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The Pros and Cons of Creating a Forum on a WordPress Website

在WordPress网站上创建论坛的利弊

Forums can be a great asset for your WordPress website, providing a range of benefits for your business and your users. However, they also need looking after and, when poorly managed, can cause a lot of problems. In this post, we’ll look at the pros and cons of creating a forum on your WordPress site.

论坛可以成为您的WordPress网站的重要资产，为您的企业和用户提供一系列好处。 但是，他们也需要照顾，如果管理不善，可能会导致很多问题。 在本文中，我们将探讨在WordPress网站上创建论坛的利弊。

What is a forum?

什么是论坛？

Essentially, a forum is a meeting place for discussion. An online forum usually takes the form of a message board where people can converse through posting and replying to messages. Individuals have the ability to create a topic for discussion, ask questions or put forward a point of view to which others can respond.

本质上，论坛是讨论的聚会场所。 在线论坛通常采用留言板的形式，人们可以在其中通过发布和回复邮件进行交谈。 个人具有创建讨论话题，提出问题或提出他人可以回应的观点的能力。

The benefits of having a forum

举办论坛的好处

1. Great for customer service

1.非常适合客户服务

If you run a business of any kind, your customers will have all kinds of questions about your products and services. Responding to those questions is a sign that you offer good customer service, however, if lots of people are asking the same questions over and over, it can be a time-consuming process.

如果您经营任何类型的业务，您的客户都会对您的产品和服务有各种疑问。 回答这些问题表明您提供了良好的客户服务，但是，如果很多人一遍又一遍地问同样的问题，那可能是一个耗时的过程。

A forum gives you the perfect way to deal with those questions.  You can create a topic for that question on your forum and write the answer. This way, when people ask in future, you can point them to the forum and save yourself the time of dealing with each query individually.

论坛为您提供了解决这些问题的完美方法。 您可以在论坛上为该问题创建主题并写下答案。 这样，当人们将来询问时，您可以将他们指向论坛，从而节省了分别处理每个查询的时间。

If there are questions you haven’t thought of, customers can ask them on the forum and you can supply the answers when they appear.

如果您有未想到的问题，客户可以在论坛上提问，并且可以在出现时提供答案。

2. Forums help develop customer loyalty

2.论坛有助于建立客户忠诚度

One of the great things about forums is that members will often help each other out. You’ll always find expert members who are inclined to offer advice to others and take a leading role in solving your other customers’ problems.

论坛的一大优点是成员之间经常会互相帮助。 您将始终找到专家成员，他们倾向于向他人提供建议并在解决其他客户的问题方面发挥领导作用。

When this starts to happen, your forum turns into a self-help community. The benefit of this is that customers are more likely to use and continue to you use your products and services when they know they have such a community to turn to when they need advice.

当这种情况开始发生时，您的论坛就会变成一个自助社区。 这样做的好处是，当客户知道他们有这样的社区可以在需要咨询时寻求帮助时，他们更有可能使用并继续使用您的产品和服务。

3. A valuable source of customer feedback

3.宝贵的客户反馈来源

Forum members often discuss any issues they have in detail. This gives you a much greater understanding of how to help them. The problems they have with your products and services will help you focus on the improvements you need to make. You’ll may also become aware of other products and services they need and this can drive future developments in your business.

论坛成员通常会详细讨论他们遇到的任何问题。 这使您对如何帮助他们有了更多的了解。 他们在产品和服务方面遇到的问题将帮助您专注于需要进行的改进。 您可能还会意识到他们需要的其他产品和服务，这可以推动您业务的未来发展。

As you can participate in those discussions, forums enable you to make sure you give your customers exactly what they need. Software companies, for example, use forums as a way to ensure that their apps are regularly updated to respond to their customers’ feedback.

当您可以参加这些讨论时，论坛使您可以确保为客户提供所需的确切信息。 例如，软件公司使用论坛来确保定期更新其应用程序以响应客户的反馈。

4. Improved SEO

4.改进的SEO

Search engines like websites that offer users detailed and relevant content – and this is exactly what a forum provides. An established, well-run forum can do this in an almost encyclopaedic way.

诸如网站之类的搜索引擎为用户提供了详细而相关的内容，而这正是论坛所提供的。 一个建立良好，运作良好的论坛几乎可以通过百科全书来完成。

In addition, if new topics and posts are added regularly, your site will be adding lots of fresh content which is also good for SEO purposes. And with members using lots of relevant keywords in their posts, it’s likely that your forum content will appear in search results, driving new traffic to your website too.

另外，如果定期添加新的主题和帖子，则您的网站将添加很多新鲜的内容，这对于SEO也是有好处的。 随着成员在帖子中使用大量相关关键字，您的论坛内容很可能会出现在搜索结果中，从而也为网站带来了新的流量。

Problems with running a forum

举办论坛的问题

1. Getting your forum off the ground

1.建立您的论坛

The hardest task with any forum is to get it established. No-one is going to join or start contributing to an empty forum so, initially, it is up to you to create the topics and start posting. Once the forum has some relevant content, you then need to start promoting it to your users. To do this, you should put links on your site to the forum and invite customers to become members in your communications with them.  You should also make it easy for people to become members.

