Switched my XF site to WP and here's the results

[Drastic]

Went from paying for ads, buying posts (to make it look busy), and trying to get people posting. It failed and I lost money.

Switched over to WordPress and it took off.

Much better search ranks. More people post comments. And had a few writers join (but not post too much).

Even on days we hit 60k in daily traffic, the forum went unnoticed. No one cared about it.

I finally took the forum out of the navigation. Probably 20k posts and 4k members down the drain. Doesn't matter. It was losing money. When you keep losing money on a failed project, then you scrap it or change it and try something new.

The change to WP is working out for us.

 

[Dr.Who]

First congrats on your success man!!! Whatever you're doing keep doing it.

However, it seems a bit of an odd comparison to me... is XenForo and Wordpress in competition?

 

[Shawn Gossman]

I think blogs are sometimes the answer over forums. There have been many forums that I essentially converted into blogs. AAF, was merged here on TAZ but I had kept admining topics going on Your Forum Blog and that worked out better. Some cases, a forum is better though.

 

[Dr.Who]

Wouldn't it just be dependant on if you were making a forum or a blog? I think a blogging software would work best for a blog. I've never thought... I really want to make a blog, I better get XenForo. I'm not trying to be rude, is there a reason to use a forum software as a blog or vice versa?

I do see value in wanting blogging abilities on a forum, or forum abilities on a blog. However, if the site I was making was exclusively one or the other, I'd just choose the appropriate software.

 

[vij]

On the analytics, What is that spike and fall?

 

[Danielx64]

Question, would it make any different if the site was on wordpress or some other system (like blogspot)?

 

[Oldsmoboi]

Question, would it make any different if the site was on wordpress or some other system (like blogspot)?

I have no quantitative data to back this up, but Google seems to LOVE wordpress software from a spidering and indexing standpoint.

 

[BrandonSheley]

On the analytics, What is that spike and fall?

I'd say reindexing

To me this isn't really anything to amazing.
Let's see what the traffic looks like in 6 months.
The new blog may turn out to be as active as the failed forum.

On a side note, I'd attempt to get your content from the forum to the blog. I'm sure there are good articles on it, those shouldn't go to waste.

 

[Drastic]

The spike came from a certain article getting shared 250k times and it's slowed down to about 10-12k per day. Prior to that, our Google ranks and shares showed a nice slow increase. Much more than we've had for the previous year or so on XF.

WordPress has better structure in terms of presenting the data/content to Google in terms of SEO.

I spent a year trying Xenforo as a way to present content, using it LIKE a blog, stripped out a lot of forume elements to give it a blog look, and even tried the article manager. I wasn't getting the results I wanted. It was basically me posting, paying posters, or buying sites to import (waste of money). I found it difficult to rank, I couldn't get people posting because it was too much work to register and confirm JUST to post a single comment on a random article.

My problem is that I like XF a lot more than WP, and I tried forcing it to work for this type of site. It just didn't. Not for me at least.

I expect the traffic to settle down a bit more, but it's stayed fairly consistent since the spike days of 60k.

Dr.Who - there's no competition between WordPress and Xenforo. They serve different purposes. I just wanted to use XF because I think it's a great system with a ton of useful options, but I didn't succeed at it. For the type of site I present, which is current events, a comment system makes more sense. These comments are usually one and done and not long discussions or technical discussions which would be better on a forum.

Danielx64 I think for this project specifically, it's best as a blog. I wouldn't waste time on blogspot though. If you're going to blog, then a self hosted solution is best. One thing I noticed is that when I used the article manager and added Disqus comment system, it did OK in regards to comments. Not a ton, but way more than people who replied via forum posts (literally 0).

Tracy Perry I took a nice forum script and bent it in ways that most people weren't doing. I eliminated as much of the "forum" feel as I could, but it didn't work. The article system was good, but still wasn't ranking well and the amount of work needed for someone to post a one time comment wasn't working either. If it did, that would've been awesome because the amount of cool things you can do with an out of the box Xenforo is pretty awesome, paired with the cool addons we had - lots of fun to be had, but no customers signing up after the millions of views we had. No harm in trying things a different way than usual. What I learned about users and content presentation from doing this long test was definitely valuable. I would've been annoyed if I didn't give it a try. It looked like a blog and acted like a blog, but it still didn't rank or generate comments like one.

Taking a software and manipulating it to work the way you want is a lot different than forcing that square into a circle hole. It's more like thinking outside the box, bending rules /designs/addons to work in your favor and trying something new to see if things work well, and sometimes it works, sometimes not. Won't know unless you take the risk. We had it look and act like a blog, but didn't matter because the registration process kept people from commenting.
You're good for the "put a square peg in a circle hole" comment at least once a month. Glad I got the privilege this time!

Oldsmoboi - I guess the site architecture is preferred. There's tons of blog platforms, but none seem to be cared about as much as the ol' wordpress. Makes you wonder if one of the newer platforms went on a huge marketing binge - how much of a dent could they put in?

