Creating a mobile app?
 

Traffic to my forum has dropped considerably over the last 4 years. When I started my forum several years ago, the majority of traffic coming to my forum was desktop users. Now, more than half are mobile. My site does have a mobile theme, but I don't think that is enough anymore. Could offering an app experience (eg. push notifications) help improve member retention? I know of tapatalk, but I am actually a member of another forum that uses tapatalk and it has hurt the functionality of their desktop forum (eg. it creates its own urls - someone will link to a thread and if it is a tapatalk url, it won't work for desktop users, and the bbcode for images uploaded by members who use the tapatalk version of the forum does not work on desktop - I have to copy and paste the url for the image into a browser to see the image). So is there a better way to create an app from my forum without hurting the desktop site/users? Suggestions?

You are talking about vB4, it has reached EOL, so no new things. The only way is to open your budget for the mobile app, but it would cost thousands or above.

Maybe it´s not any help to you, but i run vb4 with tapa and it works just fine. I think you need to look in to it, and fix your issues. TT is good enough and the pay version gives you some control over graphix and adds.

I wouldn't want a separate app and I especially wouldn't run tapatalk unless you like handing over your content.
Make your style usable on mobile, that's your best bet.
I know the frameworks I use these days work just fine on mobile out of the box.

That's the opinion of tapatalk that I've run into the most. Would subscribing to their premium service avoid that issue? Or is tapatalk premium still a bad idea?

The mobile version of my forum works fine, but I think it could be better. As my mobile visitors (67.1% mobile, 3.5% tablet) have dominated my traffic and desktop users (29.5%), I am getting less traffic overall and therefore making less income from my site.