Updated: 6 days ago
Creating a forum is one of the most effective ways to build an engaged online community around your website. With an online website builder you can add a forum to any type of site, and knowing how to build a website from scratch gives you the foundation to set it up right. Wix Groups makes the process simple, intuitive and free of charge, whether you're building around a website idea or creating a membership site. This guide covers the key steps and best practices for creating a forum that keeps your community active and growing.
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Why create a forum in the first place?
There are many reasons to create a forum or a forum website. Believe it or not, forum members are not strictly identified with Justin Bieber fans or Minecraft enthusiasts. If you search the web, you will find flourishing forums dedicated to almost every theme or niche, from military history to interior design.
The primary benefit of creating a forum is to build a community around a shared interest. Your forum will be providing this community with a space to exchange ideas, compare experiences and also enjoy a conversation with people who share a particular profession, hobby or worldview (and for almost any type of website, be it your church website or non-profit website).
An online forum also opens a new channel of communication between the site owner and site visitors. Newsletters and site comments are excellent for engaging with visitors, but both tend to place an emphasis on one side of the discussion. A forum, on the other hand, allows for user engagement that is more open and organic. The forum moderator or admin retains control over the platform, but an eye-level discussion is free to develop as long as participants abide by the rules.
Finally, creating a forum can improve your site’s SEO. Think of it as an additional source of website content that can be indexed by search engines. As long as it is active, and as long as your members make good contributions to the discussion, the forum essentially creates frequent, high-quality content that search engines love.
Learn more: Website vs blog vs forums
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How to make a forum
Now that you know why you should consider forums while learning how to build your own website from scratch, let’s discuss the steps you need to take to get started. Here’s how to create a forum:
01. Choose a forum software
You can start creating a forum by simply choosing a forum software. By selecting a forum maker that fully integrates with your professional website, whether that's your consulting website, or something else, you can build interest in your site and keep website visitors engaged with your project, organization or brand.
If you don’t have a site yet, Wix offers an AI website builder that creates a unique, business-ready site in no time. Once Wix Groups is on your site, the Create with AI option sets up a new group from your answers in a short chat with the Wix AI Assistant.
Meet Wix Groups, your online community builder
After adding the Wix Groups app to your membership website from the editor or your site’s dashboard, you can customize the layout, set member permissions and organize your community around topics. These highlights make Wix Groups a strong fit for a forum.
You can manage your groups on the go from the Wix app.
Users sign up, log in and participation is easy and intuitive.
You can display your groups in a sidebar, list or grid layout and match the colors and fonts to your site.
Members can share posts with images, videos and files.
Managing the forum is simple, so being an admin requires minimal effort.
Each member gets a profile page where they can introduce themselves to your community.
You can create multiple groups, each with its own privacy settings.
02. Define your forum’s theme
Think about the specific themes that bring your members together and that might offer them a shared sense of community. Which issues are important, useful or entertaining in their eyes? Choose a general topic that broadly resonates with your audience, and then organize the conversation by adding topics to your group. For example, if you run an LGBTQ website, you might make categories like queer history, dating advice and trans rights.
03. Be clear about the rules
As forum admin, you need to set the tone and determine what would be considered appropriate or inappropriate behavior in your community. Add your community rules as group guidelines in the group settings so every member knows what’s expected before they post.
04. Encourage active participation
Forums thrive on discussion. If your members are just passive observers, there won’t be much action going on. You can encourage them to participate by posing questions, commenting on other people’s posts or soliciting a specific member’s opinion. Try to get a sense of what makes your members respond, whether it’s opening up a compelling discussion, starting a poll or reviewing events that are relevant to your community.
You can also encourage users to ask questions of their own by creating a Q&A forum. This helps strengthen your forum community by allowing members to build discussions organically and learn from one another’s insights. It’s also a useful way for brands to create a support channel, talk about new releases and build personal connections with clients.
05. Promote your forum regularly
When you first create a forum, you’ll need to attract as many new members as possible by promoting your forum on external platforms. Use your personal or business social media channels to highlight specific threads and, if some members are particularly active, ask them to promote your forum within their own networks. If you run a newsletter, use it to invite subscribers to visit the forum. You can also drive engagement with auto posts that appear in the group when new members join or when you connect an event.
06. Enhance your forum with special features
Once you’ve learned the basics of how to make a forum, you can provide more value to users with special features that benefit both you and your community.
First, you can reward your participants with member badges as they go from new users to forum experts. This increases your community members’ engagement, as it encourages them to participate consistently in forum discussions. You can customize badges to match the look and feel of your website, as well as assign different badges for different roles (e.g., teacher and student).
Second, you can earn money from your forum by creating pricing plans. This involves connecting a group to a pricing plan so only subscribers can access it. While it’s a good idea to keep some groups open for general access, you can offer paid access to groups that cater to a specific niche.
Best practices for creating a forum
The ongoing contribution of content by forum members is what gives a forum its character. Here are the most effective ways to maintain a vibrant, dynamic online community.
Stay on track: A sense of shared interest among participants is the glue that holds your community together. Make sure that the discussions you start, the questions you raise and the visual materials you upload are directly related to your forum’s theme.
