I have been running www.letsgogirl.com. Now I am planning to launch a forum on it. I have about 50 to 100 visitors daily. Is it the right time to offer forums? If yes, then what is the best place to do the same? Thanks imphpguru
Yes, why not. If you are getting visitors then you shud go through with forums because they wud provide more stability to visitors. And i wud suggest you www.letsgogirl.com/forums is the best place to run your forum.
Okay Thanks a lot for the encouragement. Well, I have launched a few forums earlier, but failed in a nice way . I dont get proper reader / discussers. Do you have an idea how I could manage to have them. Like I have seen hell of active forums, but never manage to get one!
Also, this is a wordpress site. Should I get a wordpress' simplepress forum ( a plugin, so that everyone integrates) or a SMF Forum. Cant afford a VB right now
As i visited ur site there i found that it's type of blog. So i wud suggest you at the end of each post put your forum link with few words like : for more discussion visit our forum. But it's not a easy task. For this you need to organize your forum. Make appropriate categories in ur forum. According to them make your posts. Then put the link of appropriate category of forum in your posts. And you shud start a thread according to your post in forum which shud be in category according to your post. I hope that it wud work for you. I know this idea looking very critical but i hope that it wud work for u........ Other things you cud do are just normally off page strategies like: articles, blog posting, social bookmarking and some link building work.................. I think these are enough.......................... In this thing i can't help you. Because i am far away this development work.............
Introducing a Forum service in addition your present blog would help you to greatly increase your subscriber base. It would make people register to the forum and interact with each other while visiting your blog as well. i would say, Go with it! TIP: Try installing the forum on the top-level domain instead of a subdomain on your website. eg: abc.com/forum and not forum.abc.com. It would help you increase your rankings in various sites.
Hey archit thanks for the help. What I am interested in knowing is... should I have a different forum software such as VB or PHPBB or SMF or should I use inbuilt wordpress plugin like simplepress forum Thanks imphp
Go for a dedicated forum setup rather than trying to fully integrate into the blog, though keeping a consistent look is going to be tricky no matter what solution you go for. I have a couple of negative points, however. Forums are notoriously difficult to get off the ground, sometimes even with an existing solid user base. Blog commenters may be confused as to whether to post in bog comments, or in the forum. Your overall blog traffic is not the best measure of whether to create a forum. Better to base it on the level of comments you are getting. In my experience, site visitors are more likely to comment on a blog post than to register and contribute to a forum - where both are available on a site. If you are low on comments, then a forum is going to be very tough to get started. Encourage more commenting and start to build the community there, then create a forum so that existing community can have an additional place to hang out.
Hi, yeah you are right. The commenting isnt so much. I hope to rebuild the site very soon. Agressive content addition will be a biggest feature! I think i should get on with some work before i expect ppl to contribute. Thanks a ton for the help
With 50-100 visitors going for a forum seems to be darinngs step as the traffic required for a forum could be a big challenge for you.You need to work really hard this way.Better build a regular visitor community on your blog first and then at some suitable point of time begin with a forum.
yeah... i have made up my mind, that i'd be launching the forums later on... not now... meanwhile, I am looking on advice to make the people love the website. I will try to encourage more and more commenting on the blog
On your question regarding the simplepress integration, I have been using the "WP & SMF" plugin/module, and I will say that it works very well.
hi, phpbb is a problem when mods are concerned. It means editing a lot of files. On the other side SMF has a lot of better features as far as maintanance is concerned. Auto upgrades, plugin installations and so on... its really a benefit to use SMF over PHPBB
I used phpbb extensively back in the days of the weekly exploits. I'm still bitter all these years later, and still don't trust that software. SMF does everything I need it to up to this point.