Political Forums

There has been a massive explosion in the number of political forums over the past few years. Sites such as DemocracyForum.co.uk are probably one of the best known in the United Kingdom and most political parties have their own for their members to discuss policies and such like.

DemocracyForum.co.uk was initially set up as an unofficial UKIP forum, indeed it's name was UKIPForum.co.uk but it was changed due to pressure from the party. The owner of this site is a guy called Anthony Butcher who was also a member of the UKIP NEC and he has quite a following both on the forum and also within the party.

Political forums are not as good an investment if using basic PHP based boards as they all tend to look so much alike that the user could be on any of these sites and not know the difference. The best sites, at present, for political discussion are networking sites. Facebook has thousands, if not tens of thousands, of political groups, plus everyone has their political views on their profiles and 'The World's Smallest Political Quiz' result down on the bottom left of their profiles.

If we saw political forums produced differently, still using PHP as it is a great language for this purpose with MySQL, then maybe we'd see more participation by the electorate. Make the forums look warm and welcoming, not cold (blue/grey) and impersonal, and you'd become more appealing for people. Sites that look welcoming and easy to use generally attract buyers as they are perfect for marketing purposes, as we are finding out with such sites as Yuwie.com (shares their profits with their members), Facebook (M$ has a share in FB) and MySpace (films are advertised on here with their own groups).

Unless you only want a small membership, go international.