Forum For The Website

[abender]

Do you think it is wise to provide a forum of the website that we are setting up? People often have questions or comments and they can do that if there is a forum for that website. Although I'm thinking that maintaining a forum is much harder than maintaining the main website.

[greeny]

I notice today more websites have forums as part of their websites. That's great because  visitors and potential customers can interact with each other or the webmasters in the forums. It is easier than sending a ticket to the customer support.

[FrankSpencer]

Forums can be just wonderful yes. Not only does it leave somewhere for people to ask questions but those questions are treated as new content by Google. You may get search engine hits through them.

But an empty, unused forum can have the opposite from the desired effect.

[cenin]

Personally I would much rather handle a forum that a knowledge base (even though once its there, its there for good). Forums are a good way to keep personal with those who are interested in what you do and if you show you have the time for them, they will be happy about it.

[northern_techhead]

If your website is to market a product or service, a forum would be a much appreciated point of contact for your client base.  Spending long periods of time on the phone because of a query can be quite frustrating.  Spending a few minutes online to submit a query is an infinitely preferable alternative.

If you do decide to incorporate a forum into your website, be sure to utilize all the available features.  Word censoring, flood control etc....

They can go a long way in helping to maintain your forum.

[Di]

Do you want your site to have a community feel to it or would you rather stick with something simple (like live chat for example). Some sites work great with a forum, but keep in mind you will need someone to run the forum too (keep the spammers and trolls out, keep the enthusiasm up and help to be a part of the community). Forums can fail if no one is there to help out, having a god presence on your forums helps to let your community know that you really do take a part and not just as the boss either, it shows them a way that you can connect with them on a personal level.

[linker]

I agree with Di. Having a forum is a good way of presenting your products and services to the public. Maintaining it is not easy though because of spammers and some unwanted posts that are not related to the website. There should always be someone who will watch over the forum to maintain the integrity and good information that visitors and clients can get from the forum.

[reggie]

Forums on web sites are a great idea I think to share ideas, questions, answers, and knowledge. But if you going to have them I also think it's very important to assign somebody to be the "moderator" of "administrator" of them.