Adding forum to blog?

[lee088]

I got a no so smart question, what can I get by adding a forum on my blog? Why is good to do so and why not?

[limcs]

Hello Lee,

Good question, just wondering why others have not reply you.

It is definitely a good idea to add a forum to your blog. Blogging actually brings together a community, and adding a forum harness the community by allowing others to create and discuss the topic of their interest.

A few example of blog-forum integration:

Mysticmind's Wordpress Malaysia, which combines wordpress with SMF.

And, my Chinese Music Blog, which integrates PunBB into wordpress.

Wordpress team has also recently released BBPress, you can also look into that as the integration is very simple too.

[genzy]

Another very successful example - lowyat.net. The first page is blog type. Because of the installed forum, it becomes so famous. Imagine, if it is without the forum section.

[zul200289]

yup.. pretty good.. especially if you've got lots of readers..

[squarehippies]

I have a decent amount of readers on my blog but some of them clashed between participating in the forum and commenting, most of the visitors chose the latter. The forum is solely to discuss other topics than the ones on my posts, which is not so much. I guess when you have very large number of readers then only you can consider adding a forum (with very FEW categories to start) to your blog. Hope this helps!

[lee088]

Thanks for the tips. The idea, actually is try to use the 'forum' to draw crowd to my blog (a niche blog with growing traffic). Also, I intend to use the forum to collect related info for my research purpose. So it is kind of 'reverse' from the norm. Any chances of getting this works? BTW, how much time I need to invest in managing a forum. Many thanks

[hocky]

Hey there, I am new here and want to know how I can start my own blog or blogs? I can't seem to find any way on the screen to start my own blog, just replies, search and new posts. I am very interested in a few things. They are 1) video cameras at the moment old vhs-c, Hi8 and minidv, 2) still cameras, 3) hifi equiptment like old cassette decks, turntables, amplifiers, 4) radio control aeromodelling, 5) gold fish keeping, 6) boat fishing, 7) cars, 8) ebay trading and 9) non-ebay small business internationally. I would appreciate it very much if anyone here can help me, cheers John.