Forums, message boards, and virtual communities have become vital internet components. They serve as meeting places where people may connect, share information, and offer assistance while overcoming physical limitations such as geographical distance.
Some of the best information on the web may be found in forums and search boards. If you have a specific concern or problem that other people can help you with, forums may be the best alternative.
It is time-consuming to search through every forum one by one. A dedicated forum search engine can assist you with your specific requirement.
If you need a quick solution to a problem or an answer to a query, consider some of the best message board or forum search engines accessible.
List of Forum Search Engines
Boardreader
A long time ago, there was a search engine called Boardreader. Since the downfall of BoardTracker and Omgili, two otherpopular search engines, it’s become a popular forum search engine.
Boardreader, unfortunately, does not provide information about the forums and message boards that appear in its results. When you run irrelevant searches on various topics, you’ll notice that many well-known big names are being crawled.
Reddit, Bitcointalk, and DeviantArt are a few examples. They also include Yahoo Answers and Reddit, among many other sites.
Fashion and beauty forums, gardening forums, gaming forums, celebrities, movies, and TV show forums are just a few of the many niche forums available. Boardreader even has a lot of forums in various languages for people who can speak a variety of languages.
As you might expect from a message board search engine, some filters can help you narrow down your search. Some filters include date, language, domain, and other Boolean parameters.
Boardreader has been called out for selling its data to ad companies. Only you can decide whether or not you like the exchange.
Google Forum Search
A few years ago, Google used to have a button that said “Discussions” when you searched. It only showed you hits from forums, message boards, and blog comments.
Use a third-party Chrome extension calledDiscussions Button for Google Searchto make it easy for you to search for things.
The extension brings back the Discussions button next to the tabs for Images, News, and Videos at the top of the results page to see them again.
Add-on: It doesn’t work like it used to. Instead, it changes your queries and adds a lot of filters behind the scenes to help you. They make the tool as close to the old one as possible.
Find a Forum
FindAForum is the most popular online site for finding discussion forums. You can browse or search 1,731 forums on a variety of topics. Find forums to join, outreach opportunities, and new and exciting topics to explore. New forums are introduced regularly.
There are also a lot of stats about how active a forum is if you want to find one. When you look at a specific listing, you can see how many members there are, how many topics there are, how many posts there are, the maximum number of concurrent members, and the last known number of contemporary members who were online at that time.
It’s also possible to see what forum software the site employs, whether the forum has an RSS feed and whether it uses Google AdSense and sponsorship. Numerous features make it simple to determine whether or not a community is a good fit for you right away.
Create Your Own Custom Forum Search Engine
There aren’t many good message boards orforum search enginesout there. It is simple to create a custom search engine using Google, Bing, or another major search engine to function correctly.
Keep in mind that All significant search engines useBoolean search operators. You can direct them only to display results from a specified set of sites.
If you want to do this, you must use the Boolean operators:
Keyword + site:ForumA.com OR site:ForumB.com OR site:ForumC.com
This is useless if you don’t know which forums to look for. You can get the information you need from discussions, but you must be a member of many of them already or know which forums are the most popular for your interests.
Keep a TXT file on your desktop with pre-made Boolean operators for the forums you frequent so you don’t have to think about what to search for every time. When you need them, simply copy and paste them into Google. Try List ofPower Search Queriesto learn more about advanced search methods.
Reddit is a network of communities where people can dive into their interests, hobbies, and passions. Participation is only allowed for people who have signed up. The website lets you post links, texts, images, and even videos. Members can vote on these posts to see how high they should be placed on a list.
Reddit covers a wide range of topics called “subreddits.” These are user-created boards named in the format “r/topic,” e.g., “r/programming.”
There are 222 million people in the United States who use it every month. It has more than +130,000 active communities and more than 2.8 million subreddits in total.
