I’d sure love to hear from you guys that have done this. Was it worth the time and effort? How do your users like it?
Another question: Which one is your home page?
-Blog homepage
-Forums homepage
-Custom homepage with both recent blog and recent forum posts?
-Something else? (please specify)
Was it better for search engines? Have you noticed and increase in traffic and/or earnings?
Thanks in advance for your input!
.
I recently installed SMF Forums on my growing WordPress site with no issues at all. Both platforms are written in PHP and play well together.
I have my homepage set to a static page. My blog posts appear on the subdomain: mywebsite.com/blog/ and my forums work in the same manner: mywebsite.com/forums/
Both are tabs in my regular navigation. You can check it out here: http://prowebwriter.com
I haven’t experienced a change in traffic as of yet. I think I’ve had the forums right around a week now with no new members…only spam accounts and accounts that aren’t posting and/or haven’t validated their email.
I am currently in the process of figuring out the best way to begin promoting, but my website is also going through a transitional phase at the same time. I started it as my business site that I used to procure freelance work. I am in the process of shifting gears to focus on content writers as a community.
Hope this information helps you out. If you are thinking of installing forums, don’t hesitate to experiment. Read up everywhere you can about forum management and how you should go about about promoting you site. Best of luck.