Ads on Blogs (a newish blog – to me at least) has a list of Useful Blog Forums for those interested in discussing the ins and outs of blogging.
Do many here use blog specific forums? I have to admit to not using them much – if I go to forums they tend to be less focused upon blogging and more focused upon other website building activities like SEO and Adsense.
Which forums (if any) do you spend time in?
I’m in Webmaster World although very strict rules :)
I tend to lurk around the Webmaster World, Sitepoint, SearchEngineWatch, Cre8asite and WordPress forums. I guess they’re pretty standard for many webmasters.
Link appears to be dead. :(
Besides my forums, I also visit Top Hosting Deals (Super Moderator), WebHostingTalk (Market Place forums) and SitePoint (Advisor).
I’m the leader and moderator of http://www.blogbuzz.soflow.com
I’m a frequent poster on the Rich Dad Forums. Trying to learn about passive income!
Hi Darren,
I spend a fair amount of time in IM forums (a list is on my sidebar) where I get to learn from both successful folks and newbies. Some are focused on Blogging, most aren’t. More often than not, the active blog discussions come from less experienced folks and pertain to automated Blog stuff. Generally tho’, the information flow is excellent and often provides me with food for thought which I can take to my Blog. It’s all good!
Mark
I actively participate in all of the forums I read, but they are not really “blog specific forums”. They are geared towards the small business entrepreneur and/or accounting and income tax. That’s because that is what I do in my ‘day job’ – naturally the forums will be similar to my own trade …
For the forum sites listed above and the “blog specific” sites listed in the referred article, they are more like Support sites to me .. if I was looking for something particular and the search engine brought me to the forum, I might register and post a comment.
Mind you, I think there is a need for software specific forums, like e.g. WordPress users use wordpress forums. If there are wordpress issues, and I post a comment, I will add the RSS Feed and follow the comments on the topic even after my situation has been resolved. I wouldn’t participate in a MT forum.
But, honestly .. who needs these canned script PHP forums when there are blogs out there? I can’t tell you how many useless forums I’ve seen by companies out there, with less than 50 ‘members’ … you may as well just pick up the phone and ask the company’s tech support guy a question or email the small business owner themselves if you have any questions. They would be better off with a blog or even a ‘heads up’ Tag-Board or MSN Messenger (or googletalk)
I’m more specific to small business / entrepreneurial forums. Some I’m quite active are: Small Business Forums (www.small-business-forum.com), DigitalPoint (http://forums.digitalpoint.com/), Talk Home Business (www.talkhomebusiness.com), SitePoint is also a useful one.
For me, forums are both good and bad. The good is contributing, getting exposure, building up a reputation, developing relationships .. the bad: you can be become quite ‘addicted’ to forums where you end up spending way too much of your hours a day on them (this from experience;-)
That’s why I’d rather be invovled in fewer forums (2-4) rather than 10+ … and yep, nothing’s worse than a empty forum.
I’m always on the look-out for a good, active blogging forum to get involved in – though I’m yet to come across one, so I’m hoping something from this list hits me.
I created a blog forum for local bloggers(www.malaysiaBloggers.com). It serve as a place for blog helps and local blog related events discussion.
There is a blogging forum at http://www.bloggertalk.com
We ar running a small blog forum at http://www.seozip.com/forums/blog-forum.html
Bloggers don`t seem to enjoy lurking around in forums it seems, unlike webmasters.
We are running “Best Blogs in Asia” :
http://www.misohoni.com/bba/
I just set up: http://www.theblognation.com which is a new forum. . . but I am also part of 4 other forums and try to help members out with their blogs.
None of those websites were above a mediocore status.
Chris Jones
http://www.inspirationalexperiences.org