Shoutbox/chat room

[Sapett]

Do you have a shoutbox or chat room on your forum? What plugin or site are you using to support it? Does it get much use? Do you think it takes away from discussions in the rest of your site?

 

[xXInfectedXx]

At the moment, I don't have a chat box on my forum. However, I may consider getting one in the future.

 

[Allenafaith]

I am using the DVZ Shoutbox on my forum. I like this one more than any of the other ones.

 

[Anuj Dhawan]

I'm not also using the shout box or any chat add-on for my forum. I somehow does not like it for a forum.

 

[pwarbi]

Personally I'm not really a fan of any sort of chat box on a forum. As a forum user, rather than owner, I find it slightly annoying to be honest and as the OP said, I think in a way it does detract from the actual point of a forum, and a lot of the time, instead of people making constructive replies or starting new topics, they'll often just put something in the shout box instead.

 

[Alexandoy]

I've been going to Whzon, a social media that pays. It has a chat box on the left side. What's puzzling is that so many users are engaged in the chatbox and not minding the posts. They don't earn anything in the chatbox while they earn cents when their posted photo gets some Likes. So that makes me think that the chatbox is more interesting to some people, a one good way to attract users of a website or a forum. By the way, most chatters there seem to be looking for a long distance love affair, waheehee.

 

[pwarbi]

I'm not saying that a chatbox shouldn't be used, but like you've said yourself @Alexandoy it detracts from the actual posts and topics on the forum, and at the end of the day surely that's what a forum is about.

 

[The_Arctic_Outcry]

I had seen people using the shout box for spamming so that make me hesitate to add one in my potential forum because I want the members to focus in what really matters and that is to make discussions and reply on discussions. The only advantage of a chat box is that it can show potential members and investors that your forum is so active that there are a lot of activity in the chat box. I believe you should only add it depends on the numbers of your active members.

 

[Alexandoy]

I had seen people using the shout box for spamming so that make me hesitate to add one in my potential forum because I want the members to focus in what really matters and that is to make discussions and reply on discussions. The only advantage of a chat box is that it can show potential members and investors that your forum is so active that there are a lot of activity in the chat box. I believe you should only add it depends on the numbers of your active members.

That's the glory of the chatbox, showing the guests that your forum is dynamic. At least even if the main topics are not being touched, there is traffic you can speak of. And those chatters are part of the community. If there would be a plan to revitalize our office website, I would suggest to install a chatbox in the forum so as to attract a bigger community. For me, it wouldn't matter if the forum has hundreds of active member, the chatbox is still a good tool for getting traffic.

 

[kingcool52]

I don't think that a shoutbox or a chatroom is a good feature for a forum especially new ones as they can tend to take activity away from the main forum boards as most members will likely chat with each other on the shoutbox. What I tend to do however is have a shoutbox that is restricted so that only the staff members of the forum and maybe even members who have upgraded membership access and use it