Shoutbox on Forums

[Alexander]

Having a Shoutbox on forums can be enjoyable and interactive, enabling members to engage in quick and informal conversations. On the flip side of the coin, having a shoutbox may reduce activity with posts and topics, since people are leaning towards instant messaging nowadays resulting in a serious impact in your website's SEO. What do you think of Shoutboxes?

I noticed that @Nebulous has one on Forum Advertiser, so would be interesting to hear his thoughts on this subject.

 

[Creaky]

Personally not a fan of them, they tend to distract from the actual forum in my experience

 

[Cory]

I prefer using a Discord server over a shoutbox. I think by doing so, you'll have members both on the Discord server and your forum. If a shoutbox were available, that would take away the purpose of a general chit-chat thread to an extent, in my opinion.

 

[Nebulous's iconNebulous]

having a shoutbox may reduce activity with posts and topics

they tend to distract from the actual forum in my experience

I've never had seen that happen on a forum I've ran. People always stick to the threads and just use the shoutbox for a quick "hi" and "bye."

In reality a shoutbox is just another place for your members to engage with each other, which can only be a positive.

Also in our case, every time you post a shout, your post count increases by 1 too.