Message board on a site

should forums be limited to site related issues or include community

[cfx211]

I am going to install a message board system on our site in order to handle support questions, post tips on using the site, and handling general customer service issues that come up.

I am also thinking about adding a forum where users can exchange information related to topic. Finally I am wondering about opening up a community forum where people can talk about whatever they want.

I will probably be using phpBB.

Here is the question, will opening up forums that are beyond the scope of support/help/CS greatly increase the amount of board mgmt (moderation and technical) and increase the bandwidth both to the point where the good community love aspect outweighs the cost of running those forums?

Our site will be attracting a big youth crowd into blogs, site building, and the like.

Can anyone share their experience in this area? I am looking for sites where the boards are auxiliary to the main purpose of the site, not the sole focus.

[BlueSky]

As your forums grow, people will probably develop friendships and want to discuss things other than issues related to your products and services. If you don't provide an outlet where they can go to periodically chit chat on off-topic things, they'll go elsewhere to do it -- emails, IMs, other forums, etc losing some of your stickiness.

If you merely offer but don't push the community forums above the other ones, they shouldn't add that much more to the board's management or bandwidth. I've seen a number of forums modeled similar to WebmasterWorld where most are focused on the pertinent topics with a much smaller number for off-topic discussions. If you do something similar, I think the community ones won't become overly popular to the point of overwhelming your site yet still benefit from the added stickiness.

[roddy]

I think it's unlikely to give you a great deal of extra work - especially if you can get someone else to moderate it. Bandwidth is unlikely to be very much - it's only every going to be a fraction of your 'real' traffic - and it will probably be worthwhile in terms of bringing people back to your site.

I have a 'random chat' forum running alongside my 'real' ones - it accounts for 2.5 per cent of all posts - not very much at all.

Roddy

[trillianjedi]

Another "me too" post from TJ!

I agree entirely with Blue Sky and Roddy, when your membership increases, people get to know other people and find other common interests which are not related to the topic of your website, but they'd like to discuss nonetheless.

Something like Foo on here, or a general off-topic forum, is a good idea. We have one, it's very busy and it brings people back to the site. It's worth having.

TJ

[roddy]

Thought of one more advantage - it's pretty much inevitable that there will be some kind of random chatter on any board - threads move off-topic, somebody makes a joke, and so on. Having a specific forum for that kind of thing will keep the fluff out of the way - meaning people will find it easier to get to what they want.

And (using PHPbb anyway) creating a new forum (or ten) is incredibly simple - and if you are worried about size or bandwidth setting it to prune itself regularly should help.

Roddy

[cfx211]

Thanks for the advice, I just wanted some positive reinforcement here. The site I currently work on has a monstrous messageboard where the majority of members have graduated past the point of the site and are just a resource drain, so I was a little wary from that experience.