What Made You Create Your Forum?

I had general chat forum for 5 years til I closed it's doors this past spring. I started it because email just wasn't cutting it and we had started 11 years ago on forums but couldn't find one we liked after that one was bought out and changed. So I made my own. Five years later, mst of the members had moved on and it was time to close. What was left of the original forum has been moved and trimmed a number of times. I had gotten to close to 25,000 posts, down to less than a 1000 now on that database. But I still have a copy of the original database (or most of it).

What I trimmed was duplicates, out of date information and very personal information. Not bad for a site that never exceeded 100 members.

 

wow im suprised. That is alot.

 

I've had 5k on my previous off-topic forum didnt think it would go far but suprisingly it did and lasted a good 2 years online ;')

 

What happened to it?

 

5k? That would be good for any form let alone a offtopic forum.

 

As a former ultra admin of Planet AMD 64 and long time member, I watched it go from major to nothing all because the owner was so uninterested he would not listen to his loyal members.
I had to clean up the over 4000 spammer accounts, yes over 4000 all because the owner had Not updated the software in over 2-3 years. It would have cost $25.
Rather than do all the work (this was supposed to be a hobby) I decided to start my own forum so I would have somewhere to post after the planet died.

 

That's sad. Man you should be rewarded Mod of the year with deleting 4000 spam accounts. I can barely do 3.

 

I found a spam ring working within the forum. The forum had a place in your profile where you could list your computer hardware. After a deleteing a few spammers, I noticed a few were listing google as hardware. When i did a member search for members with google as hardware, I found over 3000 members with google as hardware and all had spam somewhere in their profile, posts, comments or other. That took a while to delete and ban the IP's. Since I resigned as admin and as of now, the forum has some sort of malware inserted and google has the site on watch. I dont think the owner even knows.

 

Ran into a similar situation in a old forum. The Admin never showed up and the Mods would abuse their powers. I had a enough with it and I wrote a strongly worded post only to be banned for speaking the truth. I think a successful forum has Admin that appears actively. It doesn't even have to be the Owner.

 

True, but the owner is important if you dont have access to certain area's, like the server (to do updates and other maintanence) and they wont give you access.
Sorry to hear about the other site that the Mods and admins.
Do you have a site now?

 

Site? No, But I do have a forum. It's not nearly as good as everyone Else's because its a free forum. I'm trying to get a paid one though. Just haven't decided which would be good for my Forum.

 

What is your forum content or about?

 

Movies of the Classical genre. Actually its a forum where you discuss about the past with others.

Edit: To not take this off-topic we should probably take this to P.M's. If need to reply just P.M me.

 

got link?

 

P.Med.

 

Nice looking.

 

Thank You.

 

Actually in XenForo, it's called Private Conversations. Mainly because you have the ability to add more than one person. It's almost like a baby group.

 

I don't blame you, mate. When I first started trying to create forums back in 2008, I found out the hard way that it's not as easy as it looks. Sure, Forum Promotion got really active in 3 short years, but they're an exception, and they have really dedicated staff as well! I basically wanted a place of my own that wasn't so strict like some forums are... but I remember when I started out, I couldn't keep a forum open for two weeks before suddenly deciding clear out of the blue to close it. I'd say I've come a long way since I first started running my own forum. It's not as easy as it looks, that's for sure! Promoting, making new topics, keeping posts up-to-date, monthly, weekly, bi-weekly, semi-weekly newsletters via email. It's a tough life, but hey, the reason I keep going is I have always wanted a place of my own where we could just chill and get away from it all...

 

Yea I just googled it and visited it, my computer went nuts to try to not let me go there lol.