Using a forum as your FULL company site

[John D]

Hey,
I am setting up a new site and forums have always played a major part in my sites, some are mainly forums but this is the first time I am using a forum for everything for a "business" site.

I know it can work well, look at Bob’s hosting company for example but I think it will take a lot of work.

My business is going to offer premium templates for directory scripts.

I want to run everything off the forum including available products/services, ordering and support.
The reason for doing this is I think vBulletin is capable of managing everything needed, especially now that it’s so easy to add pages into the forum itself.

There’s two main problems I can think of, number one is if the forum looks empty it will make the site/"business" look new and I know that would put a lot of people off, the other is some support issues should be held in private.

One of my solutions for number one is offering a free template - That will help build up the forum itself and also help get the name out.

For the second I have thought of having a private forum for support and modifying vb so only thread starters can see their own threads and posts in that forum.

This business isn't something I am putting a lot into really, there is no real support provided with templates because there is a limit to what customers would need support with, unless they are modifying them, I will be selling without support to keep any costs down (I am doing the templates very cheap because I think a lot of the markets I will be targeting wont have much money to spend) so I'm hoping the community will start helping each other with problems, of course I will still be there helping out :)

Is there anything major I'm missing here?

Like I said, this isn't anything major its just something to fill a gap I have noticed :)

[Aussie Bob]

I know it can work well, look at Bob’s hosting company for example but I think it will take a lot of work.
Yep, it's a tough model to implement and work with.
My business is going to offer premium templates for directory scripts.
I'm not sure you'll be able to build a community around that type of product. HTTPme was so sucessful as a community because the product was hosting, and it was an ongoing service, delivered to folks who spend a LOT of time online - and they like to participate in such forums to network etc.

[John D]

I don't really want to build it as a community as such but just a way to keep down costs and workload.

[Scott]

Being honest, John, if you're not aiming for a community then I would strongly advise looking at other methods. You'll find a lot of open source stuff out there which will help you cut down on work load, but will give you a lot more freedom when trying to build this.

By all means have a forum, but I think you'll find this thing a lot easier if you use scripts in the manner they were designed for.

Just my 2 cents, it's your decision :)

[John D]

I think vBulletin is beinh pushed more into the direction of a full CMS, especially with it being so easy to add additional, normal pages but still within the vBulletin systen and coding.

I'm still not sure what to do but I think vBulletin can be used as a CMS to handle everything needed.

[Aussie Bob]

Forum architecture can be used as a "website", as a website is just about navigation and the presentation of information. The forum adds that interactivity componant to it, but you don't have to have that aspect functional, if you just want to build a stand alone informational presentational platform.