A forum is a platform where everyone can put their opinions, ask questions, reply to someone's query or just participate in a discussion. It is always good to have a forum in your website or blog. It gives your user a way to interact with you and other users of the same website. Also, they have more chances of getting their question answered.
Although, users can also interact through comments but, asking a question in a comment which is not related to that post, feels awkward. So a forum gives them the freedom to start a whole new conversation.
Adding a forum in a blogger blog is a tough task. Blogger is a free platform so it lacks of so many features. But, we can still add a forum to our blog using Google Groups. Google Group provides you with a free forum with high flexibility. It's a free tool and you can customize it any time very easily. In this post, I will show how to add Google Group forum to your blog. Follow these steps carefully.
Although, users can also interact through comments but, asking a question in a comment which is not related to that post, feels awkward. So a forum gives them the freedom to start a whole new conversation.
Adding a forum in a blogger blog is a tough task. Blogger is a free platform so it lacks of so many features. But, we can still add a forum to our blog using Google Groups. Google Group provides you with a free forum with high flexibility. It's a free tool and you can customize it any time very easily. In this post, I will show how to add Google Group forum to your blog. Follow these steps carefully.
Add a Forum To Your Blogger Blog
Step 1 : First, you have to log in to your gmail account. Now, go to https://groups.google.com/forum/?fromgroups#!myforums and click on 'Create Group' as shown below.
Step 2 : Now, you will see a form. Fill the the required details. All the points are explained below.
Group name : Write a name for your new forum. It will be good to choose a name related to your subject. You can also rename it any time.
Group email address : A group email address will be created automatically according to the group name. For example, if you write "Marketing" in the group name then you will be provided with marketing@googlegroups.com as group email address.
Group description : Write a small description about your forum so that the visitor could understand about it.
Group's primary language : Select the language for your forum according to you. Most of the people select the English and it is by default selected English only.
Group type : This option you have to select according to your need. You will get four options i.e Email list, Q&A Forum, Web Forum, Collaborative inbox. Depending on your requirement , select the one out of four.
Basic permission : In this section, you have to decide the basic permissions about your forum which you want to give to your users.
Once you filled all the information correctly, click 'Create' button. Now your group is successfully created.
Step 3 : Now open your blogger account. Go to Pages and create a new page. Edit the Page in HTML form.
Step 4 : Now copy and paste the following code there.
<iframe frameborder="0" height="1000px" id="forum_embed" scrolling="no"
src="javascript:void(0)" width="100%">
<br />
</iframe>
<script type="text/javascript">
document.getElementById("forum_embed").src =
"https://groups.google.com/forum/embed/?place=forum/yourgroupname" +
"&showsearch=true&showpopout=false&parenturl=" + encodeURIComponent(window.location.href);
</script>
Replace yourgroupname with the name of your group.
Step 5 : Publish the page and you are done with it.
Congrats !! You have successfully created and added a forum to your blog.
I hope this tutorial helped you to add forum to your blog/website. If you faced any difficulty in doing it, then feel free to ask in the comments below.