建立任何论坛都是最困难的任务。 没有人会加入或开始为一个空的论坛做贡献，因此，最初，由您决定创建主题并开始发布。 一旦论坛具有一些相关的内容，您就需要开始将其推广给您的用户。 为此，您应该在站点上放置指向论坛的链接，并邀请客户成为与他们进行交流的成员。 您还应该使人们容易成为会员。

2. Establishing the rules

2.建立规则

Well-run forums have clear rules about how members are expected to behave when posting. This usually requires them not to post things which are offensive or illegal, for example, using bad language, posting copyrighted images or making defamatory comments.

运行良好的论坛有明确的规则，要求成员在发布时的行为方式。 这通常要求他们不要发布具有冒犯性或违法行为的内容，例如，使用不良语言，发布受版权保护的图像或发表诽谤性评论。

You should also set guidelines about what kind of content is or isn’t allowed and where on the forum particular discussions should take place.

您还应该设置有关允许或禁止何种内容以及在论坛上的特定位置进行讨论的准则。

3. Managing the forum

3.管理论坛

Once you have established the rules, you will need to manage the forum. To do this you will have to check that members are not breaking the rules you set. If they are, you may need to impose sanctions on them, such as temporarily blocking them from using the site.

建立规则后，您将需要管理论坛。 为此，您必须检查成员是否违反您设置的规则。 如果是这样，您可能需要对它们施加制裁，例如暂时阻止他们使用该网站。

Another important aspect of managing the forum is making sure that important questions are answered. If you are the only person managing a busy forum, it can take up a great deal of your time. To manage it effectively, you may need to restrict the number of topics which can be discussed or ask others to be administrators or moderators.

管理论坛的另一个重要方面是确保回答了重要问题。 如果您是管理繁忙论坛的唯一人员，那么它可能会占用您大量时间。 为了有效地管理它，您可能需要限制可以讨论的主题数，或者要求其他人作为管理员或主持人。

4. Preventing spam

4.防止垃圾邮件

Whilst many people use forums to find help or discuss things with others, there are some that use them for more selfish purposes. You’ll find people becoming members just so that they can create backlinks to their websites, scammers who post links to phishing sites and many other types of unwanted activities. If these things appear on your forum it can result in a search engine penalty which can have devastating consequences for your website’s ability to rank in search engine results.

尽管许多人使用论坛来寻求帮助或与他人讨论事物，但有些人将其用于更自私的目的。 您会发现人们只是成为成员而已，因此他们可以创建指向其网站的反向链接，欺诈者将其发布到钓鱼网站的链接以及许多其他类型的有害活动。 如果这些内容出现在您的论坛上，可能会导致搜索引擎罚款，这可能会对您的网站在搜索引擎结果中排名的能力造成灾难性的后果。

To prevent this, you need to make it clear in your rules that these things are not acceptable. Some forums configure their setting to prevent links being used in forum posts altogether. It is also possible to permanently ban spammers from your site – you can even put a block on their IP address to prevent them trying to re-join using a different username.

为防止这种情况，您需要在规则中明确说明这些事情是不可接受的。 某些论坛会配置其设置，以防止完全在论坛帖子中使用链接。 也可以从您的站点永久禁止垃圾邮件发送者–您甚至可以在其IP地址上设置一个阻止项，以防止他们尝试使用其他用户名重新加入。

How to create a forum on your website

如何在您的网站上创建论坛

Like most things on WordPress, you can create a forum simply by installing a plugin. The most popular forum plugins are bbPress with over 300,000 active users and BuddyPress with 200,000 active users. These two plugins have been around for a long time and have a well-established reputation amongst WordPress users. There are, however, quite a few other plugins which offer similar functions.

像WordPress上的大多数内容一样，您只需安装插件即可创建论坛。 最受欢迎的论坛插件是拥有30万活跃用户的bbPress和拥有20万活跃用户的BuddyPress 。 这两个插件已经存在很长时间了，并且在WordPress用户中享有良好的声誉。 但是，还有许多其他插件提供类似的功能。

Conclusion

结论

Forums can be very useful features for your website, enabling you to build a community around your brand, solve your customers’ problems, increase loyalty and boost SEO. However, running a forum requires time and effort to get it established and continued management once it is up and running.

论坛对于您的网站可能是非常有用的功能，使您可以围绕品牌建立社区，解决客户的问题，提高忠诚度并提高SEO。 但是，运行一个论坛需要花费时间和精力才能建立并持续管理它。

If you run a WordPress website and are looking for dedicated WordPress hosting, check out our WordPress hosting packages.

如果您运行WordPress网站并正在寻找专用的WordPress托管，请查看我们的WordPress托管软件包 。

翻译自: https://www.eukhost.com/blog/webhosting/the-pros-and-cons-of-creating-a-forum-on-a-wordpress-website/

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