Al

Glitchfeed Is Live. Let’s Mess With the Signal. We’ve launched Glitchfeed - your new home for gaming, culture, tech, and digital mischief. It’s a community built for the people who’ve had enough of algorithm-choked timelines and content designed to keep you scrolling instead of thinking. No more doom-scrolling, let's waste time properly. This isn't a Discord where content gets buried after twenty minutes, or a subreddit where you’re punished for thinking differently and downvoted for breathing wrong. Glitchfeed is structured, focused, and ready to grow into something that lasts: Like forums used to be, before everything got swallowed by feeds, followers, and short attention spans. No infinite scroll. No chasing upvotes or karma farming. Just random threads, actual conversations, and a community that doesn’t feel like it’s performing for an audience. What you’ll find: Gaming: talk about what you’re playing without it disappearing in twenty minutes. Culture: share the stuff you actually care about, not what’s trending. Tech: argue about the future like it’s still worth building. Community: post, reply, hang out. No metrics, no pressure, no pretending. Social media is a mess. Everything’s disposable, performative, and run by systems that don’t care what you actually say, just how often you say it. Glitchfeed isn’t built like that. It’s a forum. Threads, replies, conversations that don’t vanish. Gaming, tech, culture, the overlaps. A place to post something real without chasing engagement or being at the mercy of the algorithm. Join in. Start a discussion. Say something that lasts longer than a feed refresh. This is Glitchfeed.

Me too.

That's okay mate. There's no rush on this one. Take your time.

Hello sweethearts... You may have seen that there is a new forum in development. We are actively seeking focused, motivated individuals to hope on board for the ride. Right now there are opportunities for section moderators, one for gaming, one for culture (think fandoms, movies, TV, music) [filled] and one for tech. Additionally, a single supermod to oversee the entire boards. If you're interested in any of these and feel you could add value to a brand new community, please do message me so we can arrange a chat and I can give you more details of what's involved. As of now, this is a strictly volunteer position, but as we grow - I can't promise cold hard cash - but I can promise perks. What those perks are, remains to be seen. This is a great opportunity to jump into a new community project right from the start and influence its direction and vibe.

Slowly but surely getting there. Looking at opening the doors next week. Let's brainstorm! What should I do for the first week to encourage growth? One idea I had was to offer premium membership for free for life for the first X number of members. As I said above, trying to do this with "no money(?), nothing in the advertising budget" so handing out cold hard cash to encourage sign ups is off the cards. Also planning on doing this without paid posters. Post exchanges are okay, but I'm not going to pay for posts. Let's stay real.

[HEADING=1] Is it possible to launch a new forum in 2025 and for it to be successful? https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=LzD-MdEGYJw [/HEADING] I'm no stranger to forums. I've been involved in creating, managing, and contributing to them for something like twenty-two years. Twenty-two long, hard, years. I've seen forums when they were the place to be - pre-social media - and I've seen forums post-Reddit and post-Discord where their influence has waned considerably. Social media has a lot to answer for, right? We're all mainly here because we have a forum, right? Some fresh, some established. Each in a fight for survival against the behemoths of Reddit/Discord/Facebook/X and others. It's hard enough if you have an established community or vast sums of money to throw at paid posting. But is it possible to launch a forum now and make it a successful one? No community, no audience, no money(?), nothing in the advertising budget. Just a dream, hard work, and a little bit of creativity. Well, let's see. I thought it might be good to track the development of this project somewhere, and Administrata seemed like the perfect place to do it. I'll keep this thread updated on how we're doing, what we're doing, the successes and the failures. So let's start with what we have so far: https://glitchfeed.net - Gaming • Culture • Tech I wanted something which captured the things that I am interested in without just being a game forum or just being a general forum. I thought that focusing on three distinct sections would work out well. Three is always a good number (two is never enough and four is too many!). We have a gaming section (obvious), a culture section (think fandoms but also media, music etc.) and a tech section (technology news, the future, gadgets and hardware). Generic enough to give everyone something to talk about, but not too generic - if you know what I mean. I've always thought that general discussion forums are the easiest ones to get off the ground as pretty much anything goes. I wanted to channel that ease of posting but at the same time give the appearance of being niche. So far there is only me and I'm doing my best to make the forum look nice. Visually appealing websites keep people on them long enough to get a flavour for what's going on. I'm also starting to put some seed content down. We have sixteen main sections ignoring off-topic and official sections. I want to have at least five posts in each section - so I'm working towards 80 posts pre-launch. Let me get your feedback on the concept. And let me know if you have any questions or if you think this is a good idea or not (forum and the case study). I'll be back in a bit. [ATTACH type=full" width="703px]1543[/ATTACH]

There’s no way you’re 32. 42?

And in case it requires clarity. When I say “we” I mean the developers.

2021 was deliberate. We should have been prepared for this many years ago rather than playing catch up.

(so ignore it at your peril) The default xenForo offering for mobile leaves a lot to be desired. Since more and more people are browsing the web - and therefore your site - via their mobile devices, what brilliant hints and tips do you have to make the experience more pleasant? Because many of us are old(er) I think we have this idea that people are looking at our communities on desktop, because that's often how we view them. But many people don't even have a PC anymore and mobile is the way they access content. Let's put our heads together and get our communities ready for 2021.

Yea I have and never had a problem. People say that they’re key stealers and resellers but I’ve never had anything bounce back.

Or look elsewhere? I know people are cautious about CDKeys, but this looks okay.

Yes, so look at the closing date for the sale and run your contest until the day before it closes. That gives you time to organise once the contest finishes and before the sale ends.

