Dan would you say this forum is the biggest in the UK, maybe even Europe?
Tiling forum I mean?
It's the biggest most used and most active with the most posts and still the fastest naturally growing in the world bar John Bridge's beauty which is based in Canada (and not the US as I assumed when I first posted and got laughed at haha). He's had his thrice as long as we've had this if not more. And it's paid off. He has loads of UK members too but it's sort of setup different to this and has different systems and processes (i.e, I think that if you talk about the same tool, you find the existing thread and re-post in it, or post a new one and mods will move it for you - that's due to the size of the place - we'd leave our methods in place though if we got that big as it increases page-size which is important SEO-wise, something John's never cared about too much as he does quite well without it- he didn't like me suggesting he should do it once many years ago but we're sound now
).
We're not the second oldest either, the first two before us didn't get as big as us and are rarely used compared to here. Both are setup by training centres who sell tools and adhesives, and they're mainly sales support forums for their own products and services and it's very apparent too. And the others setup since also fall into that category, such as Topps Tiles forum and BAL's forum. It's the reason I opted to go down this road of not selling to members, I don't even do websites for them and SEO is mainly free. I host a couple but at cost price. I'd probably be a bit richer now if I did sell, but the forum wouldn't grow as naturally and I'd feel like I'm just selling every time I posted which gets annoying for me and the members. And I'd hate to see links to my competitor's websites and they'd have to be removed. So then I'd be called a hitler or something haha
TTA closed theirs not long after we got big. I'm guessing they thought people just don't use them before they saw ones being used then decided for whatever reason it's not worth keeping theirs. Who will ever know?
If you do a search of new posts posted by me in this forum category, you'll find our milestones as we crossed them and loads more facts.
Our plumbing forum is the biggest in the UK, and most used. And our electrical forum is the biggest, most used, and is quickly getting bigger than this too! The logged in members during 24 hours can be twice as big. But it took off later (though online the same day) as this so it's post count is about 30% lower last time I checked. Member count just past ours but we've not pruned that for a long time.
**breathes**
