Do forums lack modernization?

[Shawn Gossman]

The forum platforms of today, most of them, still have that early 2000s look and feel to them.

Many are not even well mobile responsive yet. This is a time when over 50% of your audience is likely mobile-only.

Do forums lack that modern-feel? Could that be their downfall?

While I don't think forums are dead, they're not as popular as they once were.

Social media continues to thrive because it continues to evolve. But forums.... do they really evolve?

What do you all think about this topic?

 

[AWS]

The xenforos and vbulletins of the World are indeed lacking. Stuck in the 90"s when Ultimate Bulletin Board introduced the flat style look we see.

Good thing there is IPB, Discourse and NodeBB to drag us out of the 90's.

Die hards and fanboys of xenforo and vbulletin will argue this. They say the new systems are a fad. Truth is the same was said when UBB started. Threaded was the norm. Everyone said UBB was a fad that would die. How wrong they are. While it should be dead it lingers on.

 

[Shawn Gossman]

Even VB6 still has a retro feel to me after messing around with the demo.

Of course, like you said, die-hard fans will not be impacted by this and will argue it but the majority of internet users are not in agreement with them.

 

[JoelR]

The forum platforms of today, most of them, still have that early 2000s look and feel to them.

Many are not even well mobile responsive yet. This is a time when over 50% of your audience is likely mobile-only.

Do forums lack that modern-feel? Could that be their downfall?

While I don't think forums are dead, they're not as popular as they once were.

Social media continues to thrive because it continues to evolve. But forums.... do they really evolve?

What do you all think about this topic?

One of the most misleading - well intended, but alluringly deceptive - objections that I recently read on XF regarding a feature was: we shouldn't build XYZ feature, because forum users don't like / want / need things to be different. This is a person who doesn't want to evolve because he thinks everything is just fine.

Forums should do the same thing, and never change.

XF 2.4 general discussion, feedback, complaints, random off topic posts, etc.

If we were doing something like that it would probably just be some brief bullet points in the announcement thread. It wouldn’t be any significant detail.

xenforo.com

I'm not calling out this particular user, but of his objection: the obstinacy of historic users who are just fine with the status quo, while forum usage has absolutely hemorrhaged all around us.

It's why, as much as I like XF for its friendly and active community, I would personally bet on IPS / Invision Community or Woltlab to survive in the future. They are the few companies out of the legacy forum developers that has a clear thesis about the future of forum use: new forums are going to be much more transactional, more solutions-oriented, etc.

 

[AWS]

The old guard, which I am a member of, are hard to change. Most see nothing wrong with the way the data is presented. Sad really. Forums as they exist today are in fact dying.

I'm not so sure IPB will come out any better than the rest. Competing with free products like Discourse that are clearly the future will be hard. They are going in the right direction and seem to understand to survive they have to adapt.

 

[Shawn Gossman]

You know I see people more willing to pay $100 a month for Cricle, which is a SaaS product with forum features. They can pay a little over that for a year and get a forum but they'd rather pay $100 a month for something everyone is jumping on board with. Forums could be dying but online communities are not.

 

[Nomad]

Forums have a long history, in fact forums are older than social media platforms but sadly forums couldn't manage to stay on the top. These days very few individuals are interested in running forums and very fewer people are interested in posting on forums

 

[Shawn Gossman]

Forums have a long history, in fact forums are older than social media platforms but sadly forums couldn't manage to stay on the top. These days very few individuals are interested in running forums and very fewer people are interested in posting on forums

Not always a bad thing.

As long as you have an audience-base, then you'll have less competition to compete with.