A forum for your blog
Having a forum is a great way to increase interaction on your blog/site. It results in increased traffic and provides more content to your site which might translate to higher earnings.
If you have a forum associated with your blog, share some statistics and experience related to it. How did you manage to convince people to start using your forum when your site was brand new? Or did things happen by themselves? Also, share any suggestions that you want to give to those thinking of starting a forum.
And those who don't have a forum, do you plan to create one in the future? What are your reasons for it?
Reason: -
You are asking the kind of questions only you can answer. Nobody else is going to answer. I for my part will ask more questions on this topic. You can find out the answers and tell us all.
I wanted answers from Sorcerer and Renie 
Sure, you can ask. I'll try to answer. 
[ Actually I wanted to pass time, so created this thread]
Forum??? Kayku ?? Indi hai na
Yep that is a good idea 
will think about it
Ok Pehle tw ke errors to nikalne me madad karo 
Only the person who created the template can correct those errors. 
It is from themeforest kahan dundhne jao use
Vijay Even a single glance at your theme source is sufficient to say how complicated it is. [Responsive templates are complex by default ]
I think Theme Forest provides support: http://prntscr.com/5glc6i
To tumne IIT kyu kiya complex prob solve karne ke liye aur hum Indians ki madad karne ke liye ya videsh bhagne ke liye
I don't plan to have a forum in near future or ever. What can the forum for reviewer/writer include?!
Ranjith I am running a tech blog from more than a year now. Recently I have started a blog about blogging, SEO, tools and other related stuff. I am not looking for making a tech related forum, but definitely thinking about making a forum for my new blog. I won't make the forum now as I first aim at getting regular readers for my blog. Ranjith forums can't succeed unless there are good number of members. I love Indiblogger's forum and that's why I regularly participate over here..
Don't see the point in a regular blog. What's wrong with the comments on a post for interaction? Oh, I get it, readers don't like to leave comments....
I think if you were a business and had some products and services, I can see how a user forum could help. For most of the bloggers here who are writing professionally and being paid in vouchers and ad revenue, it doesn't make sense, because they're writing for so many varied brands.
So: if you have a very specific niche, a regular set of clients, readers, brands and are not a generalist then a user forum may work. You need engaged readers not just revenue clicks....
Readers first, then comments, then regularity, then volume, then brand specificity, then user forum.
In my specific case - I'm trying to complete step 1. New Delhi is very far away, wil take an A380 14 hours ...
Yes, it doesn't make much sense for many bloggers. But it does help bloggers who deal with specialised niches and in the due course of blogging have gained sufficient knowledge on the topic. And a forum to succeed does require loyal members. But in some cases, the members come by themselves, from Google Search etc. Even if they find only a few questions on your forum but all of them have been answered, they will surely post any questions they have. The only problem is finding members who will not just post their questions, but also answer questions. 
Why did New Delhi find a place in your reply?
Because in my case, as far as readers go, Dilli door hai.....
Thank you. We aim to provide satisfaction.
do you plan to create one in the future?
- Nahhh.... [Damn sure wala smile]
What are your reasons for it?
- I'm bad at marketing and socializing, so processes to be done after creating a forum would be much beyond my abilities [No regret wala shrug]
I can start, but who will come and write/read there? indiBlogger forum is good enough for most of us
The probability of an unknown or a lesser known blogger starting forum with the aim of increasing readership of his blog is pretty low... it will simply be rejected by most people on the net.
However, if there is a group, for instance, the New Delhi Photography Group (there is no such group... just giving an example) that has a website devoted to interactions... the probability of people from the group making it a virtual discussion platform is fairly ok. Such groups do see drifters coming in and participating.
But with more and more people populating the internet today, the idea may be a good idea even for bloggers to adopt. The idea is good... and if a few bloggers with niche blogs start forums, they just might be able to create a new fad.
it is met with perverts logging to your forum and adding pornographic promotions on it. one gets fedup deleting them and banning them.
