Now that the redesign is done, it's time for a rebrand.

[Everlong]

We're talking about this in the shoutbox right now, and it's time.

The Pubtalk name is fun, but it's just too hard to market this site as a general discussion forum. A lot of us had raised those concerns early on, but the goal was to establish ourselves again as a community. Well, this site has been open for just over a year now, and I think it's time to set our sights on bigger goals. We need to grow, and to do that we need a different site name.

This also means that whatever site name we pick needs to be focused on one unifying theme. And while I was resistant to the idea at first, I think that theme should be wrestling. Wrestling brought us all here, it's accounted for the most traffic on our site, and it has no off season or end to speculation.

This isn't to say that we are going to place less emphasis on the off topic discussions or sports sections. Those will be crucial elements to our plan moving forward, and we need to continue to focus on sports and movies in particular in our blog (which we also need to ramp up again). But more than ever before, it's become clear to me that we need to go back to our roots and put most of our marketing eggs in that basket if we're going to have success.

I don't want to alienate anyone who doesn't follow wrestling any more, which is why we'll still have a lot of focus on the other sections. But the site name and the way we market it is very important.

That being said, I want to hear all of your thoughts on this, as well as potential ideas for new website names.

These were the best out of the 100s suggested (and available):

wrestlingbanter.com
mainteventforums.com
pinfallwrestling.com
wrestlingcircle.com
wrestlejerk.com
wrestlingrountable.com
realityerawrestling.com
smartwrestling.com
smarkwrestling.com
wrestlingden.com/thewrestlingden.com
boardofwrestling.com

Let's have at it.

[Ali]

Here are a few random suggestions.

"Sportatorium" - Related to wrestling history (home of WCCW) and still refers to sports.

"WrestleManiacs" - Maybe not, but it's an idea.

"The Squared Circlejerk" - I couldn't resist the pun, sorry.

[Daz]

BoardofWrestling has my pick. It has a pun it it, and accurately describes how most of us feel about the product.

[PorkChop]

Maineventforums is the one I like the most.

[SlightlyJames]

Maineventforums is the one I like the most.

Yup, seconded.

[DBSoT]

Maineventforums is a good one. It directly references wrestling, but doesn't over emphasize it. It kind of still allows for an open ended interpretation for people trying to join the site. Plus it would pop up on searches more often.

[EmperorWu]

Wrestle Rally.com (although it also looks like wrestler ally so that's kind of a cool double meaning.)
IWC Forums.com (Is open. That's pretty direct.)
Wrestle Gab.com
Gimmick Gab.com
Main Event Mania.com
Wrestle Life.com
Shoot Wrestling Talk.com
Curtain Jerker.com
Kayfabe Club.com (or Klub for alliteration)
Ring Generals.com

All are open on godaddy for 3 bucks, obviously without the spaces. I don't know if those domain prices are yearly or monthly. I think there are some good ones in there. I personally don't like the word forum in there since it seems limiting if you plan on writing articles and other things too.

[HardcoreLegend]

Board of Wrestling is quite clever actually, but I'd prefer a name without wrestling in.

Main Event Forum is decent, can be applied to a number of different things not just wrestling.

[Messiah]

I'm not a huge fan of MainEventForums. In my opinion, it just isn't specific enough. I know some don't want it to be blatant but MainEventForums could mean a lot of other things from UFC to Boxing and probably not as highly searched. We aren't likely to get that much more traffic with that name than we are with PubTalkForum. JMO, though.

My top 3 choices from that list would be BoardOfWrestling, WrestlingCircle, and WrestlingBanter.

[Everlong]

Yeah the primary issue is that a name with "wrestling" in it is much more likely to get traffic.

[DBSoT]

Yeah the primary issue is that a name with "wrestling" in it is much more likely to get traffic.

I would argue that adding "wrestling" also excludes a portion of people that may want to join other parts of the site. "Main Event" stays to theme that we are going for, but also expands the amount of people we can add.

[Messiah]

But nobody Googles "main event" as much as they do "wrestling," so even if the name is more general-themed, it wouldn't matter if nobody sees it as much. I don't think it excludes anyone because anybody wanting to join an NFL-specific forum is going to join an NFL-specific forum, anyone wanting to join an NBA-specific forum is going to join an NBA-specific forum, anyone wanting to join a Fútbol-specific forum is going to join a Fútbol-specific forum, so on and so forth.

