Integrate the forums with the website

[naahdude]

I've found the best fitness communities (i.e. Fitocracy, Bodybuilding.com) have most of the good stuff found not in the main website, but in the forums.

To throw a shoddily-put together proboards site kind of on the side of the website is suicide for building a real community to stay on the website and focus on fitness and health.

If you really want your website to succeed, try creating a larger sense of community and making the forums feel like a larger part of the site.

[hat]

I agree with this. From experience with managing other sites, eventually people just go straight to the forums. At that point, any new content on the main website is overlooked. To have forums is good, but I suggest combining it with the website so a forum account can comment on the website pages themselves. Comments don't have to be in the typical sense—users could have separate input boxes for reviewing the material, adding their own methods and suggestions, and perhaps volunteer answering in a dynamic FAQ.