ForumDirectory.com

ForumDirectory is a centralized platform that connects users with online forums across a wide range of topics. Whether interested in automotive brands, creative arts, technology, or health & wellness, users can browse an extensive selection of forums tailored to their interests.

The platform categorizes forums into sections such as Automotive, Education, Entertainment, Gaming, Health & Wellness, Hobbyist Forums, Lifestyle, Science & Nature, Sports, Technology, and more. Each category includes subcategories for more precise navigation, ensuring users quickly find relevant discussions.

Users can explore featured forums, view the latest additions, and engage with trending discussions. A search function allows for easy discovery of forums by title or topic. Forum administrators can submit their communities for inclusion, increasing visibility and expanding their audience.

The directory is regularly updated to provide an evolving list of high-quality forums. With a focus on organization and accessibility, it simplifies the process of finding and joining engaging online discussions.

I love that you put so much work into this one.

How did you get all the forums on there? Did you use some sort of automation, or did you do that manually?

Shawn Gossman said:

How did you get all the forums on there? Did you use some sort of automation, or did you do that manually?

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I tirelessly searched Google for "Powered by Xenforo/Invision Community/phpBB/MyBB"+"keywords" to put together a list of over 1500 communities (we're at about 840, with 5-10 added daily). I also used XenForo's abandoned Customer Showcase to get better quality boards in the list too.

Then, if I ever saw a forum in a signature not already on my list, it was added.

Adding is an auto-manual process as I have to review the integrity of the forum and whether it can scrape the thread count or not (some styles/boards/themes have issues, but I could probably work that out with a better coder).

The established date is manual with the first print of publicly available content, whether that's the join date of the admin (can't always rely on that because boards merge and admin.1 joined in 2020 while admin.2 was the original in 2011, and most boards require you to login to see the profile), the first visible post to the board, or archival snapshots. This is the most tedious process of it all, as it takes time, in some cases, a lot of time, like contacting the original owner. The date I come to can often be wrong from the actual date, but is as accurate as possible in the most narrow window it can be.

Here's a snippet of an article I wrote (not published) about established dates so that ForumDirectory can be used as an authoritative source (like a Wiki reference for instance if one is needed when a Board reaches the point of having a Wiki page [many do]) with the work that goes into finding that date.

Edit: Published it as it was rebranded from Discovery to Directory (was saving this article for that time for more weight on authority).

I once curated a list of 1000 forums with their social media links for a client. I don't know what he did with the list.
You have a great Forum Directory, I will be adding my forums soon.

Nomad said:

I once curated a list of 1000 forums with their social media links for a client. I don't know what he did with the list.

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I'd take the list if you still have it. I'm sure AI could weed out the duplicates!

Would be cool if there was a statistics widget seeing the used softwares.

Cedric said:

Would be cool if there was a statistics widget seeing the used softwares.

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I am actually cooking up an article with that, which shows that XenForo is the most-used platform. I didn't set out with the goal of finding and adding only XenForo forums, as I aggregated every forum from a ton of Google searches.

Another interesting pattern I noticed is when forums are established. Forums tend to stand up before or directly after Christmas, when people tend to be stuck at home looking for something to do. The established date is something that I found quite fascinating, as I only started to take notice when I saw that some forums also have established dates with spikes during C-19 as well.

I haven't ported the forum software all over from a one-line textbox input to a drop-down selection (2 fields; older forums are text-box written out as "Platform", and newer/updated ones are shifted into a drop-down as "Forum Software"). I'll probably end up writing a quick add on to convert the text fields into the drop-down (it wasn't as easy as "copy/paste" in the database or changing the input type and then magically porting to a drop-down), but I haven't gotten around to it yet. Having them in the drop-down will let me count the forums much easier, and then put those stats into a widget, which is a good idea. Thanks!

I had in mind to be in the dropdown so users can filter by forum software, but the widget stats would be cool to see as well.

frm said:

I'd take the list if you still have it. I'm sure AI could weed out the duplicates!

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I don't have the ownership rights.

Nomad said:

I don't have the ownership rights.

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IP is IP. I can respect that!