TheDoctor - 5:03 pm on May 15, 2004 (gmt 0)

Actually, "forum" doesn't have a plural in Latin. It does in English, and it's "forums".

To return to the actual topic - yes, a forum or forums can help a web site, particularly if posts are SE friendly (or should that be SE-friendly? :)).

I run a site for a not-for-profit organisation, which was, when it was set up , the only site in that general subject area. I set up a message board a couple of years ago, partly to provide our friends and relations with somewhere to post relevant information and partly to advertise our site. I figured that more content (which is what a forum gives you) equals more keywords and therefore more links on SE listings.

For the first six or eight months, it was the main web site that provided the message board with visitors - ie, people who knew about our web site would also pop in to the message board to see what was going on. But slowly, it was the message board that provided the web site with visitors. People came to the message board, often from a search engine, occasionly from a link to a thread from an outside site, and would then move on to the main part of the web site.

(You can tell which way people are going from the logs: number of visitors to the message board who came from elsewhere on the web site vs number of people who arrive at pages elsewhere on the web site from the message board).

The secret is, of course, keeping the content relevant. I'm absolutely ruthless about deleting spam, flames, etc.