AlterBrains

Hi Admin and Sarrene,

I really need to pick your brains on this. This is rather a general question and not so much related to p8pbb bridge. Hope you dont mind sharing your views.

My question is, If you are having a successfully running phpbb forum and you install EasySocial or JomSocial on your site, wouldnt this affect the forum activity big time? Why would a user need to use a forum when they can easily ask a question on their wall in Social Network? I am afraid if using EasySocial or JomSocial would kill my forum which is so important in bringing organic traffic for me. How would you have a balance between these two? Do you have any suggestions please?

I guess you don't need social network because everybody use Facebook

You are so right... I keep asking myself that - Why would someone want to use the EasySocial on my site when everyone uses Facebook!! I mean, the way forum works is completely different and most importantly, my forum topics does really well in google that brings a lot of organic traffic. But if I install Easy Social or JomSocial, then I am afraid if these are just going to work against me - as in tools for my users to take their discussions to their facebook page instead of using my forum!

The main reason I was looking at ES was because of the centralized profile system. When integrating phpbb with Joomla, there is no central profile page for users. Meaning, the username in phpbb goes to phpbb profile page (which is quite depressing itself) and the K2 articles author link takes to K2 Profile page. This can be confusing and thats why I was looking at ES. But having considering that, I am also worry if the wall posts, group features, conversation features, etc.. that includes in ES is gonna kill my forum activity! Why would someone want to post a question in forum, when it takes a second to post it in ES wall! I am still confused on whether its worth spending $100 on ES (which aint cheap!).

Probably you can disable ES walls?

Yeah... Thats what I was thinking too. I was also wondering if I should disable the conversation too so it promotes only the forum or if I am being too uptight. I dont know.. Hope I am not bloating my site by installing a mammoth and stripping down its main features. I was also thinking maybe phpbb might work better with Community Builder since thats more profile type than a full blown social network. Its just that EasySocial demo looks really good. I hate going back and forth.. lol..