It's always great when management chimes in.
A Lil bit about my history which led me to be using IPS. As a teen, while living in Jamaica, I was one of the lucky few to have a PC and the internet. I won my first PC from a Coca Cola promotional raffle. Back then, the cost of a PC could buy you a house. I got introduced to the web when Microsoft was running Windows 95, me having access and the internet was the most incredible thing and still is. Having the opportunity to connect with others worldwide and share what I knew and learned from others was great. For the past 25 years, while being on the web, 95% of the forums that hold much helpful information and forums where I took my time to post information all disappeared. Some got wealthy and moved on, while some withered away. The time had changed, and I saw that internet hosting price was now affordable, so I thought, you know what, I want to run my own forum and information hub. The idea was to have a website based on all the different things I'm into. I started researching the various forums applications. I did end up on IPS page, but for some reason, I thought IPS only did subscriptions. I tried WordPress and a forum plugin. I then found out that to have WordPress running the way I needed it, I would have to invest in a lot of plugins, and I was not too fond of the fact that all those plugins were calling home. I tried Joomla, which was a bit clunky. I then saw a post on a forum where someone mentioned IPS self hosting package. I checked IPS website again, but the price was out of my range at the time. So I did a search, and lucky me, I found a guy selling the whole IPS self hosting package licence at half the price. The main thing that drew me to IPS was that all the various applications I needed were under one roof. I got my site up and running and gradually started to post content in my free time and offer some free files I created. For two years, the website laid dormant with only 50 members. Still it felt great having my own system so I kept at it. I then realised one of the things I was into, there wasn't much info about it on the web, so I started focusing on that topic. All of a sudden, in less than five months, I had over 1200 members, and my ball started rolling. Touch wood, it continues.
Evolving is a must. However, evolving grows hand in hand with success. If there is no success, things don't evolve, so one has to have success in the equation if one wants to survive.
I think a few of the main reasons why forums are on the decline are the forum cost, forums usability and YouTube. In the present time, when folks need information, the first place they turn to is YouTube. YouTube is free for content and discussion, videos are visible, plus it's lucrative for the content creators.
An idea for big success for IPS would be, IPS offers a basic forum package free to all users and spend more on promotion.
Look, many internet giants who have grown to be very successful started by offering things for free.
You give away £10 today to earn 20 times that amount tomorrow.
My idea might sound farfetched and a joke to some. However, the statistics are out there.
The aim of the game is always to get the masses to follow you, and free is the best calling card.