I haven't really seen many successful all purpose forums. Although I did see one that lasted for a little while.

MikeRoweForums.com - a few years back Mike Rowe registered the domain name MikeRoweSoft.com and Microsoft came after him. His site recieved alot of publicity back then and the member count was up for some time but I just checked his site again and that place is dead now. In the end I think he recieved an Xbox and some other stuff.

That site had a lot of different categories back when it was popular but it looks like it went back down to only a few forum categories.

Most users ever online was 4844, 01-26-2004 at 02:16 PM

Do something to have a big company come after you and maybe your site will get swamped also