This much is certain: the forum is going nowhere as long as Adam Dicker is in charge, for obvious reasons. I think pretty much all of us can agree on that.
However, there’s something else a lot of people can agree on: DNForum used to be a decent place for domainers and in fact, it used to have a far better noise to quality ratio than NamePros back in the day.
I remember how a fairly long time ago, NamePros was considered the forum where beginners hang out, whereas DNForum was considered the place where deals got done.
Again, I’m talking about the relatively distant past, some of you who are new to domaining probably don’t know what I’m talking about.
But I for one do remember that a lot of heavy hitters used to do business on DNForum and since the forum went downhill, they did *not* move over to NamePros. I keep in touch with some of them on Skype, they’re definitely still buying/selling… just not on forums.
Unfortunately, DNF was neglected over the years and at this point, it’s pretty much a ghost town. Right now for example, it’s not even online, I think it’s been down for over a week.
Things move quickly on the Internet and I’m sure reviving DNForum would involve hard work.
At the same time, I do think the industry needs another good forum.
Perhaps if a very well-known domainer with a good platform takes over, the forum can be saved. Or maybe a group of 3-4-5 domainers can buy it, I don’t know.
What I do know is that it isn’t healthy for an industry such as ours to have just one forum. NamePros has been the main beneficiary of DNF’s decline and it’s pretty much in a monopoly position at this point. Not the ideal situation IMO: good for NamePros and those behind NamePros, not so good for the industry.
Who should take over? I have no idea.
I for one have absolutely no desire to run a forum but perhaps other domainers could make it happen. Just throwing the idea out there.
Is DNF worth a lot of money right now? Definitely not because again, it’s pretty much a ghost town over there atm. Could it be a good buy? I think that yes, it could be a good buy if you get it cheap enough.
December 22nd, 2016 at 3:55 pm
Problem is with both those forums is that know-it-all noobs shout down and argue with old domainers in the business, and then the old pros leave because they are not learning anything from the noobs and don’t have to take crap from them.
That’s more or less my story and why I stopped going to both NamePros and DNForum around 2009. I’ve been at this since 1995 and life is easier when you don’t have to deal with jerks, so I don’t go on the public forums. I have enough real friends in the business that I communicate with. That works for me.
Every so often I glance at those forums and read a little but usually it’s bogus topics or bad advice circulating around. It’s too bad because the noobs keep feeding each other bad advice which hurts them.
December 22nd, 2016 at 4:39 pm
DNFORUM is dead, everyone has moved on.
Namepros is it, the amount of money, and resoources, and mods that namepros has invested is massive.
Dicker can sit there, and jerk off to 80’s porn while he mods dnforum into the grave.
This industry is not big enough to support two forums, have one big forum, and call it a day.
Let it go, those heavy hitters have moved on, why not put the eyeballs at namepros for all to see.
Everyone has access to cheap money these days, cash is not king.
December 22nd, 2016 at 9:41 pm
That’s a problem with almost any forum is lack of moderation where others can scream and insult without repurcussion. There are a few fomaining groups on Facebook so people might have moved away from this forum and not replaced it with something else.
For anyone looking to buy or sell gambling domains we have a marketplace and forum for it. http://forum.gaffg.com/c/marketplace/domains Our goal with the forums is to keep it primarily as a market place where people can list domains for sale and help noobs with any questions or anybody that wants to know more about the online gambling industry.
December 22nd, 2016 at 10:01 pm
If someone(s) did buy it I think it would need a name change?! 🙂
December 23rd, 2016 at 2:10 am
I had a lot of fun at DNF back in 2005 collecting DNF$ to upgrade my account from GOLD to EXCLUSIVE!
Namepros is the place to be now and it’s about to hit 1,000,000 registered users.
December 23rd, 2016 at 8:25 am
If someone did buy it I think it would need a name change?! 🙂
December 23rd, 2016 at 11:45 am
I started in 2005 when both DNForum and NamePros were powerhouses. Back then I always hated that there were two of them and most domainers shared my opinion that it’d be better if everything was in just one place.
Serious domainers were on both sites anyway. When a domainer would get banned from one, they would go to the other, and they’d ping pong back and forth. It was segmented and like was said before, the industry is too small to justify two powerhouse forums.
The good thing about NamePros is they are very liberal with their userbase and try to find solutions to problems without being ban happy. DNForum would ban you for the tiniest of reasons and that made it more of a boys club. NamePros feels open minded, and the superior forum won in the end (DNForum failed long before all the Adam Dicker scandals).
We don’t need another as long as NamePros doesn’t abuse their position and I’ve never seen them abuse it. There are other monopolies in this industry where the companies do abuse their monopolies (I won’t name names) but at least NamePros isn’t one of them.
(Kudos to DomainingTips for owning Domaining.Tips!)
December 24th, 2016 at 2:31 am
I was one of the first members of DNForum, and also in the first 100 users of NamePros. You’re correct that NamePros was seen as the place for newbies to hang out, and all the big players did business at DNF and behind the scenes at Rick’s forum.
Ultimately, poor moderation didn’t help DNF. There were a small number of very prolific loudmouthed posters who liked to agitate and get political about non-domain topics, whilst contributing nothing to the community. The mods tolerated those people because they didn’t break any official rules, yet banned people who eventually snapped at the agitators. It left a bad taste and the serious folk just wandered away and did business between themselves or in closed forums. Some of those agitators are now at NamePros talking the same old non-domain related crap.
You also haven’t mentioned DomainState, which just seemed to taper off.
I doubt there’s much chance of ever getting DNF back to its heyday. The old pros aren’t coming back, and the newbies are trying to turn new gTLDs into a new gold rush. They don’t realize that those who’ve been in the industry since the early 90s have seen it all before with .CC, .TV, .BIZ, .INFO, .MOBI, not to mention IDNs. It’s tiring arguing with them, so why waste your time when you can just make money?
In addition, the days when you could pick up great domains for a few thousand dollars are gone. Many of us remember when you could get LLL.coms for $300 each on DNF. I sold NNN.coms for $800 each. Today you need real money to play for truly desirable domains, and that money isn’t hanging around on forums arguing about how .tattoos is the next big thing.