What do you do with a dead forum?

If a forum you manage died, what would you rather do? Would you close it down (with the possibility to reopen it later on)? Would you completely delete it? Or maybe leave someone else in charge? How come?

 

Try and sell the domain

 

I had a site that was rather successful for my town. A fun and safe place for people to discuss local issues and just general chat. Facebook came out a few years afterwards and my site died. I tried to get people back but I think the many changes I did to try and improve user content caused more upset.

I deleted it in the end but have started it again recently. I get a lot of traffic to the domain and with improvements in the town i'm sure people will use it at some point. Google Adsense doesn't do to bad for the site either at the moment.

 

It depends how big the project was and how much customization had been done. If something that I had made a custom theme for and had a 10k+ post size then I would try and sell it instead. Otherwise I would save the database and domain and close the site off.

 

One man's trash... Some of my biggest boards are ones that have been salvaged after dying off. It gives you a great head start, having the foundations already in place.

 

Really depends on the topic. If the topic is obsolete, there might not be any sense in trying to do anything with it. With the right topic, though, you might have something of value still.

 

Depends on the forum and the niche actually. If it's got the potential, I'd probably shut it down until I can manage to start it back up successfully, if it didn't have too much potential or even hope, I'd open it back up and use a paid to post program for a few days, then sell it off to someone and make a small profit and hope the profit returns all of what you've invested into the forum. If you've invested nothing, delete it, it's not worth it unless you're willing to invest.

 

Really if the forum is dead, its either because someone lost interest in the project. If its dead because of health issues, then of course, you start adding fresh content to the forum and start to revive it. If you have no interest in running the forum anymore, then of course, you should sell it to someone that can actually nature the community back to good health.


It takes a lot of dedication, time and effort to revive an online community. Think of it of like going to school, you have to learn and read in order to grow as a person. A forum is no different than this, you have to work hard in order to succeed on the internet.

 

Ive owned a ton of dead forums. Dead because the previous owner let them die off, in some cases policy change pushed members away etc. I have seen my own sites die off because of how the hobby changed.

Consider its value and decide if its worth selling. If the community is gone I generally try to migrate to another board I own. If not possible, I shut if off and move on.

 

yes much better to sell it.

 

Sell or start a new forum and mass email the members or do both. ;-)

 

It all depends though. If you've lost the passion for the forum and love for it, then of course sell it. Selling seems to be the best option if you don't feel like dedicating anytime to the re-building process of the forum.

 

I'd revive it, and if I'm passionate about the topic I'd keep it. Regardless you should try and revive the community so you can give the forum some value, and if you don't want to keep it...sell it.

 

The way I run a forum is, I will register the domain for a year upon the first purchase, create a forum, promote it and try to get it going for a year. After a year, or right before I renew the domain again, if the forum has not taken off, I delete it and let the domain expire. I give all my sites at least one year and if they do not work out, then I see it as a lost cause and give up.

 

What if they die out after the first year? Do you give them a year after that and see whether it's still worth keeping them around? Or just run them assuming that year 1 success indicates long term forum success?

 

For my forums if they went dead, I would try revamp them and move them to a different domain and try to start afresh. but before that, I have am in love with the niche, I would try out redesigning, re-creating the forum in terms of - maybe adding some contests, some new sections - basically a restructuring.

 

I'll take somewhat relevant forums that are dead

 

You can try to add new content, to give a new "face" to the forum or you can even try verder, but I think if you sell you will be losing hours of work investiste the forum, try to dedicate yourself to the forum and invest some of your time and money there!

 

I'd at least try to revive it with some fresh posts and material! If you still have allies among the members, ask them to help you.

 

I try and keep it going unless I see it's completely dead. My forum's members have only registered due to word-of-mouth advertising, meaning we're pretty much all friends or friends-of-friends; we haven't reached out to a bigger audience yet, so if I lost my current users I wouldn't be able to obtain any new members anyway. xD