Shoutbox

[WasteD]

Is it necessary to have shoutbox? If you said it is, where would you place it? On top of board or on footer? All forums I am active on have it. I guess I'm just used to it on top of board, but I just want everyone opinion on it.

 

[Bejay]

I perfer it being on a seperate page.

 

[USHost247]

It's not really such a big thing but members do like it. I prefer it to be at the top of a forum.

 

[Ziveeman]

I don't like them. I never use them.

 

[AnAccount]

I don't like them, really. I feel that they take activity away from what could be spent on the forum.

 

[Bossanova]

I have a ChatBox for my forum, and amazingly, activity still kicks on the forum. The ChatBox on my forum is just if we're ever waiting for someone to post in a RP.

 

[Watch Me Sink]

Never really used them. They use Server resourses (though AJAX isn't that much of a memory hog), and are often just containing people saying hi.

 

[WasteD]

It could be that or it is easier to tell people where you are or what you are doing in shoutbox rather than making hello/goodbye threads.

 

[Ashish92]

hmm i don't mind chatboxes much but i have seen on a few forums where chatbox is located in the sidebar and i found it really impressive the way it didn't diverted attention from forums 🙂

 

[Mike1140]

I do like it but it seems to Lag the whole board so I have not gotten one for this forum i have now.

 

[LunarScorpio]

I like having a shoutbox around if people actually use if. Generally I like to see it at the footer or on it's own page. I think it promotes conversation between members, which is definitely a good thing.

 

[PurpleCrow]

I dont like them, I think it distracts people from the forum.

 

[ros]

I've always had shoutboxes, and I don't think they decrease activity at all. I think they just improve your community-building. I usually put mine in a sidebar.

 

[Acorn]

I've found they are entirely not worth the tradeoff in headaches.

We get too much traffic to make the constant monitoring that a chatbox on our site would require worth our time. Every time we tried it, it was spammed, trolled, what have you within only a few hours. Instead we have a couple of boards open to guests where they may post their questions and things.

 

[xCuCu]

If the forum is a General Discussion forum, then I think they can have one. But otherwise, I think it is just space consuming.

 

[DarkRaven]

Shoutboxes are a real no no for small forums. They totally kill activity by taking members attention away from the main content.

Only large forums should get them, if even, in my opinion.

 

[CyberFreak]

I fond they are usually spam filled, take some activity away from the forum and get in the way. People have split opinions on shoutboxes normally.

On a promotion forum it is even more of a no in my opinion. It is just a sitting opportunity for some idiot to spam their link on.