Why are so many forums dead this time of year?
 

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?

Summer time maybe...lots of vacations

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

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

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

/me hides

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

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.

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.

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,.