Decided to delete my forum
 

My forum is now has been 1 year and a half old. At first I was passionated about the idea of making a place where all people can join and have fun together. I tried to minimize the forum flame, n00b bashing, ... but that only lead to worst when the old members think that they own the place, including some mods. They just don't have any respect for anyone but themself, even me. When I asked them, they just keep saying "This is not your forum only, It's belong to all members of the forum", WTH?? Of course, I really appriciated the contribution of some members and mods but that just make things worst. Some of the members and mods thinks that I'm afraid of them as I never want to make an argument with them.

Feel tired, want to retire from the forum a few week ago but things keep happening in the forum really pissed me off. After all the afford I've made for them I think at least I deserve something better than this. I already have enough many things to worried about, not anymore.

Sorry if this post didn't make any sense to you guys. I'm kinda drunk now, lolz.

Regard

well, if you don't have any passion for it any more, you can spend more time with family and loved one.
forum isn't all that.

I'm sorry to hear that, a couple of years ago i had a really great site, making money and paying out ?200+ a month just to keep the site going, Then almost overnight the members thought they owned the place, I used to dread coming home from work to see all the crap they posted, and like you after a few beers i thought sod it.

I deleted the whole lot and nameservers for the domain, I felt a bit sad, but next day after the hangover went, it felt like a massive weight was lifted from me, what a relief, it does get better believe me, Plus you don't make the same mistakes 2nd time round.

Take care

:D

Why the hell are you afraid? What for?

For those who doesn't know how to behave properly on public forums, vbulletin provides you with an infract/ban feature. :p

Warn them first, then infract them, in worst case just ban them. If they are too much proud of the contribution they have made to your forum, delete it!

Don't you see threads being closed, people getting banned here? Bad behaviour, indescent language should never be tolerated in any case.

Reading this makes me feel you're really frustrated. Come on man you own that place (did you forgot that), just click.

Your 100% right ;)

Simply put, the truth comes out when your drunk ;) as you let your "don't hurt their feelings" guard down... you seem bummed, either hand it over to another admin and take a break (and I don't mean check back everyday or every other day else you will get pissed!) and come back to it later or simply close it via admincp options and have the message say we will reopen when... or like you said shut it down but you should have been banning the negative members after warning them loooong ago.

All this is IMO so take it or leave it but no one and I repeat no one get's a refund on my 2 cents :p lol...

S-MAN

You are a quitter and we are masochists ! Yay!

If you don't enjoy it and it gives you money, it's a job.
If you enjoy it and it costs you money, it's a hobby.
If you enjoy it and it gives you money, you have a fantastic job.

The next one? If it costs money and causes grief, then either change it to stop causing grief or stop doing it.

If you want to make it enjoyable for you, then you've got a shedload of work ahead of you. It would involve sacking a few moderators who claim you don't own the place and banning the more mouthy members. Give them a warning first, but remember that a warning is only effective if you're willing to carry it out.

However, when things got fairly bad for me when I bought my main forum (mutiny amongst the inherited moderator and admin team when I questioned what they were doing), a guy at work stopped me in one aisle and asked what was up.

I told him that every time I thought about the forum, my guts started churning, and it felt like an ulcer was trying to burn a hole in my insides. Made me feel as if I wasn't allowed friends.

"Is that all?"

"Eh?"

He'd been in the air force as ground crew for two decades. He'd seen three of his mates blown to pieces in front of him on active service.

That brought it home to me. Was I really trying to placate people who were just words on a screen and not paying the bills?

Sacked the mutinous lot before they could publically leave, and from what I understand they were about to jump ship very soon with as many members as possible. I learned a valuable lesson - they act with my permission, not the other way around. Most of the time I'm not overly worried by what my team does, since they're generally good people and think right, but I always remember that I have to carry the can for what they do, and though I'll back them to the hilt when they're right I reserve the right to question what they do in private.

Rapscallion

I've noticed your quite outspoken on here... keep it up, I wouldn't want you any other way ;) & a lil' :rolleyes: :p

sell it to me. $25. I'll put them all under the whip... lol

I suggest not making decisions like this, when you drink ;)

Good call. It's always best to give up when the passion runs out. The last thing you want is leaving a forum stagnating in the hope you regain that passion and motivation leaving members frustrated and annoyed at you because they never see any contributions.

Regardless of that. Well done. :up:

lolk..99cents

I just try to have fun, so if they put me in the 'miserable user hack' I won't notice it and will still be happy :rolleyes:

but it seems like he/she is having remorse and want to justify... there were a bunch of solutions instead of that one :mad:

Trouble is iogames, its very difficult to get the respect back once lost.

Two choices really i can see
1 quit
2 take the control back, get rid of the mods that aren't behind you and get some decent ones. It ll be tough to start with though.

me i would try option 2

If you're really not enjoying it, and the passion really is gone, I suggest you do what most have said and just can it. If you feel there could possible be a little spark left in you some where, do as someone said up top, close it via ACP for about 2 or so weeks, let everything die down, and the idiots to wander away, then open it back up and start anew. The real good members will find their way back, the shitty ones will go with the wind.

If it persists, then just ghost all the people causing trouble, it's very simple, and keep a tight leash on your admins. On my last forum, the idiots threw a coup d'etates and banned me for no ++++ing reason, the place is dead now, so win win for me.

if you feel that its not worth all the effort anymore why carry on?? delete and start up as something completely different, which gets me thinking, if you buy Vbul for your forum and then you delete your forum, could you use the vbul licence to start up a completely new forum???

Forgive the dumb question but i'm getting old :o :erm:

Yep. Just make sure you change your domain for the license in the members area at vb.com.

