Making a website on the internet these days can be done by just about anyone in a matter of minutes. In the old days, webmasters had to write code and design graphics just to create simple content pages to show up on the internet. Back in those days, creating a website was also quite expensive! Nowadays, website creation is extremely cheap and the tools available online make it extremely simple to do. Most school aged children can create a website. However, even if you can easily create a website, getting traffic to come to the site, stay on the site and return to the site, well that is still not as easy as it was not easy back in the old days. However, there are many types of interactive integrations that can make a simple website into a social network of constant returning traffic! One of these integrations is message forums and they have a long reputation of really building successful online social communities…
What is a message forum?
A message forum is an online community that enables users to register and login to a website, create new discussion topics and reply to other topics that other users have created. Most modern forum software also include many social features such as logging in with Facebook and Twitter, member blog functions, image and photo sharing and even status update and chat rooms. Basic forums include a profile for each member, a signature, notification and email features to keep them informed of new posts and replies to their content, security features for the forum admin (the website owner) and great search engine optimization methods included. A forum works kind of like a blog accept more than one member can create new topics which are stored on the forum and can allow constant discussions.
What will a forum do for my website?
It will provide a place to be social! A forum is for discussing topics about the main niche of a website. Your forum will provide a place for interested website readers to further expand on the topic of your website and it will allow you to engage socially with them. Your forum will allow members to develop relationship with other member and you which will keep them wanting to come back to talk to other members and you. If you want traffic of people that you can get to know and get them to keep coming back, a forum is one of the better options to make this possible.
Are there any drawbacks?
It depends on what you think drawbacks are! A forum will require you to be active and it will need a lot of fresh and unique content to keep things interesting. You are the leader and your members are the followers. They will follow the leader! If you are inactive, they will likely become inactive and your website will become inactive. So a drawback of having a forum is that if you do not plan to be an active participator of that forum, it will likely not give you the kind of results that you want to see.
Where do I start?!
Get on Google and search for “forum software”! There are many different free software and paid software sources for forums out there and most of them are just as great as the other. Find the software that suites your needs, install and configure it and start having the time of your life. There are also other forums out there known as “admin forums” and “promotion forums” that will help you create a better message forum community, for free! The internet is huge, you will always find the answers you need about running a message forum for your website.