There are do-follow links on Reddit, which means you can use them to build your backlinks profile. Most subreddits have a solid anti-spam and anti-self-promotion stance, so you need to give real value to the communities and not just spam them with your links.
Quora.com
Quora is a platform where you can learn and share information. It’s a place to ask questions and connect with people who have unique insights and provide quality responses. Do-follow links are not available now. Nevertheless, it is one of the best sites for content marketing and a good source of traffic. This group was founded in June 2009 by two former Facebook employees.
Quora currently has around 300 million active users every month, and Google Trends suggests that its profile is growing. Many people continue to visit the site. The number of queries asked in the online community on a single day can range from 3000 to 5000. Most questions on Quora are answered in 20 to 30 minutes.
GitHub
GitHub is a website where people can upload and keep their code. This group is primarily made of software developers. They can discuss the projects they are working on with one another. GitHub has around 65 million software engineers who have created over 200 million repositories. It used to be owned by Microsoft, but Microsoft now owns Github.
This website may hold a variety of media, ranging from text to movies. It is an excellent alternative for developers who want to collaborate on projects. It allows users to help each other by suggesting new features, writing code for other people’s projects, etc.
StackOverFlow
StackOverFlow network of Q/A websites began as software engineers’ forum search engines. It is a forum where users may ask questions regarding software development and other scientific and technology-related topics. Other professionals and interested parties can respond to them.
It works the same way for all StackExchange Q/A groups, including math, science, languages, photography, history and geography, finance & personal finance, gaming, etc.
Stack Exchange
It contains a wealth of knowledge about various programming languages and technologies. The site verifies that the questions are entirely programming-related and fairly specificStack Exchange is a network of Q/A websites that cover a wide range of topics, with each site focusing on a specific subject. Questions, answers, and users are all subject to a reputation award process. There is a system called “reputation” that lets the sites be self-regulated.
It now has more than 170 websites about a wide range of subjects, such as computer programming, music, games, math, writing, graphic design, and more. Some 51 million developers use Stack Overflow each month.
Steam
A Steam community program is an online place where gamers can trade games and other items used in games. It enables customers to help each other and talk to people in the gaming world.
This online community lets you update games, use in-game voice, chat, etc. It also enables you to keep track of your friends and groups. Around 30 million people are part of this online group.
Archive of our Own
The Archive of Our Own is a website where fans may post their fanfiction and fanworks. It was launched in 2008 and allowed users to create profiles on which they could showcase their work and other stuff. They can make collections, take part in challenges, import and save other people’s work, etc.
They can also comment on and like other people’s work. It has fanbases or groups of people that have common interests.
There are over 40 thousand fanbases on the site, and there are over 7 million works. More than 2.5 million people have joined it. It is really simple because it is organized and relatively simple to find stuff.
IGN Boards
IGN is a place to go if you want to learn more about video games, entertainment (such as movies or TV shows), technology, and how to live your life! IGN Boards is now open to fans of music, games, movies, TV shows, DVDs, and other media!
There are new ways to display thumbnails and large images on the site, and you may now include videos in your posts. If you want to see who else has read your post, you don’t have to search for it. The message boards will keep you informed.
Microsoft Docs
Microsoft Docs is a documentation resource for Windows software end-users, developers, and IT professionals. There is also extensive documentation, an e-learning portal, and a code sample library. There’s also a flourishing Q&A community where you can share helpful information with other Microsoft Specialists.
It launched in 2016 to replace the MSDN and TechNet libraries, which previously held some of these materials. If you have a Microsoft account, you can now share information and files with others who have the same account.
GameFAQs(Gamespot)
GameFAQs is an online place where people can ask questions about video games made in 1995. There is a poll on the site every day and tournaments. Each game has a sub-community called a “message board.” These message boards talk about that game.
You may learn about video games and other topics such as cheat codes and reviews on forum search engines. It is believed that 2 to 5 new users join the site per minute. Do-follow links are permitted on the website.
