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Forums - Should You Have Them On Your Website?  
By Anne Moss  

Forums have become a common feature in many websites. With good 
free scripts available, and paid scripts being relatively cheap, 
it seems that every new website has its own forum(s). But is it 
wise to add forums to your website? 

In this article I'd like to take a look at the pros and cons of 
adding forums to your website. The largest of my websites, 
www.TheCatSite.com boasts one of the largest online forums on 
pet related subjects. In fact I have yet to see a larger forum 
dealing with pets. As of the writing of this article (Summer 
2004), we have over 7,000 members and nearly half a million 
posts. In the past four years I have struggled with the 
hardships of community management and learned what works and 
what doesn't. Let me share a few insights that may help you 
decide if you want to take the forums path yourself. 

The Pro Side of the Equation.

Forums Generate Content

Large, active forums generate content for your website. Google 
now has literally tens of thousands of pages indexed for 
TheCatSite.com's forums, and people looking for some of the more 
esoteric subjects related to cat health and cat behavior are 
very likely to meet one of our forum pages in their search 
results. 

Forums Make People Return to Your Website

Forums are truly a "sticky" element. Most people come back, at 
least to check on developments on their threads. With a good 
community, you get some real addicts who have to get their daily 
fix. TheCatSite.com's forums run on Vbulletin Forums , which 
means members can opt to receive an email whenever someone 
replies to their thread. Most people use it and that little 
email sends them right back to the forums.  

Forums Create a Sense of Community

Reaching from behind their computer screens, people from all 
over the world join together, get to know each other and create 
a community. This is actually happening! Members connect with 
each other, offering support in time of needs and some of them 
even meeting each other in real life. For you as the webmaster, 
this means loyal visitors that keep coming back to a place they 
consider to be home.  

And Now To The Cons

Forums Can Take a Lot of Time to Take Off the Ground

I remember how I could feel my posts echoing in the empty board 
four years ago... It can take a long time before your forums pick 
up. An empty forum can actually drive new visitors away. It's a 
vicious circle - when they see that no one else is posting, they 
don't post themselves, and move on to the next website. It can 
take weeks and even months of hard work to get your forums off 
the ground. 

Forums Need A Lot Of Ongoing Management 

You need to constantly monitor your forums to make sure that 
they are clean of spam, troll posts, and just keep everything 
where it belongs. Once your forums are large enough, you have to 
have a team of quality moderators to help you run the place - 
the task being too time-consuming for one person. This is the 
place in this article to say "hi!" to any TCS team members 
reading this - thank you guys - you're the ones that make it all 
happen!  

For the webmasters reading this article, I will say that 
managing a team is a task in its own right. Finding the good 
mods can mean the difference between success and failure. And it 
doesn't end there. You have to put your heart and mind to it - 
all the time. 

Forums Take Up a Lot of Resources

Forums are database-type applications that generate web pages on 
the fly. Every time a user views a page, it's being created from 
scratch. As the forums become more active, this can take a heavy 
load on the web server's resources. When our forums reached 
2,000 members, we had to switch over to a dedicated server. When 
they reached 7,000 members, we had to upgrade to a new dedicated 
server... With several other websites stored on our server, the 
forums are the big resources hoggers, taking up bandwidth, disk 
space and, most importantly, CPU resources. This brings us to 
the next point... 

Forums Do Not Make Lucrative Advertising Stock

You think that with successful forums, generating millions of 
targeted pageviews each month, you would do well financially? 
Think again. Forums not only cost you a lot to run, they also 
don't bring in a whole lot of revenue, compared to regular web 
pages. Advertisers don't like to run ads on forum pages. So much 
so, that most CPM based ad networks won't even let you place 
their ads there.  

Our experience with CPC ads shows that they may have a good 
point. Click-through rates on forum pages are significantly 
lower then on other types of web pages. There are ways to make 
your forums generate revenues, but trust me, it's not that easy. 
I will be writing a separate article on how we got our forums to 
pay for their keeping. 

The Bottom Line

Forums are not for every website. Don't just put it up there and 
hope for the best. If you can't or don't want to put a lot of 
time and effort into creating a viable community, just leave it. 
Having no forums is better than having dead forums. Having dead 
forums on your website may actually drive people away.  

Research your field. How easy will it be to create a community 
geared towards the subject of your website? Is it something that 
people want to talk about with each other? Are there other 
forums on this subject? How are they doing?  

Get your feet wet. Join several forums and become an active 
participant. If possible, become a team member or a moderator in 
a large forum. Big forums often have secret team forums, where 
you can learn a lot about community management. 

Think ahead. Where do you see your website in a year or two? Is 
this your main project and passion? Will you have the time and 
energy it takes to maintain a forum? Above all: Will you enjoy 
it? 

Copyright (c) Anne Moss  

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Anne Moss has been the webmaster of www.TheCatSite.com and 
www.Meowhoo.com, as well as several other sites, since the year 
2000. You can read more advice for webmasters on her webmasters 
resources website -www.4NetNeeds.com. You may use this article 
in your website, provided that you leave the "About the Author" 
bit intact and make sure that the names of the websites 
mentioned are clickable and lead to the right place. 
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