Adding a Forum to a Hosting Company a Good Idea or not???

[facilitator]

I like to know what are thoughts out there about adding a forum to hosting website where people can use it as a knowledge base???

 

[SenseiSteve]

The problem with adding forums to a hosting website is actually getting anyone to participate, be it for knowledgebase reasons or otherwise. I've seen many of these forums that are essentially dead and those just give the appearance that the host is not very popular, or that they don't pay attention to detail on their site.

 

[easyhostmedia]

Could not get our clients to participate in our forum, so we removed it

 

[MarkPoppen]

I wouldn't bother with forums. Clients won't sign up, only the tech savvy ones or spammers.

If you have a solid knowledge base that you keep building, using the input you get from your existing clients, you're golden.
The key is to actually answer questions. If you receive a question that you think other people might find useful, instead of explaining in a lengthy reply to the client, write a generic answer in the kb and refer your client to it.
That's how we built most of our KB.

 

[facilitator]

I wouldn't bother with forums. Clients won't sign up, only the tech savvy ones or spammers.

If you have a solid knowledge base that you keep building, using the input you get from your existing clients, you're golden.
The key is to actually answer questions. If you receive a question that you think other people might find useful, instead of explaining in a lengthy reply to the client, write a generic answer in the kb and refer your client to it.
That's how we built most of our KB.

Yes so far our experience is same, Thanks all for sharing

 

[HH-Josh]

Could not get our clients to participate in our forum, so we removed it

Second to this.

We originally opened our website with a fully integrated forum however we couldn't get clients to use the forum. We initially just used it as a social interaction for clients with various different forums rather than knowlage base - we then later removed it.

 

[kunnusingh]

You can use this as your advertising platform.

For example: If you write many tutorials related to website, hosting then many peoples will read your forum and check your website and maybe also convert into customer.

 

[MarkPoppen]

You can use this as your advertising platform.

For example: If you write many tutorials related to website, hosting then many peoples will read your forum and check your website and maybe also convert into customer.

So, why use forum software and not a blog or your knowledge base? In your example, I'd use something like Wordpress to write the tutorials. Easy to SEO, easy to maintain comments. Less of a "community feel", but it'll do the job.

 

[easyhostmedia]

You can use this as your advertising platform.

For example: If you write many tutorials related to website, hosting then many peoples will read your forum and check your website and maybe also convert into customer.

Why! as mark says this is what a Blog and Knowledgebase is for. All that will happen to your forum is it get spammed by spammers getting paid to plaster forums with pointless spam posts.

I have a dolphin site which is forum/chat etc. and all i seem to do is ban spammers

 

[Hypernia]

The problem with adding forums to a hosting website is actually getting anyone to participate, be it for knowledgebase reasons or otherwise. I've seen many of these forums that are essentially dead and those just give the appearance that the host is not very popular, or that they don't pay attention to detail on their site.

+1

We used to have forums for our company and honestly it used to do very well for us, but as time progressed the shift towards social media left our forums a skeleton of their former selves and we eventually shut then down due to lack of activity.

You may do well if you have a very large client base, but otherwise its likely something to avoid unless you have some incentive for your clients to post in them.

 

[zomgmike]

There's nothing worse than an empty forum. It's the saddest sad of them all. If you've got the user demand for it, though, it's a good way to build a sense of community.

 

[Alex - A2 Hosting]

You need a large client base before considering a forum. We have one with decent activity (http://forum.arvixe.com/smf/) but the majority won't use it.

Probably best to stick to the more commonly used channels and only implement a forum once you have that large client base.

 

[King-Servers]

It sure is a good idea, however you have to monitor it to avoid spammers. You will have to post a lot of articles and troubleshoot to attract visitors on your forums.

 

[LarsJ]

How about you just link to this forum?

Even very popular providers have a hard time getting a forum going and it think it just ads more work to staff...

 

[Collabora]

:idea: Want to make some money? Package a pre-populated forum similar to the idea of a pre-made knowledge base

 

[skdedicated]

It's really hard to get a new forum active, it takes up a lot of time and in most cases you'll end up with a dead forum which gives a bad impression to visitors.

 

[rfwilliams777]

A KB will usually be spammed, embarassing because no one is using it, and unless you are really offering support through it that others find useful, just do a FAQ.

 

[kunnusingh]

7 month ago one of visitor create a ticket and ask me that it seems your company is zombie because of your forum threads are x month old, announcement date is to old.. etc and we lost one customer because of our forum was not active.. lol

 

[James-A]

It can be of great use if you have atleast 300 employees and have activities on internal forum on everyday basis and your customers participate on it. Or else it is going to be of no use.

 

[ScopeHosts]

Yes Its Good idea to Add, But You need to examine the Each account and each post to avoid Spamming.