Have you ever noticed how many forums get started and die off just as fast as they get started? What makes a forum stand the test of time?
Also, I'm just curious, what are your thoughts on guest posting?
Guest posting increases the spam-rate and in turn, the staff workload.
As to your first point: New webmasters create promotion/gaming/general forums (in no particular order) and expect it to just happen overnight. They close them soon after as it doesn't and they don't have the perseverance to see it through.
iam immune to forums be active and die off -with short life span. although i see others that have been around for 7 or even 10 years and are still active. last year i was a member of over 45 small forums that folded and shut its doors. a sobering streak. and a lot of those forums decided it would be better to set up shop on FB and twitter, which i despise using.
as for guest posting, usually that would most likely get abused by spammers. some forums do have that option avaliable
Yeah like Ben said, a lot close as they're opened by inexperienced users trying to enter into a very saturated niche (gaming, hacking) and don't realise that trying to make any website popular takes time and money, let alone one for extremely well established topics like these. And as people tend to want to use social networks these days then trying to start a new forum is even harder.
I think the thing is people need a site to fulfill their expectation. Like the guy above said , it's true there are a lot of social networks, but not all of are happy about their format, features, etc.. but I agree with one thing, if the admin or whoever who runs the website are inexperienced individuals, especially in web development, it will be tough to attract people as they tend to mess up the site when it's getting bigger, or keep the default format and features which give users no benefit over another site.
The primary reason a forum fails is because the admin gives up. This can be for any number of reasons... Maybe they didn't realise the amount of work that goes into it. Perhaps they underestimated the amount of time they'd need to spent. Or maybe they just had wildly exaggerated expectations and thought their forum would exploded in popularity overnight.
As for guest posting... I've not seen many sites (outside the roleplay circle) that use it to begin with because of how much spam it tends to get hit with.
I'm starting up a forum of my own so it's interesting to hear these comments. I've been a part of forum teams of forums that failed. I think there are a lot of things that factor into it. It seems almost certain a forum will fail if the admin is inexperienced, myopic (short term) thinker, is inflexible, or faces too much competition.
Inexperience: Not knowing what's normal or not can give the admin the impression that they are behind where they should be, even though they might be doing just fine.
Short term thinker: Just like inexperience, short term thinker can lead someone to think they are failing since they haven't succeeded instantly. A lot of us are used to instant gratification of mobile apps etc but truth is, building up a forum takes time. I've been working on my forum behind the scenes for 2 months and don't plan on opening it until at least the end of this month. But I also suffer from perfectionism haha. Perfectionism can also be a flaw. File that under inexperience.
Inflexibility: Just because you have a vision in your mind at the start of your project doesn't mean that you will have the same vision by the end of it. Any good forum goes under evolutions. Can you imagine a forum made in 2009 keeping its layout and design through 2017? They might not even have the same forum team they started with. There are lots of things that can change and will change. If you're inflexible, you'll fall behind. Innovation won't wait for you!
Competition: Finding the right niche is tricky. If your passion is gaming, that's hard to break into. You have to slip through the cracks and revisit the topic in a new way. What about games only produced by one company? What about FPS games only? A forum for mobile gaming is a fresh take. There are still ways you can do what you want but you have to make sure people know your forum is different.
ive run into a lot of admins out there just starting out and dreaming big. expanding their forum etc. but once they decide to hand over forum to new ownership..that there would almost certainly break up membership base -from my pov, I would probaley request deletion of acct. and then there are some admins who are so strict in their rules. no fun for members who must endure admin running forum with an iron fist. I say just relax and make it a neutral and fun atmosphere for all to enjoy.
People tend to lose caring after starting a general discussion forum and not seeing it explode with traffic overnight. I have a vested interest in keeping my forum active (my primary email address is at my forums domain) so I try to bring new people to it as often as possible. The most important thing is for admins to not give up on their projects.
I recall some poeple having unreasonable expectations that if you simply create a forum people will flock to it. People will come for content that is worth registering for and keeping those people coming back will result in more users joining.
It is mainly that initial kickstart forums need to keep the flow of new and former users coming back.
For guest posting, it varies by case I think. If you have a way to properly manage it then it could work out great and I'd only recommend it for certain types of forums. Else you'll find yourself getting a lot of spam which will actually have a negative implication (people seeing it and potentially being turned off by it).