Two years ago, I answered a question on Quora, “Is the time for forums over?” I’m sure I answered “are forums dead?” type questions like that before.
Here we are, two years later, and what I said then is exactly as true now. I’ve been asked this type of question many, many times and I always give a similar answer. Two years from now, I expect my answer will still be as true as it is now.
I’ve tackled this topic seriously numerous times here at ManagingCommunities.com, talking about how forums evolve and why this question isn’t helpful to your efforts. I’ve talked about platform death and said that there isn’t enough time in the day for me to tell you that forums are not dead.
I’ve also had fun with it, posting an obituary for forums on April Fools’ Day and launching areforumsdead.com. That last link, though certainly facetious, is also helpful. Keep refreshing. You never know. If forums do die, the page will say yes.
Along those same lines, I was pondering this question and some meme ideas came to mind. I thought it might be fun to tackle this question in meme form and so, that is what we’re going to do in this post.
There is the thought that forums don’t evolve.
Of course, what this often amounts to is that forums aren’t enough like Facebook or Twitter.
Despite the fact that an active forum for virtually any topic is a Google search away, who really uses forums, anyway?
And, of course, condescending Wonka has to have his say.
But, when I’m asked, sometimes I feel a little like Grumpy Cat.
This post made me smile. I’ve faced this question several times and the answer is always, forums are not dead, but the word forum might be on life support.
Thanks for the comment. I think the term “forums” is in great shape because it describes a specific tool. You don’t have to call your forums your forums, but you are still using the tool. :) I think this question is generally one asked out of personal convenience, not of actual consideration of the social web.
You know what I’ve found quite funny this week.
I’ve had a couple of members sign up who have never used forums before. The chat rooms were a little quiet, so one of them was browsing the site, took a look at the ‘Post of the Day’ and fell inlove with the forums, he’s barely stopped posting since.
He was amazed at the amount of freedom and how he can post and reply.. something so simple.
I think what I’m trying to get at is there’s a generation of people out there who have never used forums, and are used to 140 char limit or “I’m having my dinner *click like*”
I believe there’s a growing sense that people want more now, yearning for more but there is this stigma around forums that they’re old, out-dated. But I’ve found once people get into them, they’re addictive!
Forums should evolve to tap into this, make them fun, easy to use.
I’m a huge fan of forums. Saying that, I wouldn’t start a community as just a forum.. I just don’t think I would. Being just a forum on its own.. that’d be one tough nut to crack in the way of becoming a success – though it can be done as Martin Reed’s InsomniaLand shows.
A CMS+A forum+personalising & customisation however.. well wow what a powerful tool you have right there, you can do anything.
I’d say having a static HTML landing page with a link stating “Forum” that leads to a standard, generic, uncustomised phpBB3 for example is “dead” or out of fashion.
Having a dynamic landing page highlighting newest discussions, the best topic of the day, fun competitions, member of the month etc all powered and connected by the forums however.. well how can anyone say they’re dead? Look at sites like Martin’s FemaleForum again. I know he’s a huge fan of forums and simplicity.
Put bluntly, people can keep doomsaying about forums all they like – it certainly isn’t going to put me off using them.
Thanks for the comment, TommyT. There are pluses and minuses to anything. For example, having a more than a forum could lead to feature overload and indecision by members. And while a custom design is usually more attractive than the default design of any forum software (or any software), you can find plenty of default looking sites that are popular. At the end of the day, the greatest thing is to have the diversity. That’s why the idea of tools being dead doesn’t make any sense because if something was truly dead, we’d lose diversity, which is bad.
Thanks,
Patrick
I like this comment:
“A CMS+A forum+personalising & customisation however.. well wow what a powerful tool you have right there, you can do anything.”
I started my 10 year old community with just a forum list front page..
I don’t think I would do that for any future ventures, the mixed media / format CMS front page that gives a taste a ‘whats in the box’ is probably key these days..
Its funny I had a meeting with my established community’s moderators a while back where one of them suggested a front / landing page – every one else shook their heads, WHAT? Its a forum dude! Who needs a landing page?! So again – once up an running – probably not a good idea to put one more obstacle in peoples way to access what they know and love.. But for a new forum… a good idea…
food for thought..
I suppose all verteran users could bookmark the forum list and all newbies would be shown the front page..
Speaking of which – Drupal 3.0 boasts (brags USA) that it is ideal for this CMS / forum community hybrid – any comments on that? I feel drawn to Drupal but it could be a painful transition from VBulletin.
Patrick made a very good important point – feature overload. My current project has many fun features people will love.. in the future. Currently they’re all disabled/hidden from public view.
I see WAY too many new communities start up packed full of features. What’s worse, is they try to sell their online community to potential members by advertising these features.
“Join us we have a wall, games, photo sharing, you can add friends and play music”… d’oh.
That’s not going to attract people. Too many new community managers IMO look at sites such as Facebook and think “well how can we compete with that? We’ll implement this feature, this feature and that’ll attract people” it’s just the wrong way to go about it.
All this feature overload and trying to be something else just doesn’t work. Switch off the features, advertise your members and content instead and get people hooked in discussion. Then when you’ve got the memberbase, slowly switch on features one at a time.
I agree Jules, my first online community.. was just static HTML. Click on the “forum” link you got a front page phpBB2 forum. It was a success with very little effort and a fantastic community, I still kick myself today for letting it close down, the second time around it seems so much more hard work and when I first started my new community I made the fatal mistake of believing I could do the same things then now… how wrong I was.
Times have changed and people need to evolve with them or get lost in the vast depths of cyberspace.
Sorry Jules missed your question, I’ve also looked at Drupal. I looked into several platforms when I started. Drupal, Joomla, WordPress & SocialEngine.
In the end I decided to go with Joomla. I’ve not found *much* difference between Drupal & Joomla myself, but Joomla certainly seems to have the larger developers’ community.
I use Joomla 2.5 + Joomlapolis’ Community Builder for my platform.
Not only is it free, but completely open source. It’s yours to edit, hack, modify, amend or re-code to your heart’s content.
Online communities are a fun passion to me, and part of that fun is the tinkering, coding and maintenance of the platform its self as well as managing the community. So Joomla+CB was the perfect choice for me giving me full freedom.
The forums, profiles, chat + CMS are all integrated, easy to use. People sign up through the CMS, on their first login they’re directed to a forum post welcoming them and encouraging to introduce themselves. After that whenever they login they’re directed to a forum post highlighting the content of the day, Post of the Day, Member of the Month and link to the chat rooms. The homepage (or landing page) has the most recent forum content, the three main links (Forum Discussions, Chat, Blogs) and calls to action.
I have no doubts that Drupal can achieve exactly the same kind of system, perhaps even better.
There is a downside to using CMS such as Joomla + Drupal of course, and that’s if you rely *too* much on third party developers.. if they go bye bye and one of their extensions you’re using goes awry, or if the platform gets upgraded and your extensions are no longer compatible… unless you love the coding & hacking like I do it could turn out to be more trouble than its worth :)
These are great Patrick! You should do more forum memes on here.
Thanks Adam. :)