Slick Deals
Slick Deals is the best online shopping deals forum that allows people to find and share the best deals voted on. Members can also share deals they’ve found on the Internet that they think others might be interested in. It has over 12 million users and can help you gain quality backlinks for your website.
Nexus Mods
On Nexus Mods, players can exchange game changes known as “mods.” This is one of the best sites to go if you want to play games online. It is a gaming information source with over 25 million registered users that allows users to share download links for mods with others.
XDA-Developers Android Forums
XDA Developers have a wealth of knowledge regarding Android development. It is a great online forum for Android developers from all around the world. It offers a section where developers can discuss ideas and brainstorm solutions to challenges they encounter while working on their projects.
People can find what they’re looking for on this forum more easily if they know what kind of mobile device and operating system they have.
KASKUS
Kaskus is an Indonesian community that operates an online forum search engine for people to communicate with each other. It includes a registration process that allows users to access over twenty subforums sorted by region and topic.
This is now considered to be Indonesia’s largest internet community. In 2012, 4.5 million users used the website. By 2014, that figure had increased to 25 million.
TripAdvisor Forums
TripAdvisor is a well-known travel review and recommendation website. It has a number of active forums for certain places or topics, such as traveling with pets, cheap travel, honeymoon travel, and so on. You can ask other travelers who have been there previously and share your own experience with other tourists.
Ars Technica
Ars Technica began as a website that discussed how people felt about technology and politics. Many postgraduates who work for academic or private institutions use it on a regular basis. It has forums dedicated to hardware and tuning, operating systems and software, gaming, and other topics.
It contains free public information that anybody may read, as well as a premium subscription option. It has over 12 million unique users, 2 million social media followers, and 15.7 million video views.
MoneySavingExpert.com
MoneySavingExpert (MSE) is a well-known consumer website in the United Kingdom. Almost 16 million people visit it each month, and it helps consumers find the best online discounts, purchasing offers, and the most satisfying online sales. It also has a vibrant forum where members may discuss personal finance, investing, frugality, and minimalism.
The MSE forum does not enable anyone to sell themselves, and there is no fee to use its services. It’s a free community supported by partnerships between MSE’s owners and a select group of brands.
SpiceWorks Community
SpiceWorks Community is a group of online message boards where users may collaborate on projects and obtain assistance from one another. It also features a store where consumers may purchase IT-related products and services.
It is well-known and used by over 6 million IT professionals and 3 million technology vendors. As they exchange ideas and solve problems on the site, users can link back to one another.
HackerNews By YCombinator
HackerNews is run by YCombinator, the startup accelerator that helped launch Reddit, Airbnb, Stripe, and DropBox. It’s a place where people may discuss topics that interest them and read news from other people’s blogs. People in this community discuss computer science and ways to make money in the area.
Every month, about 8 million visitors are estimated to visit HackerNews. IT and cybersecurity news are not debatable because it focuses on that sphere of employment.
Users can vote for a story by sending in links to marked content. A story must receive more than 100 votes to make it to the first page.
Notabug.io
Notabug is similar to Reddit and allows people to share their thoughts and news on a variety of topics. Members of this online community can post links to other websites and material, such as YouTube videos, in this section.
You should be able to acquire do-follow back-links from the site as long as you don’t spam and link to it naturally. Every month, the site has roughly 100,000 unique visitors.
Lobste.rs
Lobster is an online group that distributes links and holds discussions about technology and STEM. It was founded in 2012 and aimed to foster healthy tech communities. People who post stories and links must tag them so that they can be found and sorted quickly.
phu*ks.co
phu*ks is the link aggregation site (yep, another Reddit clone) that collects links from other websites and reorganizes them to make them easier for users to find. It gives its users a lot of links, which saves a lot of time on the Internet and allows them to have meaningful conversations.
[Source: This article was published in aofirs.org By Erin R. Goodrich – Uploaded by the Member: David J. Redcliff]
