...and even though I have my own ideas on naming, I thought I'd get some outside input. For anyone who has an opinion on the matter, as far as SEO is concerned, do you think it's better to go: domain.com/forum(s) (singular vs plural?) domain.com/board(s) domain.com/{main keyword}-forum(s) forum(s).domain.com (using a subdomain, like this place) boards(s).domain.com some other option I've missed or do you personally think it doesn't make a difference?
I second that. I run a medium-sized forum, and I use something similar (forums*, groups*, community*, discussion*, etc are all fine). Having it on a separate server+subdomain name is also handy sometimes for maintenance or migration.
i'm guessing you already have a site running and want to add a forum to that. if thats the case, then using a link like url.com/forum would give you some advantage. a subfolder url means the url is part of that existing site so the new page url.com/forum will get the link juice from the existing url.com transferred. a subdomian forum.url.com on the other hand will be considered as a new site so no link juice form existing site will be transferred. you just have to think as to whether you want to seperate the forum from the existing site or want to keep it all under same umbrella