I've been interested in forums and building communities on web sites for years. While I was at University I worked on my brothers business web site for
Remanufactured Car Parts. I suggested setting up a forum for his web site for visitors and mechanics to discuss faults with their cars - although initially doubtful Chris gave the green light and the
BBA reman forums were born. The forums have been a huge success in terms of attracting more visitors to the site, giving customers a public place to air problems and giving the site a community feel. We organized offline meetings and go-karting for the forum regulars which was great fun.
As soon as I got involved with SharePoint I looked for a community within the UK. Upon finding there was nothing already running I setup the
SharePoint User Group UK. Shortly joined by Steve Smith the community and forums grew very quickly due to the huge increase in SharePoint with the 2007 release.
With all this interest in forums it seemed only right that Lightning Tools built a forum web part for SharePoint. Check out our page on the Lightning Tools web site that covers the two forum/community tools we now have available for SharePoint:
SharePoint Forum Web Parts