I agree with this: The thing about a forum is that you can have layers of privacy where people can put more considered and useful discussion in the forum. Those names "...blog, article, news..." are really just about managing people's expectations about what kind of content they're going to see.
I don't see the forum format dying; if I want the answer to something I'm most likely to find it on a forum somewhere, and I'm most likely to find it via Google. However, we do get people to come back to our site from some Facebook groups and occasionally from Twitter.
I'm open minded about vB5 Connect, I like the idea of it "doing SEO" for you and making the most of your content, but the truth is until the CMS, or something allowing us to use the content in our present CMS, and the calendar are back in there then we won't be able to do much with it.
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Looks interesting and positive, even if the beta version doesn't yet work at least there's some honesty in calling it a beta version and the finished product may be better than what we have today. The fact remains though that if you've populated your vB4 site with content you'll kill it off by upgrading to vB5 at the moment.
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That's correct, and that creates a back-catalogue of useful content which is more important than connecting to social media if that content can be found by people who value it. Having something built around a forum structure also gives you the freedom to have choice of content, some public, some private, some even private and paid for by subscription (some of the legal sites out there manage this successfully).
It's all about great content and if you can't make the most of your back catalogue you'll struggle to upgrade. So vB5 needs to have whatever it is that "channels" the vB4 CMS content back into the site, and it needs the calendar.
I don't see the forum format dying; if I want the answer to something I'm most likely to find it on a forum somewhere, and I'm most likely to find it via Google. However, we do get people to come back to our site from some Facebook groups and occasionally from Twitter.
I'm open minded about vB5 Connect, I like the idea of it "doing SEO" for you and making the most of your content, but the truth is until the CMS, or something allowing us to use the content in our present CMS, and the calendar are back in there then we won't be able to do much with it.
- - - Updated - - -
Looks interesting and positive, even if the beta version doesn't yet work at least there's some honesty in calling it a beta version and the finished product may be better than what we have today. The fact remains though that if you've populated your vB4 site with content you'll kill it off by upgrading to vB5 at the moment.
- - - Updated - - -
That's correct, and that creates a back-catalogue of useful content which is more important than connecting to social media if that content can be found by people who value it. Having something built around a forum structure also gives you the freedom to have choice of content, some public, some private, some even private and paid for by subscription (some of the legal sites out there manage this successfully).
It's all about great content and if you can't make the most of your back catalogue you'll struggle to upgrade. So vB5 needs to have whatever it is that "channels" the vB4 CMS content back into the site, and it needs the calendar.
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