I had a few readers request that I start a John Chow dot Com forums. I have toyed with the idea for the past few days but haven’t quite made up my mind on it. On one hand, having a forum would allow more interaction with readers. Right now, the blog is kinda forum like but all the posts are started by me.
Starting a forum could also take comments away from the main blog and that is something I don’t want to do because comments help drive traffic. I have found a VB hack that will take over the WordPress comment system but it’s not as integrated as I would like it to be. The hack just takes you to the forums in order to comment and the comments no longer show up in the post itself. If someone can make a VB hack that allows readers to comment right on the blog and have those comments show up under the blog post, it would be idea.
What are your thoughts? Would you like to see a forum for this blog? Would you use it? do you think it will take away from current community setup? Feedback would be very much appreciated.