Revive a dead forum?

Jeez that's a scary thought! Are traffic counts really low? There always seems to be new questions being asked.

We are generating about a quarter of the amount of new daily content as we typically have in the past. It's gotten so bad as to encourage Reverend Jim to start a thread on Google's forums saying "Thanks for killing DaniWeb".

It seems as if you first registered here when we were already on the downswing :(

Sagging my head as the killer of daniweb. Are there similar sites to this one, that offer the same type of help accross the IT board?

There's Stack Overflow, which is strictly developer-based, but they have sister properties (such as Super User, etc.) that cover other aspects of IT. There's no crossover between the communities though that I'm aware of.

There's DevShed.com which is the only site I know of that covers a similar spectrum of topics as DaniWeb does.

Then for programming-only forums there's DreamInCode.net and Bytes.com, and for hardware/software-only forums there's TechGuy.org.

I've perused Stack, DevShed, and TechGuy and they don't measure up to daniweb in my opinion. I like stack though and have frequented that site for many issues before I found daniweb.

Thanks so much. Appreciate your feedback :)

Incidentally, what do you like better about DaniWeb than Stack Overflow? They've been stealing just about all of our Google traffic lately.

For whatever reason, I find the community here to be much better in that they don't make people feel stupid for asking even the most basic questions. That goes a long way imo. Not that I've had personal issues like that with other forums but I have seen people get lambasted because their knowledge of code (in this case VBA) wasn't up to the standard of the member lambasting. Also, the overall look of your site is imo more inviting. That's just a couple reasons off the top of my head. I would definitely like to see traffic counts pick up here if they are as you say down compared to historical times.

I don't think it is just Daniweb. I spend time in several forums and they all seem to be getting quieter. Like Daniweb, they have a mix of discussion on the topics of programming, Web development, Traffic generation, and general talk. It seems like the traffic just disappeared. I don't know where it went; DevShed, Codeguru, GIDForums, GameDev, etc.--they are all pretty quiet too.

Unfortunately, I haven't done much to liven them up. Most of the questions of interest have already been asked already. For example, I am guilty of usually ignoring "Internet Marketing" forums. They all seem to be filled with noobs or spammers; the threads are (i) several years old and resurrected by spammers, but there is no point replying to them because I am sure the OP is long gone; (ii) made by noobs who are too lazy to search for the answer that might only be one page down in the thread; or (iii) made by spammers who ask a generic question loaded with keywords who only want to draw traffic to their post and, from there, to their site. Either way, I rarely go into the "Internet Marketing" section of most forums. Even when I visit SP, DP, V7N or some of the others, I rarely see posts in the whole forums that attract me to them.

Anyhow, that is my two cents. But I don't have a solution.

So I did some investigation, and our community activity took a DRAMATIC 30% hit the day that we switched over from vBulletin to our new proprietary platform, and never recovered since, despite traffic levels.

Is our current platform harder to post on than vBulletin?! Is there something wrong with our editor?! Are we not backwards compatible with most web browsers? Why such a drastic hit all at once?

So I did some investigation, and our community activity took a DRAMATIC 30% hit the day that we switched over from vBulletin to our new proprietary platform, and never recovered since, despite traffic levels.

That's awful. 30% is like 1/3 of your members that is alot. I actually like this is platform because it's very nice and organized. I feel there more good than bad.

Is our current platform harder to post on than vBulletin?!

No, I like this more.

Is there something wrong with our editor?!

It's not perfect but can improve.

Are we not backwards compatible with most web browsers?

Not really. I think it more bug related than actually compatible. You can't compare with other educational forums because you are doing by yourself while others have help.

Why such a drastic hit all at once?

It's about timing. Everyone (including me), every business has it rough patch. For how long it will last? It really depends how you approarch it. It really depends how motivate you are and how you learn from the past and make good choices in the future.

My prediction, you will earn 12% out of 30% members (traffic) you lost back by next March because you have moderaters and long time members feel that Daniweb has alot to offer and new member will notice that.

By then you have make some good choices.

30% is a big hit, and far more than I would have expected to be honest. I seem to recall some people didn't like various things about the new interface/platform, but that's par for the course every time you have ever made a major change to things and the bleed of a handful of folk has always more than been compensated by the new ones that come in.

Perhaps there is nore to it. Was there also a drop in Google traffic when we switched to the new platform, for example? Did it somehow make DaniWeb less 'visible' do you think? I am finding it hard to believe that we could lose 30% of community activity, and not claw that back, entirely due to an interface change and nothing else. :(

I prefer this interface over vBulletin, just my 2 pennies.

I just queried Google on 2 phrases
1)Loops and Java - Daniweb showed up on page 8
2)VB.NET Array - Daniweb showed up 7th on page 1

As for actual overall traffic out there, I know that my friend at www.thecodecage.com has been telling us moderators to prepare for the worst as site traffic has been really low an we've seen it.

Perhaps there aren't that many people looking for code and tech help lately.

So I did some investigation, and our community activity took a DRAMATIC 30% hit the day that we switched over from vBulletin to our new proprietary platform, and never recovered since, despite traffic levels.

Out of curiosity, are you accounting for the spammers that were overwhelming us prior to the move being immediately reduced to 0% when the new system went live? If 30% of our traffic was 90+% spammers, I'm okay with the reduction.