Website Addons
Posted by Scott Hough on December 15th, 2009
A plain site with no interactivity doesn’t get many repeat visitors. One of the easiest ways to keep them coming back is by adding a forum. You could use it to give support to your users about your product or just talk about random stuff. Other sites use polls or surveys to add interactivity. The way you choose to interact with your users is up to you, but the results speak for themselves. Interactivity equals more visitors.
Forums
- MyBB
- I have to admit the first one on my list is one I’m a little biased about. MyBB is a forum package I was a part of since before version 1 came out. I made one of the original themes for the forum that became the official theme. The theme, of course, evolved over time into what it is today. I was a member of their support forums until about a year ago. MyBB Has features that give paid forum packages like vBulletin and IPB a run for their money. Since you need to host it yourself it’s a little advanced for the casual user, but it isn’t too complicated.
- ImperialBB
- IBB is another forum that is run by some friends of mine. This forum has some unique features that make it a little easier to run for novices. It has a one click upgrade feature so you don’t need to do too much work to upgrade.
- Vanilla
- Vanilla is a forum I really love. It’s minimalist compaired to the above two. You get basic functionality and you add features via addons. Vanilla will also host your forums for you..
- Other sites
Polls/Surveys
- Polldaddy
- Polldaddy allows you to put together a quick and easy poll or survey for your site. They offer nice graphs for the results too.
- 99polls
- 99polls allows you to create polls for your website or social network site.
Photo Galleries
- Gallery 2
- Gallery 2 is probably one of the best known photo albums for the web, right behind Flickr and Picasa Web Albums. It’s easy to set up and use.
Sites with multiple addons
- Bravenet
- Bravenet has been around for at least 10 years. They offer lots of hosted tools like Forums, guest books, photo albums, etc.