BrandonSheley I had the forum linked in the site's navigation during that rush - nothing. Not a single signup. 500+ comments on articles, tons of shares, not a single forum signup. Literally no one cared. I took the link down and now have all that old content just sitting there being wasted. I don't know if I'll move it over. If I find someone who is good at converting, then maybe, but then I have thousands of poorly SEO'd posts and I wonder if that would have a negative reaction. Maybe vbresults can chime in on this.

Anyone know someone who can convert XF to WP?

 

[mysiteguy]

At what point in the chart did the article get posted and sharing began?

 

[doubt]

Wrong picture

They don't charge people for carrying a real Stanley knife to or from work when it's their tool...
...unless they threaten someone to cut his throat with it.
Maybe your cousin forgot to tell you the whole story.

 

[Digital Phoenix]

They don't charge people for carrying a real Stanley knife to or from work when it's their tool...
...unless they threaten someone to cut his throat with it.
Maybe your cousin forgot to tell you the whole story.

You're an idiot. This is jersey. Not america, not england. We have our own laws, and those laws state that all 'work' knives must be transported in a locked toolbox.

 

[doubt]

You're an idiot.

It's becoming a daily routine here on TAZ that children calling adults an idiot because their opinion differs.

Article 43 of the Firearms (Jersey) Law 2000 (‘the Law’) is entitled ‘Prohibition on the carrying of offensive weapons without lawful authority or reasonable excuse’ and reads as follows:

(1) Any person who without lawful authority or reasonable excuse (the proof of which shall lie on the person) has with him or her in any public place any offensive weapon, shall be guilty of an offence and liable to imprisonment for a term of 4 years and to a fine.

Edit:

http://www.britishblades.com/forums/showthread.php?70480-Jersey-Knife-Law

"Article 43 of the Firearms (Jersey) Law 2000 states that “any person who without lawful authority or reasonable excuse (the proof of which shall lie on him) has with him or her in any public place any offensive weapon, shall be guilty of an offence……… “offensive weapon” means any article made or adapted for use for causing injury to the person, or intended by the person having it with him or her for such use by him or her.”


The Article creates two categories of offensive weapons. Those made or adapted for causing injury and which are often referred to as weapons per se. Here no intent to use the weapon is required although the defences of lawful authority or reasonable excuse are available provided that the accused can prove one of these on the balance of probabilities. Those articles intended for causing injury include such items such as knives which are not offensive weapons per se as they have a legitimate use other than as a weapon – this includes the vast majority of knives. Here a specific intent to use for causing injury must be proved beyond reasonable doubt. However in the absence of an admission or other corroboration, convictions are difficult to obtain.

This difficulty is highlighted at a time when concerns about the carrying of knives and the violent use thereof throughout the United Kingdom are high. There are grounds to believe that the carrying of bladed or pointed articles by persons in public places is on the increase in Jersey, the safety of the public is an obvious and significant concern"

 

[Indianparents]

On a side note, I'd attempt to get your content from the forum to the blog. I'm sure there are good articles on it, those shouldn't go to waste.

+1 to this.

Anyone know someone who can convert XF to WP?

Check with LPH and see if xenword can help write the threads on the wordpress side.

 

[Digital Phoenix]

It's becoming a daily routine here on TAZ that children calling adults an idiot because their opinion differs.

They can still charge you for carrying it, whether you have a 'reasonable' excuse or not.
In his case he was charged for having it in his pocket and not in his toolbox.
They specifically stated that he should not have had it in his pocket.
'Reasonable excuse is also determined by the arresting officer.

 

[Drastic]

This thread is a perfect example of how forums lose to comment systems and social media.

We started off talking about XF/WP, but it turned into a knife conversation. If the knife conversation was able to be "threaded" - then I could skip over the knife chat a lot faster and see the conversation I came for.

You can see this is one of the issues that cause people under 30 (maybe even under 25) to simply get lost in the forums or get annoyed at the structure of the conversations.

I know I can scroll through easily, but I've been on forums for 20 years. I know how they work. Newbs show up and get lost...if they make it through the registration process that is.

Another perfect example is my post here! This could spark another threaded convo!

But it won't be able to.

Can we take the knife conversations to another thread?

Thanks.

 

[Shawn Gossman]

Can we take the knife conversations elsewhere?

Seconded...

 

[ozzy47]

Can we take the knife conversations to another thread?

Seconded...

Half of the knife discussion was split into another thread, but it's been nuked. Not sure why half of it stayed here.

 

[Steve]

Half of the knife discussion was split into another thread, but it's been nuked. Not sure why half of it stayed here.

We're looking into what happened, seems a possible client connection/routing problem during the move.

 

[Danielx64]

We're looking into what happened, seems a possible client connection/routing problem during the move.

It was moved into a topic that I dont have permission to see. I got an alert on it with a link to the new topic.