I am thinking about killing the DomainerZone.com forum. I don't see it helping the site in any way what so ever. In fact, it just seems to hurt it. I cannot promote my mini site creator on any forums because my forum is direct competition. Plus, it's not all that active. Almost all the activity I did get was from various post exchanges, so none of the content is anything more than "How old are you?" and "How many domains do you own?". Plus, the articles seemed to be picked up in Google faster. If I have anything important to say, writing an article seems to be a better plan. Finally, the forum shows my site as being inactive. Even though I am getting some hits from Google (to the article pages) and from various link (DZ is now a predicted PR 4), the site still looks dead.

My plan is to get rid of it completely. I might move the forum to some other domain, so it doesn't affect DZ, but even then there doesn't seem to be a point. If you search for domain forums, there are millions of them with only a couple being successful domain forums. Should I end everything, move the forum, or leave DZ alone?

WOW, I have to say that is a tough call...

altho if you think way down in your gut it is not going to help your site but hold it back...by all means get rid of the forum...

I don't really know what else to say, but i wish you the best of luck trying to decide.

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NosSigna.com Network // LongerURL.com - Free Longer URL Service

Think about it this way, does it cost you more money to keep up the forum? If the answer is no then keep it. If it costs you extra to keep the forum then get rid of it. Another question you should ask yourself do you have another project you want to use your VBulletin license on? If you do than get rid of it and start your new project.

I think it's costing me money to keep it up, but at the same time, I made a custom skin for it and some custom mods. Destroying everything will mean a lot of time wasted. I do have another use for the forum, though.

You may want to consider selling it before you just close down. I'm not sure if you should close or not but if your interest level has deteriorated quite a bit, then it's probably a good idea. It's not easy to run a forum so don't feel defeated if you have to use the vB license for something else. Another thing to consider is that you have a very new forum. It'll take time to get the word out about your site. Good luck with whatever decision you make.

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Mark Blair
NowParenting - "Parenting Discussion Community"
HostHideout - "Where Professionals Discuss Web Hosting"

It isn't purely an economical factor that is present. Forums are not always the right solution for sites, some sites benefit some do not.

I used to run a very busy fan site for a film which had a forum, very little amount of people posted anythingat all.

If you do beleive as you say as you state that the forum is having a detrimental effect on your site then yes the best advice would be to move it or close it. Sites that have empty / non active forums can be a real turn off for people.

Another option may be to try and integrate it more into your site so that it is not necessarily noticeable that it is a forum (not sure if this is an option for you as I do not know how good at coding you are or how your site currently operates). The advantage of this maybe that people will not see it as an inactive forum but more a site that has occassional comments etc.

Or of course if you have a license you'd prefer to use somewhere else, you can always convert it to PHPBB or something similar. I recently converted a forum from VBulletin to PHPBB for this reason, of course you may choose some other forum software as your preference. Also consider how much time you spent on the skins and mods and consider that what you've already spent. You can of course reuse the skins and mods for a different forum if you deem it appropriate. If not at the end of the day you can always write off some things as a loss. Not every idea is successful even though you think they will be.

I just had another look at your forum and it seems to be active in all the categories, are you sure you're wasting your time? You might not be giving the site enough time to mature which is another common mistake. As far as I can tell your forum is only 1 1/2 months old.

The problem I have with the forum is it's keeping me from advertising. There are plenty of domain forums, all of which can bring in a few mini site sales, but I cannot post anything because it's a competing forum. That also leads to the point that there are several domain/webmaster related forums out there. Getting rid of mine isn't a big lose to that niche.

The site sells mini sites to bring in money. The forum doesn't make any money at all. I think even if I had a big forum, it wouldn't do me much good at DomainerZone.com. It would give some people a reason to come back, but I don't really want a community. I am looking for more of a business/newbie helpful resource. Maybe the forum would do better if I wait until a lot of people go to my site and then bring back the forum.

Okay re-read what I said. I posted about if the forum is costing you more money...96 out of 100 times the forum is all included in the same price of hosting your main site. It was kind of a hypothetical question. Personally I see an active forum, maybe not as active as you want to see it, but I see it active. If you have five active members that are always active you still have a good forum. Once you have more members than yourself that keep coming back to comment and make questions the forum is active.

Also why do you think other sites are competing forums? Advertise your main site don't advertise your forum. You're right domain/webmaster forums have tons of sites and I'm sure they are overcrowded but guess what you have a niche. The secret to a lot of successful forums is having a niche. What exactly is a niche?...a small market segment of a big market (it's not a dictionary translation but my translation). Guess what? I sell something similar to you although not the exact same thing as you, but I never started a forum. You might be more successful than me without even realizing it. Like I said earlier every idea isn't a good idea and my new point is every forum doesn't deserve VBulletin. My personal (although not everyone's) suggestion is convert to phpbb or even mybboard (I really like phpbb) and switch to VBulletin when your forum is big enough. The only reason I would use a VBulletin license on a forum that isn't big is because I have a license to spare, if not I wouldn't do it.

What you see is people from Post Fusion, post exchanges from people at SitePoint, a few paid posters, and 4 friends.

I tried. Ads that went to www.DomainerZone.com were rejected by several forums because there is clearly a forum on my site. I am not allowed to link to the forum or any page on the same domain as the forum.

Basically, I see post exchanges and a few friends (who only posted because I asked them to) standing in the way of my advertising campaign.