Starting Fresh with Forums

[Ashley]

I have been opening, closing and opening forums in the past year an it has been crazy. I am ready to drop the habit and just apply for staff at a few boards. That would keep me happy for quite some time, actually. It would give me much more satisfaction knowing that I was helping someone with their board rather than looking up ten million hosts on Google and starting up forums with them, only to get myself in trouble.



I swear sometimes I think I am the only person who actually has this problem. Nebulous, for example, I understand better than ever what you say about my just giving up forum owning in general. It's stupid and I wish I'd never gotten into it to begin with. It's really a lot of competition, almost too much of it, and there are just days when I feel seriously burned out and I don't want to do it anymore. I'm tired of the mixed feelings, tired of being yelled at, tired of getting new ideas and opening and closing boards.



I have actually turned Marie 1988 over to someone else, and I myself am actually going to stop going there, so that I don't have to worry about not being active enough on other forums.



I really need your guys' help in kicking this habit, because I really really am tired of going from one host to the next, losing passion, and then getting the urge to start another one two weeks later. I know better than ever that I have otherways of using my time.

 

[Nebulous's iconNebulous]

The way I see it, if you close your forums, they are closed for good.

If you are going to start a new one, it should be a NEW forum. A different one. Not restarting a board with the same name over and over again.

 

[skinnybones4]

Yeah thats true. My forum has been running slow as well and I questioned shutting it down months ago. But people who never get on now petitioned to keep it opened. So I did. Now it seems like I am the only one who gets on now.

 

[Ashley]

The way I see it, if you close your forums, they are closed for good.

If you are going to start a new one, it should be a NEW forum. A different one. Not restarting a board with the same name over and over again.

That's true, although it seems like whenever I want to come up with a forum, all I have is a name. The rest I just knock off based on what I've seen. I don't know why, but that seems to be my personality.

 

[Black Angel]

If you are really passionate about your forum, then you wouldn't let the so-called competition get to you. There are going to be forums that will be bigger than yours, and that fact alone won't make them better.. just like a forum that is smaller than yours won't be worse. You also wouldn't give up so easily..



I've had your problem when I first started my forum.. I would compare it to others and then end up getting upset because it wasn't as big or growing as fast as others.. then I realized that my stressing out over stats was taking the enjoyment out of running a forum.. once I stopped stressing, and remembered why I made a forum, I enjoyed it more and cared less about stats.



Ashley, not for nothing, and please don't take offense at this, but you are the reason your forum doesn't get off the ground as easily. You start a board, advertise it, only to close it citing inactivity or a lack of desire on your part.. only to do it again a short time later on another host. Your closing, switching hosts, and starting over again will land you a reputation as being flaky and unreliable, (if it hasn't already) and as a result, people will be reluctant to sign up to any of your forums in the future. I mean, what is the point in joining a forum, and putting forth the effort in being active there if the admin who owns can't decide whether or not they want to run a forum, and decides to close it a short time later. The result from this will be that each of your new forums will do worse than the one preceding it. Also, in your case, it might be a good idea to just change the name of each new board, and your admin name so that your forum won't raise any red flags with respect to your [potential] reputation.



Doing this shows a total disregard for your members, and the effort they put forth on YOUR forum.. and so, if they got fed up and decided to never join any of your forums ever again, can you really blame them? if you just stick with it and resist the urge to close, then you might be surprised at how your forum could grow if you just allow it to. I've seen quite a few members on each of the boards you've had and I will say that you are very lucky to have a loyal group of members to follow you from forum to forum, host after host, close after close, reopen after reopen, like that and not leave you hanging.. and so, I suggest that if you DO decide to open another forum, that you just make it so that you can just kick back with the members that are loyal to you.. this way you can relax and enjoy your self with the members who obviously like you enough to follow you like that. You easily lose passion in your forum because you weren't passionate about it to begin with.. you were just infatuated, and once the shine was off the apple, your interest went south.



Out of curiousity, why do you make forums? When did you get the idea to open your first forum?

 

[Ashley]

Read this, please:



http://marie1988.com/topic23.html



It's a long story that'll take forever to type out. That topic will tell you all you need to know.

 

[Black Angel]

I read that a few days ago actually, it seems as though you have bad luck with hosts. Have you ever thought about having back up boards on other software in case you have some downtime at your main board? This way if it happened that you and your members could still talk about it and possibly discuss your options?

 

[Setsuna]

You are NOT the only one, trust me. I have a forum addiction. it all started back in 2005 which I believe was the year Invision Free Opened up, and I was looking for some stuff for this anime Angel Sanctuary (which is where I get the name Setsuna.) I happened to stumble upon a forum that was Angel Sanctuary role playing, what are the chances? Well that was the first forum I ever joined. When It died I wanted to try my own. I made one, didn't really know how to advertise, and made a couple more after that in the same fashion until I created Paradise Lost, which is what I'm known for. To this day I still join forums and get Didn't you own Paradise Lost!?. That forum was amazing, and huuuuge. But after it died, I wanted more. I stopped for about 4 months, started, stopped, started, created, closed, advertised, had graphics made, had custom skins made, tried advertising, whored out my forums, but couldn't re create the activity I had with Paradise Lost.



I'm STILL creating. A couple of times Ive thought the same thing, why not just staff somewhere? but I just can't stop making new forums.



This time around, I'm making a new forum about advertising, and I think I might have found the big flaw. Stop trying to have amazing activity...start trying to help others on a bigger scale. I'm going to try and RE-activate a hobby (foruming) that most people these days would say is starting to slow down, decline.



My next forum will be all about connections. Connecting with other forums, helping to advertise, helping others to have the resources at their fingertips to get more activity, open up to more people who might not know the bigger sites for advertising, who find it hard to find an audience.



So you're not alone.

 

[Ashley]

That's what I'm trying to do as well. Slow down on how many forums I create. Someone was telling me on another site that if you really want a forum so badly, you should just apply for Co-Administrator someplace, and I have actually been applying for jobs at a few forums. Another person also said that since I like experimenting so much, I should try to apply for administration jobs on sites that are run on different softwares, both free and paid, and I'm liking the sound of that as well. I think I've tried all the software on my own except for Vbulletin (way too expensive for my liking!) and PunBB. I think it would be good to just apply for administrator positions on sites of various software, and just experiencing the differences that way. Maybe asking the owner if I could try adding a forum section or two, to see what creating categories and things like that are like on that software. I like experimenting in real life as well... seeing what will become of things and that kind of thing.