Is the Honeymoon Over Already?

[Dan Schulz]

Every new site or forum goes through what's known as a honeymoon phase. It's characterized by people visiting the site, checking it out, and then telling others they know to do the same. With forums, there's another step involved - posting. But after a while, the traffic starts to drop, the new car smell and shine wears off, and the site/forum starts to settle in and get comfortable.

This process normally takes about 3-4 months from what I can tell, but I'm noticing it happening quicker than normally here. What's going on? Is The Blog Experiment's honeymoon really over already?

[doorlight]

lol.

I'm thinking we celebrate Halloween. Like, every member should have a Halloweenish avatar or signature for the whole month of October -- or if you are lazy, whole day of Oct. 31. Whajathink?

Nyarrrrr.

[ses5909]

It's slowed a tiny bit in terms of posting but traffic is still the same. It took 4.5 weeks to reach the first 4k posts and it looks like it will take about 5.5 weeks ti reach the next 4k posts.

Running a forum is definitely not as easy as you would think but we are actually averaging more and more signups than we did in the beginning. Guess people are shy though :)

I have no doubt it will have it's busy times and slower times as with any community.

[davemcnally]

Things don't seem to have slowed down too much, maybe just a tiny bit. I am still amazed how quick this community has grown within such a short space of time.

[shyflower]

Guess people are shy though :)



Well at least one of us is!:p

Could be part of the posting thing is due to an increase in activity in other areas. Ever since Labor Day, I've been on the run either with RFPs or new projects. Right now, I'm full but there are still requests coming my way. Not complaining because it is a GOOD thing, but it leaves little time for updating my blogs and less time for forum posting.

[Dan Schulz]

Sara, I've been running forums since 2002, so yes, I know how hard it can be.

[Prettyfem]

You had a good start as many of those who joined from what I can see were people that you invited or people that you knew. That's great!

As you know I admin my own blogging community and I have 1108 registered members, but the forums are dead. Traffic is there, but I see they are all lurking. lol

I also belong to bloggerforum.com and have for some time now. I am noticing a decrease in posting there too. Even my writing community todays-woman.net that has been in operation for five years is less active. I think many forums are hurting. Maybe people are spending more time on sites like Facebook and less time on forums.

I'm hoping there are still those that prefer forums over networks.

[ses5909]

Yes I'm aware of all of that. I'll continue to plug away keep growing the community though. It's definitely a process and always will be. Forums can be VERY time consuming and sometimes it's challenging to divide my time between a few of them, but you do what you got to do :)

[Prettyfem]

I don't think some realize how time consuming it is. lol

[rodaniel]

It may have a little something to do with timing as well... even though it doesn't directly affect me, I know that since school has started back up, everyone seems quite a bit busier.

For us at work, our fiscal year-end is a week away, so mgmt is really cracking the whips to pull out the stops this month. And the hospital is heading into the higher-occupancy season, so that also piles on more for us - more patients, heavier computer usage, more printing, more outages... so even though I'm far-removed from the patient-care end of things, it all rolls downhill.

Anyway, we're still here for ya, Sara!