what would make you shut down?

Ya, that's a killer right there. I don't know anyone could keep on pushing with no new members coming in, and other members not posting so much. It would kill their inspiration and m0tivation to continue on.

 

I recently shut down my forum because it evolved beyond the point of being a forum. It started as a webmaster forum, then when I added a store, the forums died and it was just used as a store. I'm going to eventually bring it back using my own ecommerce software, but I think I'd be beating a dead horse if I tried to revive the forum part of it. Webmaster forums are hard to maintain anyway, there are far too many of them.

Another probably common reason to shut down a forum would be if you're simply too busy to maintain it. I've got school, so my side projects are already hard to maintain, but I do keep them around.

 

More than likely it would be due to lack of traffic to my work. If you are unable to keep a consistent of at least 100 unique hits daily to your work, that hurts eventually over time. This would definitely make me reconsider how to drive traffic back or start from scratch at a different angle.

 

Ya, that's exactly why I've never tried my luck at running an webmaster forum. If you don't keep it updated all the time, you lose it to others that have more active members posting and such. I really think that the main issue regarding a "forum shut down" is usually time and dedication. If the owner isn't interested anymore, and moves on with his/her life, I see the forum closing. Then its the thing called running into bullshit problems - such as getting into trouble with the law or something, and it forces you to shut down because you have no way to pay your server bills or anything; to keep things afloat.

I always find joy in working on admin/webmaster forums because its nice to share knowledge with others and network.