Are forums alone unsuccessful?

It was brought up in a thread somewhere (I do not recall which one, but it was here on AA) that forums alone -- that is, a forum with no other part to the website, such as a blog or information section -- will have a very hard time at succeeding, if they get even close.

It was mentioned that in order to be a successful forum, you must have other components to your website.


What are your thoughts on this? Do you agree that lone-forums cannot really succeed?

I personally do not agree. In fact, two of my forums were launched as just forums. One of them which is almost two years old has always been a forum, but I did add a blog to it about 6 months ago. It is very successful, without question. The other, was only launched last month, and it was (still is) just a forum.

It's nice to supplement your community with informative resources, but it isn't vital. Most of the time, your community itself becomes a master resource of your niche and provides discussion and answers to just about every aspect of the niche.


Share your thoughts.

 

i guess depends on the kind of forum you are running. In my own example we were struggling with just a forum, till we added stuff like Downloads, Articles, blogs, etc....of course what this has done also is that members just visit the site for the downloads and articles more often than not and getting em to post is a challenge, but comparitively its much better than what it used to be as just a forum

 

I would most definitely say that this is not true. I know a lot of forums which were set up purely as forums that have done well, usually ones started to coincide with a major game/TV series/film release and a snappy domain. However, most don't do well in the same way most other kinds of sites do well... that market is merely saturated to the point there's not really enough room in many niches for all these forums.

 

no, i dont think so, cause i know of loads of forums that are just forums, and they are active and successful.

 

My largest forum is just a forum. I've tried adding articles, blogs and other options, but nothing ever took. The users just want the forums, and I'm happy to oblige.

It can make it harder to become more successful though.

 

I think it depends on what the site is about. For me, it's much easier to have the main website and the forum. It would be overload if everything was on the forum.

 

I'm 50/50 on this. My DJ forum, is a forum only, and it was and still is an uphill battle to stay moderately successful.

You need content to draw people in and forums rarely stay on topic. You can block general discussion forums from the search engine like I do and that helps to an extent. I think to the uninitiated (computer/net newbies) forums are somewhat confusing in that they don't quite understand what a forum is and why people are conversing rather than the website just having a solid statement of fact or opinion because it's all written by the same author.

I'd really like to stick a front end on my DJ board, be it vB's new CMS or Wordpress but I'm not a great writer and that's the only thing that stops me. With the CMS it will be nice to be able to pull posts right out of the forum and onto the front page.

On the other hand whenever I see a forum added AFTER the content website be it a blog or static site for the most part it seems as the forum is hidden. Lots of time the owner doesn't give much attention to the forum and it shows.

For my newest blog project, I'm thinking of adding a forum shortly. I'm not sure about launching them both at the same time to though, I have to build content on the blog first and foremost and don't want the promotion of the forums to take away from that.