This sounds like a perfect opportunity for a giveaway to get people to join. Make it a contest.

Over on that other forum I think I'm considered a bit of a troll. Especially from one admin who shall not be named. I went through a bit of a fun phase of posting like Putin's Tangerine Fleshlight and most people got a real laugh out of it. But there's always one boring asshat who won't allow anyone to have any fun. MUST BE ALL SERIOUSNESS ALL THE TIME. Which is a shame, because if the community is getting some entertainment out of the troll, don't come along with your big admin stick and take that fun away. When you do that, you look like the problem, not the troll.

[mention=5]Cpvr[/mention] is a worthy victor. Well done. I think Administrata should concede defeat at this point. Just remember, second place is really just first loser.

Administrata isn't cloud hosted.

Lots of subjects about 'how many staff is too many' but let's ask a different question: How many sites is too many? At my peak I was running four forums and about a dozen (!) blogs. It was too much. I couldn't keep up. So I merged some stuff and felt better... and then started a new forum because I enjoy the honeymoon period! So what’s your tipping point? At what point do you start burning out, losing quality, or just leaving projects to rot? I want to hear how many sites you’re actively managing and what your upper limit looks like before things start falling apart.

Some admins have spreadsheets and content calendars. Others just log in and everything is a complete blag. I’ve done both, and each has pros and cons. Planning gives structure but can feel rigid. Winging it is flexible but often ends in burnout. What works for you when it comes to keeping the content flowing? For a few months I had a weekly planner with required posts per site per day, but that was when I was running four forums and double the number of blogs. I've slimmed down a lot since then but I'm still running a lot of sites. Right now I'm in a blagging phase and I find that I don't post nearly as much as I did. Is it just personal preference or is there a winning formula for content creation?

I’ve been looking at XenForo Cloud and wondering if it’s actually worth the monthly cost or if it’s just convenience dressed up with a price tag. On the surface, it looks like a good deal: no server setup, no maintenance, automatic updates, backups, and security all handled for you. That’s a big selling point for anyone who doesn’t want to spend their time in cPanel or fiddling with file permissions. But here’s where I start questioning it. You lose control. No access to your server. No FTP. No way to install third-party add-ons outside of what xenForo officially supports in their cloud ecosystem. So if your setup relies on a specific plugin or something custom-built, forget it. Same goes for tweaking server-level performance, custom caching layers, or anything fancy. And then there’s the pricing. Last I checked, it starts at around $60/month. That adds up fast. Especially when you compare it to a one-time $195 license for self-hosted XenForo, where you can grab decent VPS hosting for under €10/month. Long-term, you’re paying a premium just to avoid admin work. So here's what I'm trying to work out: Has anyone here used XenForo Cloud long-term? Did it actually make your life easier—or did you hit a wall with limitations? How’s the performance? Is it fast, stable, reliable? Are the backups and support actually worth the extra monthly spend? And if you moved from self-hosted to Cloud (or vice versa), would you recommend it? If you’ve got experience with it, good or bad, drop your thoughts. I’m trying to figure out if it’s a smart move for new forums, or just a more expensive way to run something I could host myself.

If you strip away ads (pointless), sponsorships (pipe-dream), and affiliate links (spam), you’re left with the direct ask: “pay to support the site.” That only works if you’re offering something people care about. So what’s your value? Is it a tight-knit community, custom content, access to devs, early posts, something else? Let’s be blunt: what are you offering that actually justifies payment? Monetising a forum is a tough call. Direct support is probably the most effective way. But how do you justify taking the hard earned cash from your users?

Let’s start with the obvious question. Forums aren’t exactly high-traffic cash cows in 2025. Ad revenue is low unless you’ve got serious numbers, and most users treat paywalls like a personal insult. So is it still worth the effort to monetise? Or is it better to just treat the forum as a hobby and skip the stress? If you are trying to earn something, what are you doing and is it working? The dream would be to make a living from a forum - but is it just that, a dream? And do we need to wake up and face reality?

It’s easy enough to set up a forum and post into the void. Getting people to actually sign up and participate is a different story. And in 2025, with social media dominating everything and logins being more friction than ever, it’s not simple. What are you doing to get people through the door? Are you relying on personal invites, Discord channels, search traffic, social posts, paid ads, or just hoping decent content is enough? Let’s be honest about what’s worked and what’s been a complete waste of time. Post your tips for getting new members so we can help each other create awesome communities!

Everyone says build a team. Get mods. Appoint admins. But when you’re starting small, is it just unnecessary bloat? A lot of early-stage forums don’t need daily moderation or policy discussions, they need posts. So does adding staff early help create momentum, or just complicate things with extra voices before there’s anything to moderate? What’s your view? Do you start solo, or build a team from day one? I tend to fall into the camp which eschews hiring staff before needing them. After all, what's the point in having additional staff when there is nothing to moderate? Be honest, do you hire staff as a way of making up for a lack of members? "Join my team" when really what you mean is "please come and post on my forum."

A lot of us run both. A forum for permanence, a Discord for quick chat. In theory, that’s a solid combo. But the reality? I’ve watched plenty of forums turn into ghost towns while the Discord buzzes with the exact conversations that should have been threads. Other times, Discord has brought people in and kept the community active. It’s messy. So I’m wondering: has Discord been a benefit or a parasite for your forum? Are you finding a balance, or does one always end up cannibalising the other? I have typically considered Discord to be the killer of a forum, but how do you turn Discord into an advantage for your community?