Having a shoutbox for your forum?

Not to get too far off topic, but I was wondering about the back story for that forum change. The new forum looks very nice, some very interesting topics being discussed over there. A good atmosphere, too. That's what you want most from a general chat forum, a place where everyone can relax.

I was thinking the same thing too about how chat boxes make a site look messy. There's a lot of text speak going on in the chat box.

Not to mention how chat boxes defeat forum SEO; all those words wasted in the chat box when they could be converted into relevant posts and responses and archived on the forum for search engine optimization purposes. Once words are posted on a chat box, they are lost forever, no good to the forum owner. On a forum (just as on a blog), the more words used, the better. We're talking about fresh content.

Words attract the Google search engine spiders like nothing else and just so long as you stay on topic, the search engine traffic will follow.

 

Ah yes, SEO.. forgot how chat boxes indeed affect SEO very well, and most dont realize that. So if anyone uses a chatbox its best to make it hidden from bots/guests or whatever usergroup the bots visit from.

 

Those are the two reasons why my forum doesn't have one. I'm thinking of setting up a Jabber group for my staff, and maybe a chat room for VIPs, but never for the normal members. It can be very deadly to a forum.

 

You could try using IRC.

 

Yeah IRC can be a good idea, it's just got a steeper learning curve than the Jabber protocol has. XMPP is behind both Jabber and GTalk, so there's an option of adding GMail users to the chat. Also, most of the Jabber-compliant clients out there are free and easy to use, like Trillian and Pidgin for example. IRC's clients are crappy if they're free, at least the ones for Windows.

 

We don't use a "shout box" because it eats forum resources. I do, however, generally embed an external chat client (chatango) onto the forum portal, which we use for general discussion of all of our RPs. Yes, the words could be used for "valuable posts" but I am not concerned with spamming up the discussion threads for the RPs with the mindless stuff we discuss in the chat. We use it for characterization brain storming and generally getting to know one another. I believe the reason that we are such a tightly knit community is because of the chat room, which a good half of the active users visit regularly. It is also how I got to know my girlfriend so well and eventually asked her to date me. So chat rooms on forums have my thumbs up. It's not much to ask users to write properly there anyway. If they're decent people they can avoid the "urge" to write in "chatspeak".

 

It's okay as long as you don't extremely promote it. If there's less posts than 'shouts' you should probably temporarily close it(or tell them it's going through an error) and see if you get a boost in posts.

 

I rather just not have a shoutbox then go through that hassle.

 

Well, then that's where the 'ultimate veto rule' comes into play. If you yourself don't want it for the community, then just don't add it

 

I wouldn't ever, I still think they should be posting and not chatting. If you need to chat with someone that's why you have spots for them to input their messenger handles.

 

I've never really been fan of shoutboxes on my forums. I honestly don't see the point of them. Sure you can have small off-topic gossip but if that's truly what you're using it for why not take it to a messenger or a PM. Most of the time people leave 5-6 word shouts and I find it pointless even for general or gaming forums.

 

Yea as mentioned above it defeats the purpose of a forum, as the purpose of a forum is to chat about things anyway.

 

A shout box/chat box is good but it does have it's problems, loss of posting around the forums because members are posting more in the shout box, problems and arguments being caused in the shoutbox, one problem I had was that members would post up problems they where having in the shoutbox rather than PM'ing a member of staff or posting in the appropriate forum which was a problem if members had posted after that shout and you didn't always see it.

 

Good points Shortie, when I had a shoutbox on my old gaming forum I would have members doing the same thing there.

 

I personally don't like shoutboxes. Most you see are big and take up a lot of room, and draw your attention away from the forum itself.

The only exception I can see if it's hidden away from everybody and you just use it to leave a quick note for your staff.

 

Yea that and only allowing it to members who upgrade to VIP/Premium Membership which alot of forums do.

 

i dont like having shoutboxes because it usally means the post count goes down

 

Hey Jack, Mind elaborating more like how others here have done? Why does a shoutbox make a forum's activity or posts go down?

 

your post count goes down because if you have a shoutbox why would members go to the effort of creating a new topic when they could just type and enter

 

The single worst feature for holding back activity.