Secret List of Broken And Closed Down Discussion Forums

Here's a not so secret list of broken and closed down forums, courtesy of FindAForum.net. This list is updated regularly, so please check back and have a look through this list.

Forums are listed together with their category and sub-category. Some forums show icons for the number of users () and number of topics/threads () posted on the forum when it was last updated on FindAForum.

Larger forums are also listed with their MozRank () which is a measure of how important the site is (1 = unimportant, 10 = awesome). Some forums also show their number of high quality backlinks ().

Rows with a gold background indicate particularly important forums that were unavailable when last checked.

If you're interested in a particular forum, click on the info circle () to see that forum's entry on FindAForum. This is handy if the forum is no longer available. Maybe you'll get enough clues as to what content to put on a new forum in that niche!

Why is this list useful?

These forums are all in great niches, but the sites themselves may have closed down or have been neglected. Maybe you can buy them off the owners, or pick up their expired domain names, or set up rival forums. Remember that generally speaking, the more popular the niche the more posts/users you'd expect to see on that forum. Don't neglect the smaller niches though, they can also be very lucrative. Personally speaking, I would say that every single forum you see here is in a good niche!!!

Key to Errors

The severity of the site's issues are shown in the Status column. The possible statuses are:

= site closed down and domain has probably expired
= issue may only be temporary. Emptier battery represents more serious issue.

You can also check the Detailed Error column for a more detailed description of the forum's state:

NameResolutionFailure

Browser can't find site - maybe it has closed down and the domain has expired. Check to see if the domain is available! Note that this just means the forum's subdomain is inaccessible. The site's domain itself might still be registered. But if the forum itself has closed down, then you might be able to re-establish it on another domain!

Timeout

The forum's site was down. This might be temporary or it's possible the site has closed. Either way, it's unreliable, so you could make a more reliable alternative!

ConnectionClosed

Something went wrong and they didn't want us to visit...

SecureChannelFailure

They might have bought an SSL certificate then mis-configured it. Remember to visit your own sites once in a while just to make sure they're actually working!

ProtocolError

Something is wrong somewhere.

ServerProtocolViolation, TrustFailure, SendFailure, ProtocolError, ConnectFailure, ReceiveFailure, ProtocolError, UnknownError

Other problems

 

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