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Foundation Shutting Down a forum
- Thread starter Cpvr
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InMyOpinion
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I've shut down a forum because I was unable to continue to be active on the forum and I wasn't able to find anyone to take over so unfortunately, I had to shut it down. Other than that, I have stepped away from being admin of a forum (the aiChatGPT) simply because the issues weren't getting resolved and I didn't want to work on a forum if we couldn't figure out the issue and fix it. The other admin said he did everything he could and he ran a lot of other successful forums so he wasn't sure why we were having the issue but it never got resolved so I stepped down and left. Not sure if the owner of the forum has demoted me yet but oh well, not my problem lol.
I've shut down multiple Yu-Gi-Oh message boards due to finding greater interest in something else or it became hard to find an audience for such a niche. I've also closed down a few old coding message boards because I returned to my original resource board instead of creating new ones. I also closed down a general discussion forum when we split my current resource board into two separate forums. Later, general discussions were moved back to the resource board because the separate general discussion board did not gain enough traction.
Ravenfreak
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Yeah I've shut down too many forums in the past. I didn't have the drive to try and get more members, or keep activity going on the forums. I gave up on them way too fast.
Shawn Gossman
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I shut down 3 of them recently and one I just launched the other day.
I had a forum for outdoor writing, kayaking, and camping. I shut all three down. I used the free software on them (phpBB, MyBB, and SMF) mainly to experience using it all again. But the forums never really went anywhere so I ended them with no plans to revive.
I started another XF-powered forum the other day and recently, I've decided to end a lot of online projects to focus more on the ones that are paying me.
I had 63 websites going and now it's down to 14. 6 of them are forums and I'm considering closing two of them down if they don't start to pick up soon. Forums are a hobby. I'm not looking to make money but I'm also not looking to have dead communities taking up server space.
I have three monetized blogs, and one is even more monetized elsewhere - it alone earned me $20,000+ in 2024. I pay into taxes now. This year I'm getting a but more serious about writing stuff off and doubling down on the business side of things.
It feels a lot better to downsize to be honest. I had too many projects going. I was paying for a lot of services and premium software and not getting any ROI because I hadn't launched anything, yet. I've saved a lot of money in the past week.
I just purchased a 2025 Dodge Ram 1500 pickup truck, too. It's not cheap but a portion of it will be written off since I used it for my business. With that, I'm ending most of my spending outside of the norm to re-evaluate things. I'll likely start back up some subscriptions here and there but at the moment, I have to get a hold of my finances.
Adulting is so much fun, isn't it?
I’ve also shut down one in the past. It was an off topic/general chat forum. I ran it for about a year before merging it with another one of my communities.
It was far too time consuming to run two communities.
I once shut down my forum. I had no intention to shut it down but someone offered me to buy the domain (only the domain and not the website) for a good price. After I sold the domain, I shut down the forum for almost a year and then brought back a few months ago.
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