Seven Reasons Why A Hosted Forum Solution Makes Sense For Your Company

Ninja Post is a hosted forum solution. We host your forum in the cloud and integrate it with your site and URL. The end user can’t tell the difference because the experience is seamless.

This approach represents a departure from traditional forum software in which a software package is installed and hosted locally. Installing, configuring, and designing a forum platform can be time consuming and frustrating.  But that’s only the first hurdle because hosting a heavily trafficked forum presents a unique set of challenges that can quickly bog down or even cripple a normal server.

Because we provide a hosted solution, we can extend the following benefits to our clients:

1. Automatic configuration and automatic updates. It is a pain to set the initial configuration options and install weekly (or sometimes daily) software patches. Ninja Post is hosted in the cloud so it works without endless tinkering.  Updates (such as new features) are rolled out automatically.
2. Elegant design. Forum software has a reputation for being ugly. We offer a WYSIWYG color picker and will customize the CSS on your forum to match your main site.
3. High availability and reliability. A single server that hosts your main site and your forum could suffer from a single point of failure (SPOF): if your main site goes down (heaven forbid!), then the forum will go down with it. A Ninja Post forum can remain operational even if your main site is in maintenance mode for some reason. Bonus: We also provide automatic daily and weekly backups.
4. Image hosting. Threads with lots of images must pull those images from a content delivery network (CDN) rather than directly from the server to remain alive. Ninja Post has a CDN built into its core.
5. Automated email delivery and tracking. Sending a vast amount of email alerts requires a special relationship with ISPs, otherwise the messages will be flagged as spam. Ninja Post has solved this problem for you and we can even provide data regarding deliverability and total emails sent.
6. Real-time updates. Most forum software is static: new posts only show up when the page is refreshed manually. Ninja Post solves what we call the “overlapping post” problem by updating threads instantaneously.
7. Automated monthly reports. We help you understand what is being said and measuring the content. This will help you extract valuable information from the content, as opposed to simply having an area for your users to talk.

Hosting your forum yourself is a daunting challenge. For a heavily trafficked forum, it often makes sense to partner with a company that can help you surmount these challenges. By working together we can reap the benefits of a hosted forum solution which will provide more time to focus on the more important task of making your community as vibrant as possible.