The advantages and disadvantages of having a forum on your website
Forums can be a great addition to a website, but like anything online, there are pros and cons when it comes to adding a forum to your website, because having a forum won’t really do much for you.
Below we take a look at the main pros and cons when it comes to having a forum on your site that might help you decide if it’s worth having one or if you should stay away.
advantage:
Fascinated – Google (and other decent search engines) love content, so having a forum with lots of people contributing and adding new posts and replies can generate enough content to really boost your site. It takes a while to get to this kind of level and you’ll need some great members, but if you can get a happy group of users to post, this can really help your site move up the rankings.
visitor retention – A forum gives visitors, customers, and potential customers a reason to return to your site, especially if they need help or advice on a certain topic. All websites want their visitors to come back, so having a forum can be a great way to get people to want to come back and use your website regularly.
Business Opportunities – The more people you have on your site, the more money you can make, so by having more people and more repeat visitors using your site, you immediately increase the chance of making a decent income from your site. From shopping sites to online services, if you can keep your visitors entertained on your site and give them a reason to come back often, this gives you more opportunities to sell to them.
Disadvantages:
Moderation – Whenever you open a public forum, you will have to think about moderation, because not everyone will behave as well as you! From petty arguments to dubious posts and naughty articles, you need to make sure you’re on top of the forum or have people do it for you, which of course will take up a lot of your time or mean you have to trust often non-members. paid to do it for you.
unwanted mail – Like most things on the World Wide Web, a forum is just an open target for any spammer because if your forum grows, it might carry some weight with Google. There have been some massive forums closed or changed in the way they operate due to spam, so it is vital to consider how you will deal with this before it becomes a problem for you.
Security vulnerabilities – Because most forums will be an addition to your site, you need to make sure you regularly update the software that runs them, otherwise you could expose yourself to some massive security issues. It’s important to review your forum setup before it goes live to make sure you’ve closed any obvious loop holes that could let bad guys in, but even then, you should make sure you’re constantly monitoring your site for issues, which again, takes up your time.
lack of publications – A bit like a city with many closed stores, if someone comes to your site and sees that you only have a few posts, this can have a negative impact on that visitor. Although it’s hard to get members without being live, you should consider how you’re going to activate your forum to avoid making it look like an empty site and actually diverting visitors from your site.