1,000 Members

[Shawn Gossman]

For those of you who have more than 1,000 members on your forum, how long did it take you to get to 1,000?

[Cheeto]

For those of you who have more than 1,000 members on your forum, how long did it take you to get to 1,000?

2 Years.

[Shawn Gossman]

2 Years.

That's not bad at all! They say it usually takes a forum about 4-6 years to get very active. At that rate, you could have a very active forum

[Gaz]

2 Years.

Congrats.
What lessons can you share to help others grow their site?
How many members do you have and how many of them do you regard as active members?

[Shawn Gossman]

Congrats.
What lessons can you share to help others grow their site?
How many members do you have and how many of them do you regard as active members?

I'm also interesting in your answers Cheeto

[Gaz]

I'm also interesting in your answers Cheeto

A couple of things I've noticed and it's very different to my forum.
177K Topics
927K Posts
27K Members
2K Active members which is a great number.


I wonder how active members are being calculated? On my forum if you have visited the site in the last 2 weeks then you are regarded as active.
That is a massive amount of topics with a vastly smaller number of responses.

Now my forum has been around for 18 years so the numbers are going to be very different.
I also delete off inactive user ID's if they haven't been back for 12 months and haven't made at least 50 posts.
17K Topics
904K Posts
330 Members
230 Active Members


Some of my active members are very active contributors.

[Cheeto]

I wonder how active members are being calculated? On my forum if you have visited the site in the last 2 weeks then you are regarded as active.
That is a massive amount of topics with a vastly smaller number of responses.

We're an industry-specific tech support forum so we get traffic from technicians everywhere. Since model numbers, error codes, and terminology are somewhat unique to the industry we end up with a lot of inbounds from Google. I use the vB default of 30 days for the active members setting but the real number is probably 2/3 of what's indicated because we end up with a bunch of spammers that get banned and spammy registrations that complete the email confirmation and never return. I sit down a few times a year to delete zero posters with no activity and long-gone users with low post counts.

[Shawn Gossman]

I sit down a few times a year to delete zero posters with no activity and long-gone users with low post counts.

Do you try to mass email that user group first to see if they will return?

[Cheeto]

Do you try to mass email that user group first to see if they will return?

I did email before deleting users a long time ago but don't send them now. By long-gone user I mean less than 5 posts with 10+ years of inactivity so they have probably retired from the industry we support, I would probably be more selective about deleting non-posters if vB had more filter options available in the purge process.

Speaking of additional options on the purge, I would appreciate an up-vote in the vB tracker for an enhancement I would like to see; read about it and vote it up here: More search options in "Prune / Move Users" (vB6).

[Shawn Gossman]

I did email before deleting users a long time ago but don't send them now. By long-gone user I mean less than 5 posts with 10+ years of inactivity so they have probably retired from the industry we support, I would probably be more selective about deleting non-posters if vB had more filter options available in the purge process.

Speaking of additional options on the purge, I would appreciate an up-vote in the vB tracker for an enhancement I would like to see; read about it and vote it up here: More search options in "Prune / Move Users" (vB6).

I gave you an upvote!