Why are so many forums dead this time of year?

[cheat-master30]

I checked out a ton of sites I visit/visited before, and most seem totally devoid of any activity whatsoever. Forums with 1000s of members totally dead like a ghost town. A 251 member site with 1 member online. A 42 000 member site like below 40 members online. Heck, this site seems to have days recently where there have been hours between posts in some forums.

What is going on? Or more precisely, where is everyone recently?

[Michael Biddle]

Summer time maybe...lots of vacations

[Odoin]

In general the entire internet slows down in the summer time. To many people have things going on and with the nice weather they spend more time outside. When you sell products online the fall turns into a nice christmas season, and that leads a little down time right after, but soon its tax seasons. Few months after tax season summer is back and you wait all summer for fall :).

Mark

[Brad]

The younger group is also returning the school this time of year. My brother started fall classes this week and I think the local public schools started classes last Wednesday.

It's just a busy time of year for every one. :p

[SnowBot]

schools are out, holidays and women.......i mean everything that goes on in this world is run by a woman.....lol

/me hides

[PJAmerica]

School, Vacation etc. Fall is almost near which is how it goes. My site is actually very active and I am shocked by it.

[Kirk Y]

Summer is when I get most of my activity actually, lol. All the kids are out of school and usually have more free time to occupy.

[lasto]

tbh its nothing to do with holidays - its to do with content on your site.
If theres something there that keeps the members coming back then you are sorted.
Hot weather or not i have certain sites i log into everyday on a regular basis,so they deffo got soemthing right.

[KTBleeding]

I don't think there's much of a demand for "forums" anymore. They seem to be dying out pretty quickly. Communities seem to be driven by far more than just vBulletin now a days. (No, I'm not talking about stupid Myspace)

With the above post, your sites content has a lot to do with continuous traffic to your website.. That goes without saying. However -- I personally think that on top of that, people are getting tired of seeing the same ol' same ol' on every website.

No doubt most everyone here will disagree with me.. but I know one things for sure.. I have no plans of purchasing vB for any of my future website projects. It's weird coming to this point, because I was a huge vB fanboy.. I just see it as becoming outdated. Time to move on.. I guess.

[Zachery]

I don't think there's much of a demand for "forums" anymore. They seem to be dying out pretty quickly. Communities seem to be driven by far more than just vBulletin now a days. (No, I'm not talking about stupid Myspace)

With the above post, your sites content has a lot to do with continuous traffic to your website.. That goes without saying. However -- I personally think that on top of that, people are getting tired of seeing the same ol' same ol' on every website.

No doubt most everyone here will disagree with me.. but I know one things for sure.. I have no plans of purchasing vB for any of my future website projects. It's weird coming to this point, because I was a huge vB fanboy.. I just see it as becoming outdated. Time to move on.. I guess.
I don't think thats quite true, what I do think however is there is ALOT of competition for everything that everyone does. Sites die quickly because they lack real content. ANy site that has content will have members,.

[KTBleeding]

I agree 100% that if you lack good content, you're going to get no where and that traffic will be very miniscule if not non-existent. Content is the number one key to success on the web.

The number two key to success I feel is design. Most people won't customize their website past throwing vBadvanced on there and buying a pre-made skin. They just won't do it. This creates the "Hey check out my site", you click the link, and it looks exactly like xxxxxxxx.com with a different name in the logo.

I don't know. With the Web 2.0 popularity booming right now, and myself being a front end css developer, I don't see vB being in my life anymore. Until they make it so I don't spend 500 hours changing the table layout to non-table layout, and get rid of the hundreds of useless features, I won't see a use for it.

Don't get me wrong. I think Jelsoft did great with vB. I DO think it's still the best forum software that your money can buy and if I ever do need a forum as feature rich as vB, then I'll definitely buy a third license.. but with the sites I'm currently working on, I don't even need forums. I'm putting all of my focus into the content rather than putting all of my focus into a community where the majority of posts are complete garbage and waste of bandwidth.

This is of course my personal view on this. I think forums are less popular because the web is changing and people are getting tired of them when the site itself could be so much more than a portal with the latest posts displayed.

[amnesia623]

I don't think the forum based website is dead. I think there's a lot now that must go into sites that people aren't aware of. Long past are the days of just throwing up a forum, getting some links, and people will post. I too am experiencing a sort of downtime as it might seem. I notice less people are visiting, less posts per day, and lack of registration.

