Your Opinion Please – WP vs. Forums

[randyd]

I manage a site at work and have set up a forum using a php script (Chipmunk board) for a couple of reasons:
1. To establish a industry resource area for our site visitors
2. To create a keyword rich area for search engine spiders
My questions:
1. As it relates to online marketing, is WordPress a better tool to use verses a php forum script like Chipmunk Board? Why?
2. Is the WordPress default program and the posts people add search engine friendly?
3. How is WordPress used other than a blogging tool?
Thanks for your opinions and feedback.
Randyd

[moshu]

1. IMO it’s a wrong question, consequently it would be difficult to get the right answer ??
Since a blog script and a forum script serve different purposes, comparing them is like the proverbial apples and oranges. Only you know how do you want to create the industry resource area for our site visitors, so only you can decide which fits better for your goals. I mean: who will be posting? Visitors? Employees? I guess after answering all those questions you’ll know the exact answer!
2. If you use custom permalinks you will have very search engine friendly URIs.
3. In this thread you can see an example of a heavily modified WP, made into a general publishing tool… or something like that. There are many different ways WP is used, it just needs a lot of work and tweaking.
https://www.ads-software.com/support/11/17005

[TechGnome]

The best way to answer all of that, is to determine what your needs are. What do you need it to do? Then get a list of the features of the two products, and decide which one fits your needs best.
moshu is right though, to compare the two directly isn’t going to get you where you need to be. You wouldn’t contemplate between using a hammer and a crowbar if you need to tighen a screw. It’s all about the right tool for the right job.
Tg

[randyd]

I was thinking about the rss feature and easy content management of WP. My forums do not have that and I would have to manually create the rss feeds. With WP, everytime I or someone else makes a post and then leave comments, keywords are going to be created. So my thought was – The more keywords relating to our industry that are found on a new WP site as apposed to a forum page can possibly be picked up through RSS marketing and by search engine spiders.
RSS marketing is very intriguing to me and would like further discussion on this.
All comments are appreciated.
Thanks
Randyd

[TechGnome]

Keywords aren’t so importaint any more. Today it’s all about links. Especialy with Google. If you want some statistics regarding search engines & blogs & forums, try https://www.blogbusinessworld.blogspot.com/ — this guy has made blogging, marketing & business his business.
Tg

[DJ Rg]

forums or boards are being indexed more and more by SEs, although when it comes to PR esp google it appears its only done quartlety if your lucky.. i have both poetry boards (4 years old) and a poetry blog (barely 6 months old) ..the boards got a PR5 and the blog got PR6 .. my main blog Blogosphere Zoo (about 4 months old) got a PR3 -this time around .. to a blogger the Zoo would be much more interesting, though it was young and many backlinks have been added since the last google PR -cant wiat til the next PR ..lol
like everyone says here it all depends what your needs are and how you need to delivery your information and how you want your visitor to interact and offer feedback ..if your information is updated regualrly the SE monster will visit often whether its a board, blog or home page. keywords dont mean much if searchers dont use them to find sites, as for your site what keywords would you use to find it. with any site (product or service) there will only be 3-4 keywords that matter. I dont think the word RSS is going into increase your PR. also keep in mind theres a zillion sites out there fighting for top position and most the top ones are junk. go figure.
probably the most important question to ask is what do your visitors want NOT what the SEs want ..most of your visitors will come from outside advertising and word of mouth not SEs.. SEO-ing is a full time job by itself.
with all that in mind blogs are becoming very popular and are much easier to maintain ..bloggers like to surf ..board ppl dont – as far which will get the most unexpected traffic.