Updates to FindAForum.Net

19 November 2024: Minor Updates

General site update to remove broken links and functionality that was no longer working.

4 July 2021: Minor Updates

Recent changes:

  • The A to Z of Forum Niches page now lists double the amount of niches, and no longer truncates the list at the letter L.
  • A few more forums have been added to the directory, particulary in the weight loss, dieting, alternative lifestyles and drones niches.
  • The Alexa traffic charts no longer work so they have been removed from forum listings pages. If you want to gauge a forum's traffic levels then all forums will soon have their Moz data showing (see below).
  • I've reinstated the code to populate forum Moz traffic and backlink data. This gives an estimation of how big and well known a forum is.
  • There's a new Forum Topic Ideas Generator tool that helps you brainstorm ideas for forum posts. This tool will be especially useful if you're starting a niche internet discussion board and want some ideas for what topics you could write about to get your forum up and running.
  • I've added a few more forums in the solo ads and RPG games niches. Actually I could only find a single forum in the solo ads niche, but there are A LOT of new RPG forums! Offline gaming is a pretty big niche apparently as many of the forums I've added are massive (and we did already have a lot of RPG forums added when FindAForum was initially established back in 2013).
  • The content filter has been enhanced to prevent anybody from being triggered.

12 March 2021: About Those Non-Forums...

Forums that no longer appear to be forums are now being flagged. Links have been removed to such sites. Take care before visiting these sites because their domain names may have been registered by adult site operators, scammers or spammers. These sites are being retained on FindAForum because it is useful to know which forums have closed down - replacing them with new forums or blogs can be VERY lucrative.

Other changes:

  • Lists of forum keywords are now being screened for potentially NSFW or contentious content.

24 February 2021: Forum Content Being Updated

Since I started FindAForum back in 2013 a lot of the forums have changed. I'm now adding functionality to detect all these changes. The first modification is that forum RSS feed URL changes are now being detected.

Other changes:

  • The forum Change Log table formatting has been improved so that word wrapping works better.
  • Forum site images will start appearing on listings pages of forums that have them.
  • Site descriptions will start updating if the forum has changed them.
  • Site keywords will now update and are now being screened for NSFW content. They should also have more useful words in them, although a major issue is that forums in general don't have a great deal of text on their home pages and they also go off topic quite regularly.
  • Site titles will change under certain circumstances.
  • Sites are now being flagged if they no longer appear to be forums. I will keep dead forums on the site for archival purposes though.
  • There's a new A-Z of Niches page.
  • Lists of forum keywords are now being screened for potentially NSFW or contentious content.

12 February 2021: Rubbish Niche Detection Replaced With Better Version!

I've replaced the niches display on the forum details pages with a better version. Now when you browse a forum's page you will see links to some related niches. These are colour coded to represent how difficult it could be to establish a blog or a forum in this niche.

Other changes:

  • The Top Forums page now displays if a forum has risen, fallen or stayed the same in the rankings.
  • Categories and subcategories now have a competitiveness score thanks to SakiAI. This score is based on how much interest there is from other bloggers and potential forum owners in a particular niche.
  • Categories and subcategories show related niches.
  • Niche details pages will now show a related photo if there any associated with that niche.
  • There's a new Forum Building Guide with some tips for how to build your own discussion board.
  • I've added another batch of forums - these are mainly in the skin care, vegan and fitness niches. Veganism is a hot topic right now with a lot of people interested in going vegan. People are asking questions like how can I make my car vegan? This would be a perfect topic for a microniche site! I've also added some more prepper and survivalist forums - it seems unlikely this niche will be going out of fashion anytime soon.

12 February 2021: A Few More Updates

Forum list pages are now cached so much of the site should run significantly faster.

Other changes:

  • The Top Forums page now shows icons to represent forum properties like the other pages do.
  • Forum recent posts loading has been improved.
  • Data retrieval speed has been improved.
  • Forum details pages are now showing related ecommerce stores from our sister site FindAStore.

1 February 2021: More Updates

Forum details pages will now display maps showing which countries the forums are most popular in. It will take a while for these to appear as only a few forums have enough data to show these. The 3fatchicks.com forum should be able to display a map.

A few more changes:

  • There is a new niches feature that integrates forums with niches. Check out the Niches Home Page for a list of the 25 hottest forum niches.
  • The category pages now display forums that aren't assigned to a subcategory.
  • The statistics side panel now shows a table with the number of forums broken down by forum platform.
  • XenForo forum statistics (members, topics and posts counts) are now updating for those forums who choose to display their statistics on their pages.
  • Forum details pages now display information about the forum's domain name registration.
  • The breadcrumbs have been improved on the forum details pages.
  • There are now pages showing Easier Niches and More Difficult Niches. Good luck with the site building!
  • Saki has some new forum building and niche finding tips for us - look out for these in the side panel.

