Cybele May, the creative mind behind typetive.com and the popular (and very yummy) Candy Blog, recently contacted us about adding a forum to her Candy Blog site. Cybele hoped the addition of a forum would increase traffic to the site, improve general communication from and between readers, as well as contribute to fostering the community’s growth.
The Candy Blog is a very popular blog with a few thousand drive-by visitors per a day, and a smaller but very vibrant community of avid readers that communicate through the comments on the blog. Cybele wanted to take things one step further and give visitors a place to interact, get to know one another and share information about CANDY! There were two ways to do it - incrementally by doing a small amount of customization now, or by building all at once and starting with a big finished online space for users to play in. We suggested the latter. But because this was something new for Cybele and she wasn’t sure how well it would be received by the audience she chose the former.
So she started out by modifying an existing ExpressionEngine template instead of doing a full unique forum design, and Hop Studios has done minimal integration of forum posts and topics with the rest of her blog. This kept costs down but still provided the basics for her ardent readers.
The forum has been live for about two weeks now and already there is a total of 234 registered users and 169 posts. I’d say that’s a good sign the forum has been well-received! Some of that interest is coming from the contest the Candy Blog is running: a contest where people can win “an exceptional package of summer-safe candies shipped right to your door” just by registering. Please see the Summer Candy Giveaway for further details.
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