Of course I think it's the content of my site, time of year, and the fact that there's always ups and downs. Right now I'm using this 'downtime' to reinvent my site. Complete restyling, targeted landing pages, additional content, and crap like screensavers, e-books, podcasting, etc... will always make people comeback for more.

I think the forums that survive thru downtimes won't be the vbulletins, SMF, IPB's, etc... but the owners who can create content, learn SEO, and successfully evolve with the changing internet.

Web 2.0, CSS, AJAX, etc... are great, but content is king. It's the combination of content and user interaction that will separate the good, bad, and ugly.

[cheat-master30]

I agree 100% that if you lack good content, you're going to get no where and that traffic will be very miniscule if not non-existent. Content is the number one key to success on the web.

The number two key to success I feel is design. Most people won't customize their website past throwing vBadvanced on there and buying a pre-made skin. They just won't do it. This creates the "Hey check out my site", you click the link, and it looks exactly like xxxxxxxx.com with a different name in the logo.

I don't know. With the Web 2.0 popularity booming right now, and myself being a front end css developer, I don't see vB being in my life anymore. Until they make it so I don't spend 500 hours changing the table layout to non-table layout, and get rid of the hundreds of useless features, I won't see a use for it.

Don't get me wrong. I think Jelsoft did great with vB. I DO think it's still the best forum software that your money can buy and if I ever do need a forum as feature rich as vB, then I'll definitely buy a third license.. but with the sites I'm currently working on, I don't even need forums. I'm putting all of my focus into the content rather than putting all of my focus into a community where the majority of posts are complete garbage and waste of bandwidth.

This is of course my personal view on this. I think forums are less popular because the web is changing and people are getting tired of them when the site itself could be so much more than a portal with the latest posts displayed.

I don't like pre made skins personally, nor basic attempts with VBAdvanced as the only different thing from the default. Heck, I don't like those with default smilies or vB code either, seems quite lazy to me.

Tables are fine for tabular data. Some data in vBulletin is arguably tabular. Anyway, although it needs LESS tables, it needs to concentrate on removing font tags mainly, since it sticks them in by default with normal generated HTML in posts, which uses valuable bandwidth and is not semantic. In fact, most forum software needs to cut the obsolete tags in posts before going non table for layout.

Don't think features are useless. Just need a line between overkill and Usenet basicality. Which is what annoys me about many sites which hit either extreme.

As for portals, I don't like them. I run a website with my forum, so a portal to me seems utterly useless, seeing as it's better to have a content page as your home page rather than stats.

I will also make no mistake that my own site personally needs another layout re design. Because the amount of links being required is ridiculous.

I don't think the forum based website is dead. I think there's a lot now that must go into sites that people aren't aware of. Long past are the days of just throwing up a forum, getting some links, and people will post. I too am experiencing a sort of downtime as it might seem. I notice less people are visiting, less posts per day, and lack of registration.

Of course I think it's the content of my site, time of year, and the fact that there's always ups and downs. Right now I'm using this 'downtime' to reinvent my site. Complete restyling, targeted landing pages, additional content, and crap like screensavers, e-books, podcasting, etc... will always make people comeback for more.

I think the forums that survive thru downtimes won't be the vbulletins, SMF, IPB's, etc... but the owners who can create content, learn SEO, and successfully evolve with the changing internet.

Web 2.0, CSS, AJAX, etc... are great, but content is king. It's the combination of content and user interaction that will separate the good, bad, and ugly.

Your posts is pretty true. There are in my opinion too many forums, too many free ones thrown up in five minutes attempting to get members and too many trying over saturated niches. I mean, how many web design forums do you see? Too many, with like THREE HUNDRED and THIRTY FIVE MILLION results in Google. That's crazy. But yes, content is king. Web masters should write content for their sites and forums, and regularly. Don't expect people to do it for you.

As for the dead period, my guess is that it some niches are far worse effected by Summer. Gaming and Technology (web site design, forum management, etc) forums I have noticed seem to plummet when summer hits, while those related to outdoor activities I can see doing well around this time. Whoever says many forums are seasonal I think is right.

As for another curiosity, ever noticed how vBulletin forums often get popular faster than phpBB or free forum ones? Just something I noticed on certain forums accessed from signatures.

[amnesia623]

I agree that some niches are just overdone while some niches have a life of only a couple years.

I too am getting very bored with the layout I have (vbadvanced, etc...). I didn't have as good as understanding as I do now on what it takes to keep a forum going, attracting new people, and not looking like every-other-freaking-forum out there.