Forum or Blog?

[jjmao1]

I am thinking to add a forum or blog to my sites, but am not sure which one is better. Could somebody elaborate a little bit about the benefit, drawback or pros and cons of each in terms of:

1. The impact to site ranking, link-building, and traffic, etc.
2. installation
3. management

Any helpful opinion is appreciated.

jjmao1

Black Panther Animal

[limebrook1]

It depends a lot on what your site is about. I have a forum on my site about horses and riding, and on the bearded dragon site - lots of people are interested in these hobby subjects, and have problems or stories they want to share, and questions they want to ask. The great thing about forums once they get going is that members answer other members. The drawback is that the more activity the more work you have to do. You have to check each new member to make sure that they are not spammers, and each post to make sure it won't offend. Of course, if you can build up a network of moderators some of this can be shared. It does increase traffic, and google seems to like it. Forums need time to mature - you may have to wait a year or so before it really gets going, so will need to be patient.

You do need to have a subject which interests people - the more people it will interest, the more members, the more activity etc.

Blogs are great where you personally have a lot to say - I have tried these on a couple of my sites. Trouble is I find that I dry up, and can't think of anything new to say. Blogs again attract search engines, and can improve your ranking. However, they do attract spam comments, although these won't show unless you allow them to, still quite a bit of work to make sure you keep moderating them.

My conclusion is that they are worth trying, although you will need to give them time to mature. Depends on how much you want to write, or whether you can use a forum to get members to write for you!

[jjmao1]

Trish,

Thank you very much for your advice. It is very helpful. I checked your limebrook.com site. You have a pretty active forum.

Jay

[limebrook1]

Cheers Jay - it's been live for 18 months though, so didn't happen overnight. Probably took about 8 or 9 months to start to pick up. Good luck whatever you decide to do!

[jjmao1]

Trish,

Based what you said, I will go with forum. I have 5 sites up and running now. They are all very young. Only one of the sites shows on the first page on Yahoo and Google search results for several keywords. Since this is a small niche, traffic is still relative low. I am not sure I should wait for more traffic or not. Why does it take so long to mature? Is it because traffic or something else?

BTW, I have two sites which somewhat related to your pets4kids.info. If you are interested in a link exchange, please let me know. You can contact me from contact page at:

Black Panther Animal

jjmao1

[pioneerVicki]

A blog is much simplier to operate & gets the search engines coming back. If you tie a blog on your site with a blog somwhere else that will also bring in traffic.

[lemmondr]

Trish,


How did you get your bearded dragon pic to show on your forum
page??

Thanks!!

Daniel-

[limebrook1]

Right click your logo and go to Properties to determine where it is and what it's named. If you have the default SubSilver skin, your logo is in your forum/templates/subsilver/images folder and is named logo_phpBB.gif. Simply create or rename an image with this name and ftp it into the subsilver/images folder and it will replace the default phpBB logo.

Just make sure that your logo is the same size as the current one!

I got this advice myself, and loads more from entries on this forum!

Good Luck and have fun!

[lemmondr]

Trish,

Your going to have to hold my hand on this one...I did locate the logo
in properties at:

http://jaxviews.com/forum/templates/...logo_phpBB.gif

I not sure how to go to the file folder and make the change. Do have to
be in Administrator mode to place the pic?

Thanks for your patience

Daniel-

[lemmondr]

Trish,

It took me a while but I finally figured it out.

Thanks!!

Daniel-

[limebrook1]

Well done you! Sorry I wasn't able to get back to you!

[thx1012]

I am trying link exchanges on my site, I here it helps

[karel]

Blog everytime for me, I get as much traffic to this as I do my main site. Make sure you post a new thread as a term someone may search for and fill it with content. Forums can be a pain to maintain and other problems.

[ebusiness]

Pinky, how do you set up your site so that the users listings post go to a certain page?

I am trying link exchanges on my site, I here it helps

[thx1012]

Not sure what you mean?

[ebusiness]

From what it looks like, a blog!