Xenforo! :D
But honestly, wordpress community is far more open. Xenforo/vb charges 150-200$ (VB costs more?) for branded and way more for unbranded. After a year, you'll need to pay a certain amount. Many plugins cost money. Wordpress has a healthy mix of free, open and paid stuff. XF good as a forum, maintaining user galleries, guides that need changes and editing from time to time, way better than commenting system. But as a front page layout for the main content sucks. If you're reviewing, you pick up headaches like having in-post galleries, etc. This is coming from a guy who used to post content in forums before moving to his own.There's also another problem that forums are not as active as it used to be back in 2005- 2010, especially if its new. Mostly because of facebook where they have thriving groups with massive userbase. Unfortunately, it was the case with orkut and myspace- and we all know the fate they had to grow through. There's also a problem to moderate and keeping troublemakers at bay. Some have a colourful way of disrupting forums and annoying community base with half-assed knowledge fueled by teenage raging hormones that slaps common sense. Some get inspired by a forum, but end up ttrying to leech memberbase from existing forums and therefore same stagnant content. like blogging, forums are not for everyone. forums need more attention because you're building a community. building a community and having the right crowd to join and post is not a joke. i dont know anything about buddypress, but judging by what I saw I don't really like it. Even well-known sites have ridiculous interaction with buddypress. I might be wrong with this one.
Thanks Sorc! I was waiting for your answer. 
It would he helpful if you can talk specifically about your site. How many active members does it have? How do you make people come to your forum and discuss things? 
And do you think providing incentives to members (occasional surprise coffee mugs, t shirts, vouchers) would be a good way to promote discussions... Or is it a bad idea as they might run away the moment you stop giving those freebies?
36. But I didn't work on my forum as much as I wanted to. My plans were flushed down the drain in an instant after 4 years of hardwork thanks to Asus India whose shenanigans with their custom BIOS stunt for a motherboard lead to huge loss of faith by the investors in me, which was worth $6,000 for the first six months and $24,000 for the later half *deep sigh*.
I don't think its good to give incentives to members. This will simply promote people hooting around and trying to troll helpful members fearing that they will get swags. Its good to have forum-specific contests but something that involves people making an effort. You will see a lot of contests and freebies companies give and they have 'maximum likes' but the next post barely has 1-2. I usually don't give importance to that, but the difference between a contest post and a normal post which is made afterwards should be as bad as 600: 2 or 3. Encouraging membership by reeling in the right crowd is the best way to do things,, but you should also make sure that things work smoothly by keeping tabs on things on a very regular basis.
I can do with a Forum in my website, a lot visitors have requested one but till date I have not been able to add one .. Always I feel, i still need larger community before a forum.. Beside, Forum comes with its added costing, extra server resources
How much larger do you want to be? My God! You're already the gold standard around here, no?
@Sharma Uncle..
May be it (my website) does perform better compare to a few but there are many others are having far superior stats than mine..
When going into a forum, few things which right now I am not in position to address
Costing
Forum comes with few added costing, first there is the price of the code. Secondly, VB or such, which are considered to be a best in market, requires a lot of server resources. That means upgrading the server hardware for sure..
Security and further additional costing
Forum will contain user information hence security would need to be tighten, SSL or such, once again adding up to server resource and cost for the same.
Management
Moderation needs to be in high to address the issues hence arranging members to moderate the same on regular basis and timely manner is also a concern. Increasing code would also require extra effort in back end hence I too have to devote regular time on this, which I find some time really hard to come by..
So unless I am having more active members (core), it wont be possible for me to run a public forum.
first there is the price of the code.
There are many free forum softwares available!
And about resources required - that will depend on the amount of activity going on in the forum. And a PHP based forum doesn't really require huge resources. I have a Q and A site which runs on a VPS with just 512 MB RAM. On the same server, I also run a few wordpress blogs as well as a Java mail server (Apache James). My point being that resource usage won't be as high as you are expecting.
Do you really think SSL is required? IB ran for 5 yrs on http!
Management - I think you can spend your yawning time on moderating.
I'm not saying that you should start a forum. Neither I am saying that you shouldn't
There are many free forum softwares available!
Definately, phpBB one of the best, but nothing comes close VB when looked into from management side.. Previously i have manged forums, and vb is definately really better compare to anything else specially from options and from management side..
And about resources required - that will depend on the amount of activity going on in the forum.
If I expect no activity, then I would not be thinking for a forum.. Forum is something only to be deployed when I have that enough activity..
My point being that resource usage won't be as high as you are expecting.
You have not yet seen what happens when server struggles to keep up with 150 / 200 simultaneous request !! In pick hours, load is even high at times
Do you really think SSL is required?
Yes..
Management - I think you can spend your yawning time on moderating.
That is the problem.. most of the free time I am yawning, else I am out on highways
ask Renie for IB's code
First start a forum, it will become popular by itself
I am not concerned about popularity !!
By popular, I meant people will start joining and discussing...
Yes, my answer was meant towards only this meaning of yours.
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