Don’t over-thread: Creating multiple discussion threads with different focal points is a great way to create a forum, but you should be careful not to set up too many of them. When too many threads are available, visitors (especially first-time visitors) can get overwhelmed. Too many topics may also lead to a situation in which some threads have only very little conversation going on in them. It’s better to narrow down the options and keep a lively discussion going.
Make it beautiful: While forums thrive on words, their look and feel is also important. Make sure your forum is consistent with your website design overall, as members will feel more at home on a forum that’s visually pleasing, user-friendly and resonates with their interests. By customizing the layout, fonts, colors and more, you can design your forum in a way that reflects your project or brand and attracts new members.
Be a present admin: As the forum’s administrator, you have a responsibility to participate actively and contribute your own content to the community’s discussions. Be proactive, answer questions, start conversations and encourage community members to share their thoughts.
Stay informed: As the admin, you also need to show expertise and authority in your field. Keeping up to date on the latest news, developments and trends will help you add high-quality content to your community and keep your members interested in what you have to say. Turn your forum into a reliable source of information and your community will reward you with traffic.
How to maintain a strong forum website
When considering how to make a forum, you’ll need to think not just about the content you’ll want to include, but also about the practices you’ll need to avoid. As any savvy forum admin will tell you, you’ll need to stay alert to keep your forum running strong. Remember to regularly check for the following elements, as this will ensure a safe, friendly and positive community:
Spammers
Spammy content is not only annoying, but it can cause SEO problems. Search engines like Google can penalize you for spammy posts on your site if you don’t weed them out.
Wix Groups also includes AI spam detection, which filters out potential spam posts before they’re published in your group. The filter is on by default, and posts from group admins aren’t affected.
Trolls
As forum admin, you bear the responsibility to ensure that all forum members are safe, and you owe it to them to keep trolls away.
Uninspiring content
Make sure that the discussions taking place on your forum remain interesting, fun and engaging. The key is to stay committed as the admin of your forum. If you regularly participate in discussions, take a proactive approach, raise relevant and interesting issues and acknowledge valuable and contributing members, you’ll provide your community with a forum they’ll love.
How much does it cost to create a forum?
The cost to build a forum with Wix, for example, can vary depending on your specific needs and the plan you choose. Here's a breakdown of the potential costs:
Light plan: $17/month
Core plan: $29/month
Business plan: $39/month
Business Elite plan: $159/month
Domain name
Free for the first year with annual plans
After the first year, your domain renews at the standard annual rate for its extension.
One to know: .community is a domain extension, and not one of ICANN's formal community-based extensions, so it carries no eligibility rules and no dispute policy for challenging registrations. .zone is a domain extension that stakes out the space rather than the people, which suits a forum built around one subject.
Wix Groups app
Free to install from the Wix App Market
Charge for access by connecting a group to a pricing plan you set up
Create a forum FAQ
Are online forums still worth creating?
Online forums are still worth creating for niche audiences who want to talk to each other and not only to the brand. Discussion boards hold their value where a topic needs long, searchable answers rather than fast-moving chatter, which is why hobby, professional and support communities keep running them. The real cost is time, since someone has to seed conversation and moderate it every week.
How do you get the first members for a new forum?
The fastest way to get your first forum members is to invite people who already follow you elsewhere and give them something specific to answer. Seed each category with a handful of real questions and reply to every post for the first few weeks so new arrivals never land on an empty board. Visitors judge a forum by how recent the last reply is, so a small group of regulars posting at the start matters more than a large launch audience.
What is the difference between a forum and a social media group?
A forum organizes discussion into persistent topics and threads, while a social media group centers on a feed of recent activity. That structure makes a forum better suited to questions whose answers stay useful long after they are posted, and a group better suited to announcements and casual updates. A forum hosted on your own site also gives you more control over the content and member experience than a community hosted entirely on a social platform.
How many moderators does a forum need?
One moderator is enough for a new forum, and a second becomes necessary once posts arrive faster than you can read them. Published rules cut the workload more than extra moderators do, because members can report content against a standard everyone can see. Promoting active, trusted members to help moderate is the usual way to scale as traffic grows.
Can a forum be private or members only?
A forum can be private, and you decide whether people join freely, need admin approval or need a paid plan. On a Wix site, a group can be public, private but still listed on your Groups page or hidden so only members know it exists. Admins can also control who is allowed to post, invite or add new people.
Is a forum good for SEO?
A forum can help SEO because members create question-and-answer pages that target specific long phrases your own pages never cover. The benefit depends entirely on quality, since thin or spam-filled threads add crawlable pages without adding value. Keeping categories tidy and clearing spam quickly is what turns member posts into search traffic.
Can you make money from a forum?
You can make money from a forum by charging for access to part of it, selling sponsorship or using the community to sell your own products and services. On a Wix site, you can connect a pricing plan to a group so only paying members get in, and you can publish individual posts that only subscribers can read. Most owners keep a free area open so newcomers can see the community before paying.
Is Wix good for building an online community?
Wix is a strong choice for building an online community because the community tools sit inside the same site as the rest of your pages. Wix Groups provides discussion feeds, member profiles, comments and access controls within your Wix site. Members sign in once and reach the community, your content and anything you sell in one place.
