Having a shoutbox for your forum?

I know a few forums that run it and their owners love it, I just hate shoutboxes - it gives us admins/staff member more work to do, and that's not cool.

 

I may consider adding an IRC here on AdminBB.

 

I'm not a fan of IRC as I'd rather moderate a chat integrated into the forums, than use some third party shoutbox or IRC, etc. but that's another discussion all together

 

Thats the point, if we have a shoutbox that will just cause members to stop posting. But an IRC is a different thing.. and it wont be used much.

 

I feel shoutboxes defeat the purpose of posting and that ultimately kills forums.....I don't use one on my site and don't ever plan to. :-)

 

Thats exactly what I said.. its not useful much to a forum. Maybe to a website of blog for visitors to connect.

 

Shoutboxes look very cheap and free imo. Best to just install a separate chatroom on your site for members to chat to each other, plus shoutboxes take up plenty of resources.

 

Yea I forgot to mention that, it can put a good load on your servers.

 

I think it really depends on what your site’s niche. On my site it works really well because a lot of people there role-play and it’s a lot easier to plot in chat rather than via PM or even in thread. It hasn’t taken away any activity and actually when I did experiment, taking the shoutbox off the site, activity went down quite a bit. I was honestly surprised because I had heard so many people saying how it kills activity, when it turned out it helped my community gain activity. New topics often arise from the conversations and it helps us to get to know one another better as well. But that’s my site and that’s now how it always works out.

 

Well I am happy to hear its helping you, and yes a forum's niche does play a good role in determining whether or not having a shoutbox can be useful or not. Its a No-No for webmaster forums.

 

I hate shoutboxes though my users love them.

If I MUST have them then I wont display them to unregistered members because for me personally if I seen a site that had one displayed to guests it would instantly put me off signing up.

I think they looker really messy and risk becoming spammy for forums as well it's even more silly because forums are about discussions and a shoutbox kind of defeats the object.

Sadly my members like them so I'm sure it wont be long before I'm asked to implement one but it one be taking up to much room on my homepage if I do.

 

I thought you had one, you removed it?

 

It's not called a shout-box, But I think it's about the same thing, it's called mChat (mini Chat) I liked having it on my forum because every once in awhile, I don't feel like making a thread just to say simple things like, "Has so and so happen yet" OR "Where's such and such" and things of that nature

 

I don't own that forum any more long complicated story lol

I'm in the process of setting up a new general discussion forum and that one now belongs to someone else who I sold it to.

Very complex story but I was offered a nice price for it and figured I could just start another and make it better and pay for better servers and what not with the money that's cutting a long and complex story short trust me

But yea on my new site I'm gonna put off a shoutbox for as long as I possibly can before members start complaining lol

 

Well it is called a shoutbox or chatbox, but if you are referring to a specific shoutbox's name than thats a different story.

 

I think that it could be a cool addition to forums but I think that's only if the forums are really active otherwise the shoutbox just looks lonely and I think reflects poorly on said forums in general.

 

A shoutbox defeats the purpose of a forum, as people are suppose to communicate through the threads and talk about the topics. And not to mention it can use alot of server resources.

 

It all depends of the forum I suppose. I mean if you have a new forum and add a shoutbox its a really bad thing. First of all for chat and shoutbox you need at least a few members that are active. If you don't have those members then guests will fill the forum is empty by just looking at the shoutbox conversations or the chat that never has anyone online.

 

It's proven to take a way activity from the forum epically on general discussion forums. I know a one forum I'd spend hours on the chatbox but would never post on the forum.

 

Same here, if I see a chatbox im bound to chat rather than post.