29 January 2021: More Updates

A few more changes:

  • Legacy site .ASPX pages should now redirect to their new site equivalents.
  • Forum category and subcategory counts are now being correctly updated.
  • Message now displayed if a forum's RSS feed is unavailable.
  • Forum summaries should now start appearing more frequently, as should a forum's related niches.
  • I've moved the bodybuilding forums to their own subcategory. Incidentally this is a pretty decent niche for a forum, plus it's a super easy niche to monetize.
  • Related niches are now only showing if their competitiveness factor is shown. I'm aware that many of them aren't too relevant to the forum they appear on. Their relevancy should improve once I add a lot more niches (note how related blogs are much more relevant - because there are over 11,000 of them now).

27 January 2021: Various Updates

A few more changes:

  • There's a new page that lists unreliable forums. If you're smart you might be able to make some decent money online by resurrecting an old formerly popular forum. I've tried it before and it does work.
  • There's also a new most searched for forums page showing the forums FindAForum users most visit after using the search.
  • I've started the rather daunting process of converting the forum URL's from http to https. This isn't as easy as it sounds given that in the 7 years since I started FindAForum many forums have (a) closed down, (b) moved to a different domain or (c) switched to different forum software. The initial batch of forum URL's that will switchover to HTTPS are those that are using the same software and haven't moved their forum to a different URL.
  • I've added a contact page.
  • Forum monetization fields are now being correctly shown on the forum details pages.
  • Some issues with the search page have been resolved.
  • The Illnesses and Diseases category is now spelt correctly. It's strange nobody noticed that for over 7 years.
  • I've added an Executive Summary to the bottom of each forum details page. There are some notes from our mascot Saki about each forum. Some forums also have links to related niches which could be useful if you want to start a site in a similar niche to the forum. Finally I've also added some logging information which shows when certain aspects of a forum's listings were last updated.
  • Forum RSS feeds are now retrieved in a different thread to the rest of the forum details page which will significantly speed up FindAForum's forum details pages.

20 January 2021: Forums Can Now Be Added to the Index

I'm pleased to announce that I have rebuilt the functionality for inserting new forums into the index. I've added 25 new forums and will keep adding more - you can see the new forums on this page. In the first stage I will focus on adding forums to ensure that each subcategory has at least one forum. After that I will add more forums in the most popular niches you guys love (e.g. paleo diet, keto diet, make money online, forex).

Incidentally I've not yet rebuilt all of the functionality so you can't yet see how many members or posts a forum has. There is also other additional data needed that will appear gradually once the routines are up and running.

Other updates:

  • phpBB forum statistics and topics are now being actively regenerated. It may take some time for the new data to appear for every phpBB forum on the site.
  • There are 33 new forum categories - see this blog post for a list of them and how they're really good niches in 2021.

18 January 2021: Site Update Released

We're now running on FindAForum version 2.0.

Changes after main redesign went live:

  • There's a new 'as featured in' panel at the top of the page. These are quite popular features with blogs (e.g. Smart Passive Income has one, so you might want to consider adding one to your own site.
  • The forum submission queue is now accepting forum submissions. Forums won't be added to the site until I have rebuilt the code that adds them.
  • There are some more pages listed under the 'Explore Forums' dropdown menu in the top menu bar. These give you some good ideas for what forums are doing well, and what forums aren't doing quite so well. This could actually be a good time to start a forum now that social media sites are mired in cancel culture. If you don't think it affects you, then remember through history this stuff never ends until all the books have been burnt...
  • Forum listings pages now show little icons which you can hover the mouse over to see more details about that forum.
  • The algorithm for ranking the forums has been updated with the additional data now available about each forum. The algorithm will now also run much more frequently.
  • Forum date added and date last modified are now showing correctly.
  • Forum screenshot images have been converted from .PNG to .WEBP.
  • XenForo forums are now supported.
  • IP.Board forums have been reassigned to the Invision Community forum software category.

17 January 2021: Improving Loading Speeds

Rummaging around in my Google Search Console I found there's a feature to give website owners valuable suggestions about improving their site's loading speed. The most noticeable problem with my latest sites is that the screenshot images are quite large. So I have now switched from using .PNG images to the newer .WEBP format. Most browsers support these, and they have much smaller file sizes. For example one forums's screenshot is a 295Kb .PNG, but the equivalent .WEBP image is just 40Kb - an 86% reduction in file size! Imagine how less bandwidth your site might consume if you did the same on your website...

15 January 2021: FindAForum 2.0

Hi everybody!

I am pleased to announce that after pretty much staying 'as-is' since I built it in 2013, redevelopment has begun on FindAForum.

The main changes are:

  • The site has been merged into my Visual Studio Solution for all of my other apps. This allows it to share the codebase of other sites and also makes it easier to add in content from my other ventures.
  • I've rebuilt the routines for adding new forums. This will allow me to add more forums much more easily.
  • Images have been switched to the much more efficient WEBP format. If you can't see images on the site, you need to update your web browser.
  • There's new content from FindABlog.
  • The search has been revamped with an 'infinite scroll'. This will be really useful if the number of forums increases substantially.
  • It's now possible to view the number of forums in a particular subcategory.
  • The site should be a lot faster.