I've seen some forums have a live chat room. Does any one feel this is beneficial to a discussion forum?
I think it really depends on the amount of activity that a forum is currently experiencing. For example, if you were to include a live chat function on a forum that is currently experiencing a lack of activity, the consequences (on the forum-side) could have negative effects on its future. On the flip side, if you were to include a live chat function on a forum that experiences mass amounts of activity on a daily basis, it could prove to be an excellent addition. It's always nice to talk in "real-time" rather than doing so via a threaded interface.
I am in complete agreement with Chris on this one. If a forum isn't very active, all of the discussion will divert to the chatbox - and that doesn't help populate your community, so it's a bad idea. Only when you have a substantial amount of activity is a chatbox something to consider. If you really wanted to have a chatbox but you don't have an extremely active forum, you could try having scheduled chats at certain times say, twice a week. You could open the chatbox for an hour at these specified times and the close it afterwards. It's a great way to interact with other members rather quickly. It can be really fun, too.
If you're talking about a standalone chatroom like flashchat or irc, then I agree as well. However, if you're talking about a chat (shout) box that sits on the forumhome, then I have to say I believe they can be a nice attraction to visitors. I started 2 forums from scratch with a chatbox on forumhome. The #1 rule is that it was used for saying hello and minor chatter on your way to the forums. In no way did it detract from the forum activity, in fact, it actually added to it.
Rather than placing the shoutbox on the index page, I generally install it elsewhere and add an access link to the navbar.
Thanks for the Feed Back people. I think I'll hold off on that one for a while. Then maybe use it as a member only feature.
Yes really. As long as you lay down the ground rules from the beginning, a shoutbox can be a great feature for your forum. It's when you allow forum subjects/topics to be discussed in the shoutbox that it can, and often does, become a detriment.
I agree 100%. I do not recommend it if you are trying to increase the amount of posts you get on your forum at the time.
Everything I said has been said: bad idea for new/slow forums. However, an amazing vB mod which gives my members orgasms is the "live topic" mod. Look it up on vb.org It's super awesome.
We tried that here the other night; It didn't seem to work properly. I'll have to set aside some time to try it out on our testing board.
Yeah not really sure what to tell you. Works off of ajax.php (so obv. it's ajax based) and it shouldn't really require configuration. It's pretty much install-and-go. You can configure it if you want, but it should work immediately :s
Well in some cases it was loading the replies automatically, and in others, it wasn't. And I didn't like the little "live" text graphic that it added to the thread titles when viewing new posts. I didn't give it much more than 5 minutes, so I'll have to set it up again.
Odd that my experiences with the shoutbox on a new forum are so much different. My forums were successful, and the shoutbox only enhanced the experience.
I've actually never seen a forum with an actually active chat. Yeah there will be some people who simply idle in the chat room but don't say anything. I would say many people on the internet aren't knowledgeable about or don't like IRC. Which is what many chatrooms are based on. Personally, I fall into the later category and will only use IRC when required to do so. There are much better technologies to impart information over including Skype, WebEx, GoToMeeting and so forth. Overall, you'd get more participation if you hosted invite-based webinars on one of the above technologies than through an IRC chat. If you capture the Webinar using something like Camstasia Studio, you can host that for replay as well. Now if you implemented something like Facebook's chat where a few friends could implement their own chat whenever they wanted than that would be good. A global chat room just doesn't serve any purpose though.
This is something I have always longed for in vBulletin - the ability for users to chat one-on-one, just like on Facebook.
Well either way, I think that both of them have the possibility of being a distraction (from my experience).