I just strongly disagree with going for a general-themed forum if the expectation is more traffic. Maybe in the long-run (read: years), it can work. We will have the longevity and hopefully rise in Google Search. But I think it is better to target a more specific group. WWE-Club was poorly moderated and failed to expand which is where they struggled over the long-run but when I originally joined, it was an extremely active forum. A large part of that is because it was going for wrestling fans primarily whereas we can't try to compete for all different types of fans to come here.

Besides, everyone on this site aside from a couple of new members came together because we had one thing in common yet we have several other sections that remain reasonably active. So we will still get members like that because I mean, everyone loves movies and television, nearly everyone loves sports, and a lot of people love video games.

If we did a poll and MainEventForums won, I wouldn't be mad or anything. This should be voted on and everyone's opinion on it matters. But I would strongly disagree with it, I don't think it is as effective as the others. Sudden traffic won't happen in a day or two, it takes time, but I think being more specific in the name helps out a ton.

[SlightlyJames]

I guess to expand a little more on why I favour "Main Event Forums", while I'm all for identifying more heavily with Wrestling, none of the other proposed names do it for me. The most popular one of them is "Board of Wrestling" and while I get the pun and everything I don't really agree with it representing the forum as I'm not bored of wrestling at all.

Sure we all whine about Raw most weeks but that's not the be-all and end-all of wrestling. Even if it was, what happens if they have a big turnaround and all of a sudden we all love it again? We gonna change the name?

[Everlong]

I guess to expand a little more on why I favour "Main Event Forums", while I'm all for identifying more heavily with Wrestling, none of the other proposed names do it for me. The most popular one of them is "Board of Wrestling" and while I get the pun and everything I don't really agree with it representing the forum as I'm not bored of wrestling at all.

Sure we all whine about Raw most weeks but that's not the be-all and end-all of wrestling. Even if it was, what happens if they have a big turnaround and all of a sudden we all love it again? We gonna change the name?

My favorite is Reality Era Wrestling personally, but I'll likely go with whatever the consensus is unless I think it sucks

[Messiah]

I just like BoardOfWrestling since it is creative and I don't think the pun is gonna be a big deal. It isn't my #1 choice, though. I really like WrestlingBanter and WrestlingCircle.

[HFX]

If you dont vote for WrestlingDen I'll burn your houses to the ground

[Romo]

Aslong as it's not WrestlingBanter then i'm cool with most, WrestlingBanter is the gayest thing i've ever heard for a forum name.

I like mainteventforums but Messiah has a point on not main people google main event, MainEventWrestling.com?

[PorkChop]

The main problem I have was that we've been a wrestling forum before, and we failed. Most of our user base here were part of a wrestling forum which ran for 11 years, and barely had any traffic whatsoever - particularly over the past 5 years or so. Also, I've seen people in this thread say that wrestling doesn't have an off season - which is technically true, but WWE's popularity plummets from April onwards. It might as well be considered an off season.

Main event forums caters for wrestling, boxing, MMA, loads of things. Let's roll with that rather than reboot a failed gimmick with WWE-Club II.

[Everlong]

the gayest thing i've ever heard

Come on dude, you're better than that.

The main problem I have was that we've been a wrestling forum before, and we failed. Most of our user base here were part of a wrestling forum which ran for 11 years, and barely had any traffic whatsoever - particularly over the past 5 years or so. Also, I've seen people in this thread say that wrestling doesn't have an off season - which is technically true, but WWE's popularity plummets from April onwards. It might as well be considered an off season.

Main event forums caters for wrestling, boxing, MMA, loads of things. Let's roll with that rather than reboot a failed gimmick with WWE-Club II.

Good point about it catering to a variety of sports, but the boxing/mma discussion on this site is basically you and Aky. It's not something we can build around at this point.

Also, we didn't try being a wrestling forum and fail... Bryan did.

I'm fine with MainEventForums if that's the consensus, in a perfect world I'd rather have a more ambiguous, creative name like that. But a couple things are clear to me:

1. We need to get more specific with our focus, including in our domain name
2. A site name that includes our specific focus will be a lot better for search engines

[HFX]

Aslong as it's not WrestlingBanter then i'm cool with most, WrestlingBanter is the gayest thing i've ever heard for a forum name.

I suggested rawbeefwrestling and there were other similar names suggested by me and Daz last night so there's that

I think having the word forum in your site name just sounds kinda lame personally. But that might just be me. My #1 option is still becoming a T-Swizzle cult site.