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Should You Put a Chatbox On Your Forum?

Ever thought about putting a chatbox on your forum? Alot of people have mixed emotions about them because they can help the forum but they can also hurt it.

There's a lot of people that think if you have a chatbox people would be more focused on communicating with that whether than posting on the forum. This is relatively true sometimes. A chatbox can attract too much attention by a member and they would be so into communicating with the chatbox, that they get lazy and wouldn't be posting as much around the forum. This isn't really something you want.



On the other hand, a chatbox could be a great asset to your forum. Many people may become attracted to the idea of having fast communication with the whole forum, unlike Private Messaging, which is usually with only one person. I've seen a lot of forums with a shoutbox at the bottom which seems pretty active. Many people may make a thread or new post and go to the shoutbox to inform others to go read and reply to it. This could improve forum interactions.


A shoutbox is also a form of chatbox.



As of now I don't really focus too much on them because only certain forums can have them. I've been browsing and posting in a lot of promotion forums. A promotion forum or something similar doesn't really need a chatbox. It doesn't really go with the flow. A promotion forum with a chat box would probably cause too much trouble. I can totally see a bunch of member hungry people advertising up and down the chat box posting links everywhere clogging everything up. 


In my personal experiences, chatboxes work better on forums about gaming, anime, manga, and anything similar. 



Another reason why a forum couldn't have a chatbox is their overall activity. If you own a forum that has dozens and dozens of people online at the same time throughout the day, your chat box could be very overpopulated and cluttered. They work better on forums with decent activity. Not too big but not too small.


Thanks for reading!


How do you feel about chatboxes? Reply with a comment below.



2 comments:

  1. "Some people think if you have a chatbox people would be more focused on communicating on that whether than posting on the forum."

    Unfortunately, is extremely common, and the main reason why I don't put chatboxes on my forums. In that rare instance, maybe the chatbox won't swallow the forum's activity, but generally, people will spend all their time in the chatbox. I do like them, especially for fast communication, I just don't like how they drain activity from the forum.

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  2. I have the same thinking as yours, a 'normal' forums does not need to have chatroom. However, a gaming like forums with a chatroom would be great.

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