forum means a lot to the members, but if he's alone it's hard to keep things going. So I guess there has to be some kind of core members, who first started things, who try to keep on going even in slow times. It's true that perseverance is the key. Since low period is to be expected, you can't expect the level of interest will stay the same forever, haha. I guess we just have to keep the marketing on going to bring new interested members to replace old members while doing our best to keep what we have by adding content and interesting activities.