Hi When is it worth having a forum? It seems almost every site tries to have a forum. Is it worth having one even without many visitors per day?
In my opinion forums are best used on existing websites that already have alot of traffic, otherwise it'll just sit dead (99.9% chance it will never take off without alot of promoting).
When you have a massive site backing it up (massive as in lots of traffic, good content). Just take a look at Digitial Point - for example.
Or you have an extremely well niched on topic site, It could be worth starting a forum for that particular lot of users. If it is something they are interested in, likely it will build itself. Especially if you have lots of quality information on your topic. Forums can definately be worth it, but not when you only put in a half baked effort. It is practically a full time job at the beginning. Brad
my site is 1 year old and has had the current forum for about 6 months, the site recieves 200/300 unique visiters a day and gets about 2 - 6 average members a day but has only just started to become active.
thats definetly not true considering the amount of dead forums on the internet. id rather have no forum on a site of mine then a dead one. It makes your whole site seem dead.
I agree that forums with no traffic are just empty lifeless forums. The best time to have a forum is if you have a established website and you are looking to build sites visability with more site options.
But there are some forums that serve people for another reason, like to get jobs, ect. Like i have a forum i just started (no members) and it is going to be used for freelancers to gather and for people that need a job done to go and have it done. PS: My forum: "http://freelance.14.forumer.com/"
One of my sites is just a forum. The forum is the index page. I have no content other than forum topics. I consider it a success so far. The site is only 10 weeks old and I havenearly 150 members and 10,000 posts. If you have a great niche (like i do) a forum can exist on its own. Otherwise it's best to have a content filled site to back it up.
The other time to have a forum -- even a quiet one -- is product support. It becomes a living FAQ, which can be useful for people who are interested in the product.
also take into consideration taht alot of time must be put into maintaining and moderating the forum.
unless u choose VB which allows one person to easyly mod a whole forum in half the time thanks to its in-line moderation.
Going to a dead forum is a huge turnoff for a site. I'd rather see a site with NO forum than a dead forum, because it gives me the impression the site owner just doesn't care.