TheForum.ws Needs A Review
 

So I've been running this site for about a year now, it really hasn't gotten anywhere. My license vBulletin expires next month.. have you got any ideas on what to do to get more members / hits?

http://www.theforum.ws/index.php

Well i would go for a .com or a .net domain..

And in what way is you forum different from others in the same niche?

only 115 members in a year? need more advertising and content on that site big time
.com and .net are both taken for that domain name so out of luck with that...

That's actually a good domain for a general forum, but general forums are by their very nature unfocused and difficult to make a success. It's a catchy domain, and that is about the only thing you have going for you.

But don't give up. Forums are difficult to make into a success but ultimately rewardings once you do get somewhere.

I didn't like the skin real well, it was kind of confusing to tell what was going on. I like the domain name though. I'm still not really sure what the forum chat was about.

I am having the same problem on my forum though, so its not easy to get going.

Yeah - a custom skin design would definitely help - The default "ice blue" is very drab. Even a nice custom logo you could put on all your skins would help pique interest in your forum... Use the "don't judge a book by it's cover" mentality, as your users sure will. That is to say - they're judging your forum by the look of it. You want to entice prospective Members because your forum is gorgeous and unique ;)

Some additional things may be of interest (partially quoted from a post on TAZ...):

Usually there is only one reason a site fails. That is - because there hasn't been a steady PROMOTION of the site. A few things that would help with promoting your forum and letting people know that it's still online:

Inactive Users Email Reminders For 3.7.x
Wonderful modification that sends out timed emails to inactive users, reminding them that the forum is still online.

Try Welcome Headers modification. No matter the forum niche - You can list all of your forum features in your welcome header and have your prospective Members salivating to register LOL - Once you have your new member registered - it's usually a good thing to send them a welcome PM - which can be sent automatically via the AdminCP settings. It's usually a good thing to make 'em feel at home by dropping 'em a personal welcome message in the profile ;)

There's a lot of ideas to make a forum successful and popular - Promote Promote Promote is the ideology I've used. How about an Invitation System - you can encourage your Members to invite their friends to the forum and such... Hasann on vB.org has an invitation system that seems to do rather well - He's an excellent coder - may wanna check it out.

Anyway - using the Promote Promote Promote ideology, it's all up to the Administrator really. Once you've established a bit of activity - you still promote the forum.

Jacquii.