InformationWeek

ooking for loyalty and site stickiness? Your corporate Web site offers your customers product information, purchasing opportunities, and technical support. Newsletters, E-mail updates, and the occasional snail-mail missive might entice a long-lost visitor to return to your site. But one of the best sure-fire ways to generate loyalty is a discussion board.

An online community can serve as a backup to your tech support department. Users tell each other what works, and how to avoid potential problem areas. Discussion boards also can give your marketing department unique insight into customers' concerns; participants will tell each other--and you--what they really care about. Plus, a community keeps your customers committed to your product, which is a benefit that's difficult to quantify.

Online community building can involve message boards, real-time chat, and file sharing. In this article, we'll look at the issues involved in setting up a Web-based discussion forum.

Computer nerds have always liked to get together and talk about their projects, hobbies, and outside lives. As a result, discussion software has been around, in some form, for about 30 years, dating back to teletype printouts from primitive mainframe-based systems. In the past, members of a particular discussion forum had to run platform-dependent software, which effectively blocked those on other platforms from accessing the board. In the last few years, most discussion software has been re-written to run on a Web browser, so anyone who can access the Web can join in.

Simple Stuff, Techie-Wise
The underlying technology of discussion software is a database that lets users view the messages, choose from the topics being discussed, and post a reply if desired. Community members write text messages and post them to the board, and other users can read and respond on their own schedules.

The database on which the forum is built defines how users view the posted messages. Early forms of discussion software simply presented the messages in chronological order, and didn't allow an easy way to follow a particular discussion from start to finish. A "threaded" message board displays the discussions on a single topic in an easy-to-follow structure.

Busy discussion forums can attract hundreds of posts in a day, so another key attribute of a good board is the ability to define major topic areas. For instance, users who are concerned with setup issues might not want to wade through messages about a ski trip planned by another group of users. The administrator has the somewhat unenviable task of making sure the board is organized properly, with appropriate sections and topics.

The unfortunate reality regarding discussion boards, however, is that most of them are clumsy and difficult to administer.

Administrators need tools that let them move a discussion into the proper section, and rename threads that either were misnamed to begin with, or have veered off the topic as the discussion developed. If the tools are difficult to use, the boards looks sloppy and unprofessional. Some packages have archiving options, so you can maintain the older messages without having them scroll off into byte heaven as they age. You'll also have to watch for posts that contain language that your company doesn't want associated with its image, and may have to block some users entirely.

Comparison Shopping
Of the packages on the market, three that are notable are Web Crossing, BuzzPower and WebBoard.

BuzzPower, published by BuzzCompany was developed with E-commerce sites in mind, and gives the hosting company plenty of opportunity to link the discussion topics back to product promotion. BuzzPower offers flexible setup options, but the administrative learning curve is somewhat steep. You can define the general topic areas and post a FAQ or intro message in each area, so your users know what to expect, and also generate cross-links to other topics on your site. One nice touch is BuzzPower's ability to put graphics on a topic page, and rotate ad banners by topic. From the point of view of a company with product to sell, BuzzPower is a winner.

Web Crossing, by Lundeen & Associates, features an array of customizable options and is highly scalable. It includes a scripting language that gives administrators incredible control over the user interface, and its security options are also strong. You can differentiate between authenticated users and guests, letting guests ("lurkers") peek and permitting only registered members to post.

WebBoard, currently published by O'Reilly and Associates, is being acquired by ChatSpace, and it's a strong product. WebBoard lets you run your discussion forum concurrently on different servers, which keeps your forum up and available even if one of your servers goes down. It also supports a variety of database formats. You can run up to 255 separate forums with one copy of WebBoard, making it a reasonable choice for a growing community. Three different levels of administration can be defined, so you can get help managing the message board without giving away the keys to the entire forum.

As illustrated by WebBoard's status, the community software market is undergoing a massive contraction, thanks to the recent slide in tech stocks. Several good products are being orphaned. Although those applications still work, no future development is planned.

One site with a terrific discussion forum is Prophet Finance's ProphetTalk. The software, which was developed in-house, is now available for lease, and I'm impressed with its messaging features.

However, for legal reasons, the site owners decided not to include tools that let an administrator move, rename, or delete posts. ProphetTalk is a discussion board about stocks, investments, and company rumors; investors who feel duped by a post, or companies that think they've been slammed unfairly, have taken to the courts to get posts deleted. Apparently, Prophet Finance's concern revolved around the potential for being sued if they offered a moderated board; their lawyers feel that leaving the board unmoderated prevents the company from lawsuits. (This should also give you some insight into the nontechnical concerns of operating a discussion forum.)

None Of Them Are Outstanding
Though the offerings are improving bit by bit, the Web-based forum software available still has problems. The main problem, from the point of view of both user and administrator, is a lack of keyboard commands. You have to click on a link, and then wait (and wait ý and wait ý ) for the next page to load, or for your command to be carried out. I've been sysopping on a CompuServe forum for 13 years now, and have done most of my work using an ancient DOS-based access program called Tapcis. CompuServe forums can also be accessed via the Web now, but it takes considerably longer to execute the same commands on the Web vs. the old DOS program.

Is there a way to add keyboard equivalents to HTML-based forums, and to speed up performance overall? Help us out here, developers!