Forum Options That Can Revitalize Your Membership Website

A forum for your membership website is not only a great way to engage members but it is better than social media in some cases.  Even so, the engagement rate of your forum may be low unless you take the time to develop it into a growing place that attracts members.  Membership management software can help you do just that and revitalize your website into a leading source for valuable information.

 

Discourse is a relatively new, mobile-friendly option that is open source and has received numerous positive reviews for how flawless it functions.  This choice is a combination of a chat room, Facebook group, and forum.  Discourse has useful features that include the capacity to send out automatic emails and a badge system that makes the forum experience more user-friendly.

Additionally, it supports instant notifications and allows you to see when members are typing a response.  The downside is that you will likely need to use different cloud hosting as the one offered with Discourse is rather expensive.

 

BuddyPress delivers a social site feel with elements like customizable member profiles, member directories, and private messaging while bbPress offers the forums.  Not only is this combination free but it has a key benefit of membership plug-ins being compatible with your existing theme.
The shortcoming with this option is that it doesn’t provide all the features of specialized forum software so other plug-ins may need to be installed.  Fortunately, there are a variety of tutorials and supporting plug-ins available for BuddyPress.

 

Xenforo is an excellent option if you seek a comprehensive forum for your membership.  With this software, your content doesn’t have to be placed on WordPress as Xenforo will host it along with your discussions.  The disadvantage is that it’s not designed to work with WordPress but it can be integrated.  When choosing membership management software, make sure you weigh each forum option and choose the one that works best for you.