Have you ever closed down a forum?

[Shawn Gossman]

Have you ever shut down your forum for good?

Tell us about it here. Why did you do it?

Do you regret doing it today? If no, why not? If yes, why so?

 

[Tracy]

Two that at times I miss. One was The Bent Bike. Had the .BIKE domain for it and it was nice and an decent logo a friend did for free for me. I just got out of recumbents when the wife had to quit riding because of health reasons. We did not have a lot of people that rode bikes for fun in my area, much less recumbents. Felt that I could not do the site justice so just let it die on the vine and when the domain reached near expiring I let that license lay fallow for a time. At the beginning I was running myBB then IPS on it. Then I let it lit with just the domain for a few months then brought it back with XenForo. In fact, it now is what runs on a friends pipe and cigar site.
If you check the IPS one out, the directory list on the bottom was created in Pages. Even then it was one of the strong points of that package. With the XenForo install I was running my own MTA (mail server) and was offering free branded emails to users for that domain.

I still think about starting it back up, but realize it is a fairly niche (and expensive) market and would probably be better served by a blog or some similar CMS website.
The other was Now Serving Linux. That was back when I was doing a LOT of free outside work on setting folks servers up, fixing issues with them and similar and enjoyed it. But it being free it started to get abused and I began to get away from it and then also the site (which ran Woltlab).

 

[Nomad]

I have closed down one forum. I had three forums at that time and it was becoming very difficult to maintain these forums as I was not earning anything from the forums, instead these forums were costing me money for content development.

 

[Shawn Gossman]

I've shut down many in my day.

I used to give forums a year and then close them if they didn't work out.

I've since changed my strategy. I'll give them a few years to even 5 years to see what they can do. If the forum is dead for 3-5 years no matter how hard I try, then it might be time to call it quits.

 

[AWS]

I closed all my sites early last year after my second stroke. I honestly thought it was the end. I still have lingering effects after almost a year of rehab. I have a hard time talking. The words are there they just don't come out. Reopening my forums has helped me along. The therapist suggested it. While I couldn't talk to you I can express myself by typing out responses.

It was a tough decision to make. I could have left them stay open and unmaintained. I decided best to close them. I never envisioned I'd have forums again. Yet here I am.

 

[Cedric]

I've shut down many in my day.

I used to give forums a year and then close them if they didn't work out.

I've since changed my strategy. I'll give them a few years to even 5 years to see what they can do. If the forum is dead for 3-5 years no matter how hard I try, then it might be time to call it quits.

At least you gave it a year. I just to give it up after the hype went down. Sometimes it only took a few weeks. That was 10 years ago though. I’m much more mature now.

 

[Shawn Gossman]

At least you gave it a year. I just to give it up after the hype went down. Sometimes it only took a few weeks. That was 10 years ago though. I’m much more mature now.

I did that a few times.

Nowadays, I'm just letting it happen.

Blogging Collective isn't doing as good as I thought it would, but I still get occasional posts on it so I'm happy with that One day it might get seen by the right crowd and take off. If I close it down, I might miss that opportunity.

 

[Cedric]

I did that a few times.

Nowadays, I'm just letting it happen.

Blogging Collective isn't doing as good as I thought it would, but I still get occasional posts on it so I'm happy with that One day it might get seen by the right crowd and take off. If I close it down, I might miss that opportunity.

It all depends what your desire is. Some people like to have a forum online and don't really care for activity. Others strive for a really active forum (that is usually me) and some are happy with just a few posts. There's literally nothing wrong with the way you prefer. It's your community.

 

[Shawn Gossman]

It all depends what your desire is. Some people like to have a forum online and don't really care for activity. Others strive for a really active forum (that is usually me) and some are happy with just a few posts. There's literally nothing wrong with the way you prefer. It's your community.

I would rather the forum be very active, but I can wait for that to happen.

I'll just keep posting and working on developing the community within.

 

[Cpvr]

I would rather the forum be very active, but I can wait for that to happen.

I'll just keep posting and working on developing the community within.

Same here. Slow progress is better than no progress.


Hardwork will always pay off in the long run. I’ll keep pushing and posting on my forum until I can’t anymore. At least, that’s my motto.


I’m not one to ever give up. I learned this while playing sports growing up, especially experiencing slumps and bouncing back while playing baseball, so I apply this to forum building as well.

However, I do understand the need to close down forums once the passion or love for it runs out when you’re running it. It’s the same thing as quitting a sport or a game.

 

[Shawn Gossman]

Hardwork will always pay off in the long run. I’ll keep pushing and posting on my forum until I can’t anymore. At least, that’s my motto.

Everything about this statement is so true.

And there will be days that you can't work as hard. Lately I've not been able to spend a lot of time on here. I have a huge project at work that is taking a lot of my time.

But I login when I can and post when I can. That's important.

Do what you can, when you can, and keep trying!