Adding Forums to blogs, Good idea?

Blogs are directed conversation; your users (typically) comment on your posts, which presumably wouldn't exist if they took the community in an unwanted direction.

When you throw open that message board, every user can direct the discussion, which is neither good nor bad, but it can be chaotic.

Also realize you're going to be investing less time in blogging and more in playing editor.

I think it could be a good thing, provided you don't have dead forums. Since you have a fair number of visitors, you might give it a try. Dead forums, however can kill a site. Hey, why not have other people create content for you?

Oooo, don't use phpBB. I did that and I spend so much time killing spam accounts that it's just not worth it.

Yes, you can set it so that users need to validate before they can post but I'm trying to keep the forum kid-friendly so I can't leave accounts with rude words in the name/website/comment fields as they're visible to the users.

There are benefits to having forums in addition to your blog:

1. User-generated conversations - people can raise topics independently and sometimes you'll get a bit of news you didn't know about!
2. Gated community - anyone can comment on your blog, but I've found those who take the time to sign up to a forum are more likely to be sensible commenters and participate in quality discussions.
3. Traffic! - All that user-generated content likewise generates additional search engine traffic and possible AdSense/advertising opportunities.

I have a reality TV blog that I created a forum for, and it's now generating a fair bit of traffic in it's own right. Occassionally I cross-refer between the two and can definitely see the benefits.

As for platform, Simple Machines Forum is pretty fully featured and easy to skin.

I'm trying to that with one on my blogs. I have the blog and a forum. The key is to get the users that visit the blog to post on the forum. The quality of the blog should be determinant for the success of the forum I think.

It is a good idea to have a forum as it makes the peole more interactive , and they come regualarly to your site, it is well organised and compact thean blog.

Thhis will certainly help you and I tell you it never downs you nor makes you feel sorry of keeping forum but makes you happy.

he end user can post his tricks and cheat codes,...

It's a it more work, but you can monitor the forums if you choose one that has that feature. That way if someone says something you don't like, then you simply don't post it.

Although in the ebay powersellers blog we have some big arguments going on, and it's best when both sides of the argument are on at the same time.

I'm usually pretty come in my answers and can usually make the person on the other side get so mad they say things they would never say in person. You want to talk about traffic? Other ps'ers will see the comment, run to their favorite chat threads and type Fight Fight see post "url link".

Gets even more fun when others get involved.

Funny thing is the arguing parties usually end up friends.

Full disclosure, I lost my last fight. Sad, but true.

Great idea dude, as long as you are prepared to work for it

It takes one bit of effort in the early stages to get such a project off the ground, let alone organizing it. In fact, this is the easy part.

You can either try and set up a networking blog, where bloggers log in and contribute, or a free forum like mylot or orkut, where contributors are paid according to their input.

Hence it should be more of a social network and the fact they are getting paid for it makes it more enjoyable for them, despite the amount. Can name many more which have made a killing in the recent few months.

Infact think of starting a forum which has a blog.

However your objective should be clear and how am I going to make something out of it.

I agree that forums add more life to blogs. It allows an alternative way of communication and allows people to get faster responses rather than make comments on blog entries that are usually spam or need approval before they are shown

I have to recommend bbPress if you are worried about spam because they use the Akimet database.