Forums (guide)
From Webcomic Wiki
When a webcomic audience reaches a certain size the webcomic owner may begin to consider adding more community features to their website.
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[edit] Advantages of a forum
The main advantages of adding a forum is that it fosters a feeling of community for the fans, giving them a place to talk about the webcomic, and a place to talk to the webcomic artist. It also allows the webcomic artist to get to know his readers more, allowing him to gain valuable insight into what is liked and disliked about the comic. It also gives the fans another reason to come back to the website.
[edit] Disadvantages of a forum
There are problems associated with having a forum on a website. They can be a lot of work. For larger forums there will be a lot of posts to moderate, users to check and general upkeep activities. Also, if a forum is started without sufficient interest from the fans it will appear “dead” and may reflect badly on the webcomic itself.
[edit] When to start a forum?
The webcomic artist may decide to open a forum when they feel the community is large enough to merit its own place for discussion. Some webcomics will never reach this size, and will make do with shoutboxes and contact forms, and other such forms of communication. Sometimes a webcomic will outgrow it’s original community devices. This is often the case with webcomics that allow commenting. A good rule of thumb for such webcomics is when at least 15 or more people comment on each webcomic then there is sufficient interest in a forums and it will receive sufficient posts to remain “alive”.
Without a commenting system it can be difficult to gauge how many people would sign up to the forums, and more importantly how many people would actually post. The general rule is that for every person that posts there are 5 – 10 that don’t. So, to have a forum of roughly 20 regular posters would probably require a readership of 100 – 200 people. The suggested minimum is that a forum should have at least 15 regular posters to remain sufficiently active as to encourage other posters. Otherwise the forums will stagnant due to lack of topics of conversation.
[edit] Which software to use?
If the website is using a wordpress installation, and has enabled user sign ups one software solution is bbpress as it allows for a fully integrated user database solution. The forum software itself is lacking other features that more mainstream software have as default however.
Punbb is has more features than bbpress, but is still a lightweight package in comparison to other, larger packages.
phpBB is one of the most popular open source forum solutions available. Due to its popularity there are many extension available, and a lot of users on the support forums. There have however been many security issues with phpBB in the past.
vBulletin is a popular paid solution, used by webcomics such as Ctrl-Alt-Delete. It has many features and good support but requires a licence fee. Invison Power Board is another paid solution and is similar to vBulletin, but is has fewer installations.
[edit] Tips
To be added
[edit] See also
- Forums (guide)
- Comparison of Internet forum software
- Imageboard
- Shoutbox (also known as a "tagboard")
