Top TEN most Popular Features Every Forum should Have
Whether you own a personal or professional forum for yourself or a large corporation, running a successful forum could mean the difference between owning a successful company or an unsuccessful company that goes bankrupt. Forums are great social networking platforms that offer a topical venue for registered members to discuss shared interests and entice a potential member who views the forum as a guest to register as a recurring member. Forums compliment blogs as an offering social networking platform for registered members to discuss shared likes and interest regarding the posted blog articles on the main home page of the website’s blog. Below I have highlighted the Top TEN most Popular Features Every Forum should Have in no particular order;
TOPIC/THREAD STAR RATING SYSTEM
By having a TOPIC/THREAD STAR RATING SYSTEM on your forum, you allow your registered forum members to rate a particular topic/thread that they like by starring the topic/thread. TOPIC/THREAD STAR RATING SYSTEM’s are great for showcasing some of the most popular topic’s/thread’s that your registered forum members have both posted and liked. TOPIC/THREAD STAR RATING SYSTEM’s will allow casual forum guests who simply browse your forum content to have a better idea of what the most popular topic’s/thread’s are in relation to your overall niche for the forum and website in general.
REPUTATION SYSTEM
REPUTATION SYSTEM’s are great for allowing your most active and well participating members to get the recognition that they deserve. The most active of members is what helps drive your forum to being a successful content pusher of other similar forum websites. By including a REPUTATION SYSTEM on your forum, you, the owner of the forum help to promote and establish a strong user base amongst the registered forum members. Guests and potential future members will look at the most reputable registered members of your forum to get a quick determination of the overall best content in relation to the average content that appears by lesser reputable registered members of the same forum. The REPUTATION SYSTEM should be numerically counted and easily readable by your statistics metrics that your forum uses on its full statistics page.
PORTAL PAGE, ATOM 1.0, OR RSS (RICH SITE SUMMARY / REALLY SIMPLE SYNDICATION) FEATURE
If you wish to display an content activity summary of the most recent polls posted, replies posted, and topics/threads posted, then having a PORTAL PAGE, ATOM 1.0, OR RSS (RICH SITE SUMMARY / REALLY SIMPLE SYNDICATION) FEATURE is a must have feature that should be included on your forum. PORTAL PAGE’s need to have at the very least, (Welcome Box, Private Message Box, Search Box, Forum Statistics Box, Latest Threads side box, along with a partial or full page summary of the most recent of posted polls, replies, and topics/threads). By having a PORTAL PAGE, ATOM 1.0, OR RSS (RICH SITE SUMMARY / REALLY SIMPLE SYNDICATION) FEATURE on your forum, you enable both your casual browsing forum guests and your registered forum members to quickly and methodically retrieve a statistical summary of the most recent user-generated content on your forum. ATOM 1.0, OR RSS (RICH SITE SUMMARY / REALLY SIMPLE SYNDICATION) FEATURE’S need to give the user the option to select either polls, replies, or topics/threads along with displaying a partial or full page summary of the most recent user-generated content for your forum. The Generated Syndication URL’s need to be simple for web browsers to adequately read along with being SEO (Search Engine Optimization) friendly, afterall, a good forum is a successful forum which equates search engine keyword searches into the overall forum promotion and advertisement that the owner has established their own guidelines and methods for.
MEMBER INTRODUCTION FORUM
A MEMBER INTRODUCTION FORUM is nice to have to enable a place for your newly registered members to post a quick “hello” or “introduction topic” related to their new status as a forum member. A MEMBER INTRODUCTION FORUM is also an excellent venue category for pre-existing registered forum members to kindly and warmly welcome the newly registered forum members who had just been browsing the forum as a guest not to long ago. By having a MEMBER INTRODUCTION FORUM, you show any potential future members of your forum, just how friendly and inviting your forum and member community base really and truly are. A friendly community helps to foster and drive a strong community of new and old registered members. The MEMBER INTRODUCTION FORUM should be one of the top three forums that a user sees when they first visit your forums index page, along with the ANNOUNCEMENTS FORUM AND FEEDBACK FORUM.
