[emh68]

I haven't been laid off, but due to the economy I've been trying to come up with something I can do to become self-reliant. I've built a forum platform, and I've been buying up ___forum.com domains and pointing them at it. So far it has been costing me lots of money, and no users are showing up, but it's my vision and I'm not going to give up so easily.

[pornel]

The hard lesson with forums is they're not about the software, or a domain, but the people who can be reached there. Communities will endure the worst software, and also collapse as soon as key people leave.

[emh68]

I think that's very true. However many forums die due to the owner not being able to pay the bills or stop spam. Xenforo + anti-spam addons ain't cheap, google ads won't take just anyone and the payout is very low. Or they just get bored with running a final fantasy fansite. This is where reddit becomes more appealing because if someone deletes a subreddit you don't have to find an entirely new site to join, someone will just recreate it. Of course Reddit is busy trying to make it's VC owners back all of their billions, so its vision has become heavily compromised.