Your Community Software Choice Does Matter

Some “ community experts” have put forward the idea that the forum software you choose does not matter. Bollocks! Using the wrong software can actually hurt your community. The second piece of bad advice I hear, and far too often, is that changing your community software will give you no noticeable benefit.

Let’s look at these two fallacies, especially when talking about legacy (a.k.a. ugly 1995–2005 forum software). Community stability is about growth. It’s about getting fresh blood to join, and keep old members coming back.

It’s also about recruiting from this pool to be future moderators. If you are using an old software, with outdated interfaces, archaic knobs and dials; the creaking behemoth will scare away new and web-savvy users. It will also certainly make your moderation team not likely to stick. If your forum is easily overrun with spam, trolls or is a chore to manage, good luck in keeping them around.

People join forums because of interest and passion in a topic. But they also want to be on a cool and fun platform. Using an old and out-dated forum software will certainly make it hard to attract new users to your community. Furthermore, your moderators, who began to help because they cared, will only put up with only so much for free. If your software makes it difficult to manage the community, they will just stop visiting out of frustration. They may or may not even tell you why.

I know of a couple of companies who refused to rid themselves of old forum software, and essentially had their complete moderation team walk out in protest. (I’ll with-hold their names in case they finally come to their senses).

Going to a new platform could have actually saved the crisis and breathed new life into their community. Now the forum admins are creaking along press-ganging employees into supporting a community.

Before the pitch-forkers scream “bias” because I work at a vendor, let me mention some caveats. Changing software needs to come with an active moderation and interest in fostering community. The biggest mistake is to think software fixes community management deficiencies or toxicity. You still need to be an active and present, or at least have a team that is monitoring, engaging and actively trying to grow the community. You also need to set-up the software properly. Modern forum solutions offer many tools, but not using it the right way is like using your smartphone as a paperweight.

How do you know if it’s time for a migrate or change software? If it’s not evident to you, it may be time to ask. But beware, you can’t always ask your community, because these are people are putting up with the situation. Look to ask potential community members, people passionate about you or your product. Their refusal to join or delay to find kind words to tell you how your forum sucks, will be all the evidence you need.

Adrian Speyer is the Marketing Manager at Vanilla Forums, a community software company located in Montreal. His opinions are his own.