Thanks Lynne ;)

Been there, done that several times, but I never deleted the forum, just turned it off. When I felt better, turned it back on. Sometimes you need to take a break. Like someone else said, I'd sooner turn it over then kill it, too much work put in by me and others to throw it away. Good luck, friend!

Well lets form a VB AA group :D

vborg admins anonymous? :D

In!

to much self pity in my view - if the forum was not going how u liked it,then why not offer the database to one of your other admins or mods so they could at least give it a go.
Remember just cause you admin dont make u god.And its the members that make the board so how will they feel once they log in and find out it no longer exists ?

Growing a forum is hard work, and I think you have to be either lucky or have taken financial investment in order to turn a forum into one which makes you money.
The hardest part is making sure the servers are powerful enough to cope with the traffic. So you have to invest in the hardware *before* you can reap the rewards from advertising or whatever.

If your forum is about a subject that has a market for advertising and you have reasonable traffic then maybe you should clean house and persevere with it.
For example, if your forum is about stamp collecting, DVDs or different types of rocks then it's unlikely that you will make significant revenue. On the other hand if your forum is about cars, electronics or holidays then you may have a whole bunch of companies who want to advertise their products/services on your forum.

One difficult part of running a forum is managing its growth. There is a period in the life of a growing forum when there is a small band of regular users who form a clique. The community spirit that is at the heart of the forum works negatively against those new to the community. Picking on noobs, for example.
This has to be dealt with. New people must be made to feel welcome or your forum will not grow.
I created rules which insist on respectful behaviour towards other forum members. Name calling results in infractions. If you keep your forums civil then they will appeal to the widest audience.

If your forums are going to grow, you need a strong team of moderators who apply the forum rules fairly and justly. You decide the rules. You can and probably should do this with input from your community, but it is your forum so ultimately the decision is yours. If people don't like it they can choose not to participate. You have to take that line.
If the moderators do not agree with your rules, then they can not be moderators any more.
If they do not apply the rules fairly they can not be moderators any more.
If they break the rules they can not be moderators any more.
Moderators are representatives of your forum and must maintain the highest level of integrity and must lead your community by example.
One tip with regard to moderators is not to appoint them on the basis of whether they apply or not, but instead you should choose them based on their behaviour in the forum.
We always ask trusted moderators to nominate other members for moderating positions.

I love running my forum and it generates enough money to keep 6 people in full time work. So I'm very fortunate. If your forum has the potential to earn you a living and it's something you think you can enjoy then take a firm grip of the reigns and steer it into success.

That's my pearl of wisdom for today ;)

Nah, I changed my mind and leave the database to another admin.

One last thing that I could do for them provide them with enough good advises and epxerience from me that I've learnt along the way. And the VBB licensed with a decent price if they want.

Today I meet two member of the moderators team to finish the matter. But they told me they will move to another free hosting service, not the current server anymore. Then use some kind of PBP license for the forum.

I'm speakless as my advises are ignored.

Shame. They will learn how hard it is to run a forum.

The forum is re-opened, but this is the last day on my server. I believe the cost for running the current server isn't too expensive. And It has been working nicely for almost 2 years. They will move to another free host today as they've backed up the database.

They won't be using VBB anymore. They will convert the database to another form. As It's kinda cheaper or even free.

Also a thread to praise the "old admin that contribute for us a lot" has been made. I'm not happy about that, sound so sarcatic. What's wrong with these people.

Sometimes you need to learn for yourself just what needs to be done when running a server/site. They will have problems on their new free server and then they will start to understand just what you have already learned from the experience and perhaps realize that they should have listened to you. But, it won't be your problem, it will be theirs.

heeroyun if you learned from this experience and want to have a go at making money from a forum, pick a topic which has a market for advertising and give it a go.

My community was formed because our old community turned out the way you are saying. However, the elitism and "owning" attitude was pretty much coming from the ones in charge and the moderators. It was a community that didn't promote the registration of new members, as the ones in power would drive the "noobs" away.

So I created my new community to be as open as possible to new members. I know that for every 1 serious member you lose, you need 20 new members to replace him; assuming there is a 5% retention rate of new members. So for a community exists, it has to ALWAYS generate new memberships. So I threw a coup over the community and created a new community. This was almost a year ago. The old community forum is still up, but no one visits it anymore.

For our new community I decided that TRANSPARENCY was key... so I created a set of guidelines for moderators and made the PUBLIC to all members:
http://www.8wayrun.com/f63/a-series-...derators-t268/

Mmmh... this issue is getting... 'Stranger' so can we blame the alcohol or the 'POSTS' Post-stress'? :D

The server was messed up to get an "internal server error 500" so no one could access to the forum. When It changed the owner, the site is back to normal.

Don't stress up... when you feel down, sad, tired you know you can call me pal! ;)

Looks like it got a whole lot stranger *thinks twilight zone strange*.

The only strange thing is why iogames would want to create a dummy account and post from it.

This thread is going widly off topic, and heading for the inevitable fate that brings.

why me? :confused: maybe a kind soul who wants to undo all the emotional damage caused :D

back to the topic: once forumer, can't quit! (rule #1)

I agree with veenuisthebest, you just ban members that won't respect you and the other members.

Then again it depends on what kind of forum it was. My first forum ever (not a vB) was formed by me (admin because I paid for hosting and domain haha) and my online friends. My British members were all of a sudden very hateful towards my American members and I told them to calm down....and they started acting horrible towards me so I banned the troublemakers.

The forum activity died after that so I had no choice but to give it up.

But if your forum isn't specifically for one group of people and you're having new registrations by the day, you shouldn't delete it. If you can't handle the 'pain', sell it. ;)

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Btw, the current site is still using vbulletin but no longer have the link on the license system. Would someone be so kind to tell me what could happend to them cause they seem don't intend to purchase a license.

Burnt at the stake.