Forums (aka message boards, bulletin boards, discussion boards), wikis (aka has nothing to do with anything Polynesian), chat rooms (where the worst pick up lines come to life) and blogs are great tools for building community on your Web site. You might use one, two or all of them. It just depends on your target market’s needs.

By regularly adding new content to your site, you not only keep people coming back, but also help to optimize your site’s search engine results. This article shows how to build a thriving community on your site using wikis, blogs, forums, and chat rooms. Though many of these tools exist, this article should help you determine which ones you need.

If you’re interested in this from an enterprise perspective, your company may have a CMS (Content Management System) that has some of these tools. But even if it doesn’t, that’s OK. Plenty of Open Source and third-party apps are available for the taking or buying.

[Read Forums, Wikis, and Blogs]