ANNOUNCEMENTS FORUM
If you are a potential new forum owner, then one of the first forums for you to created for your community is to create an ANNOUNCEMENTS FORUM. ANNOUNCEMENTS FORUM’S are great for posting any forum announcements you or your employed staff members care to share with your community of registered and non-registerd(guests) members. By having an ANNOUNCEMENTS FORUM, you have a dedicated place to post forum updates, breaking forum news announcements, new policy guidelines, and any other similar community announcement that affects your site wide community forum. The ANNOUNCEMENTS FORUM’S need to be one of the first few forums that are near the upper section of your forum categories, along with the MEMBER INTRODUCTION FORUM AND FEEDBACK FORUM. You may or may not want to have guests the ability to view the ANNOUNCEMENTS FORUM, depending on whether or not your have top secret community announcements or not.
FEEDBACK FORUM
By introducing a FEEDBACK FORUM on your own personal or professional forum, you are giving your registered members and even guests, if you set the guest permissions correctly and appropriately the topic venue for speaking one’s mind regarding the overall operation and feature’s list of your community forum. A FEEDBACK FORUM is a great way for a forum owner to connect with the user base of registered members and guests on just what exactly the community wants or doesn’t want to see added or removed on the forum. You may never know of a problem or glitch that exists on your forum if you don’t provide the venue and opportunity for a registered member or forum guest the place to post such feedback and let your and your employed staff know about it. The FEEDBACK FORUM should be one of the top three forums that a user sees when they first visit your forums index page, along with the MEMBER INTRODUCTION FORUM AND ANNOUNCEMENTS FORUM.
GENERAL DISCUSSION FORUM
Even niche-only forums need to have a GENERAL DISCUSSION FORUM for their registered members the place to discuss all things not related to ONLY the niche subject of the forum topic. A GENERAL DISCUSSION FORUM on a forum owners board or website provides the area for their registered forum member users to post topics/threads and replies about everything and all things covering every subject in the books. Sometimes by enabling a GENERAL DISCUSSION FORUM on a niche-focused forum, could mean keeping an active community from staying active or becoming inactive. The GENERAL DISCUSSION FORUM should be one of the last, if not the last forum on your forum. As your niche-related forums should be the first forums your registered forum members along with your forum guests see when they first view your forum’s index page. You wouldn’t want to have a niche forum related to baseball and then the very first forum you have on your index page is your GENERAL DISCUSSION FORUM. Instead you should have niche-related forums first, such as baseball teams, sports channels, baseball player drafts, etc… The GENERAL DISCUSSION FORUM needs to be one of the last forums on any forum, whether it is niche specific or not.
PRIVACY POLICY PAGE
PRIVACY POLICY PAGE’S are nice to have if you wish to stay policy compliant with any ad publishers that you work with, even if your are an independent contractor. For instance, Google Adsense does not take to kindly on websites who do not offer a PRIVACY POLICY PAGE that conforms to their standards. PRIVACY POLICY PAGE’S should be the norm for any and every forum, website, or blog…whether personally owned or professionally owned. Plus, by having PRIVACY POLICY PAGE or a TERMS AND CONDITIONS PAGE, your forum looks and feels even more professional than a similar forum related to your niche that doesn’t have a PRIVACY POLICY PAGE or a TERMS AND CONDITIONS PAGE.
SEARCH FEATURE / SEARCH PAGE
By having a SEARCH FEATURE / SEARCH PAGE installed on your forum, you as the forum owner allow registered forum members and casually browsing forum guests to quickly through pages of your forum content using specific keywords that they type into either the search box or advance search box on the search page. You may even wish to code and script your own search engine into your forum or use Google’s Search Box feature that they allow on some forums. By having a SEARCH FEATURE / SEARCH PAGE installed on your forum, you allow a quick and methodical use of content searches site-wide on your forum, so a registered forum member or forum guest does not have to spend countless time digging through pages of your forum content.
MEMBER UPLOADED AVATARS
MEMBER UPLOADED AVATARS are a great feature to have if you wish to allow your registered members to personalize their user profile. You may even wish to have MEMBER UPLOADED AVATARS to be either privately or publicly viewable on your forum, depending on how you have your forum user permissions set up. MEMBER UPLOADED AVATARS should be enabled on both the user profile pages, the mini-profiles that are in the content area of the forum, along with having MEMBER UPLOADED AVATARS on the index page, show thread page, thread display page, and forum display page of your forum. MEMBER UPLOADED AVATARS help give a forum a more personal and social touch to the overall niche aspect of your forum topic.
There you have it, the Top TEN most Popular Features Every Forum should Have. Feel free to discuss these features and other features that were not mentioned that you feel could be apart of one of the Top TEN most Popular Features Every Forum should Have.
Discussion Topic: Top TEN most Popular Features Every Forum should Have
