How to add a forum into your wordpress.com website for Free

So you own a wordpress.com website or blog and you want to add a forum to it? Don’t panic, there is no need to upgrade and use any plugins, you can do it for free! In this article we will look at how to add a forum as well as the pros and cons of doing so.

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How to add a forum into your wordpress.com site

1. Head over to tlk.io
2. Create your channel
3. Create a new page on your wordpress.com website
4. Embed the forum using a shortcode
5. (Optional) Use the forum widget

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What is tlk.io?

Tlk.io is an absolutely free website where anyone can create a chat room. It is an amazing way to get people talking about something and the perfect way to have a forum on your site.

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Creating your channel

• Head over to tlk.io
• You will see a screen like this.

• Now go ahead and enter a channel name

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Tips for selecting a channel name

When selecting a channel name, I recommend that you select something that you can remember as we will need this later on.

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• Now login with your Facebook/Twitter account to display your avatar against your name.

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Embedding your forum on your website

You can either embed the forum onto a new page on your website or you could set it up on your footer/sidebar. We will assume that you create a new page for your website.

Embedding

Now go ahead and setup your page as you like with a suitable picture etc.

Add a Shortcode block and add this code

[tlkio channel=your channel here height= a suitable height in pixels]

Note that if the height is very large, it might take a longer time to load

Your forum should look like this

Yes, go ahead and chat on it. I will reply to it when I log on again.

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Managing your channel

You can find your channel by going to tlk.io/yourchannelname. I recommend that you become the moderator after a day of setting your channel up. If you don’t do this, the messages might not be saved.

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Pros

It’s totally free of charge

Yes, you don’t need to pay a cent and there are no limitations when it comes to traffic

It can handle a few 1000 visitors at once

Okay, if you had about 10,000 visitors on your blog at any time you wouldn’t be reading this article. But if you do happen to have that amount of traffic, talk.io won’t crash

It’s super easy to setup

You just have to copy a code and it embeds itself. What could be more easier than that?

You can login using Facebook or Twitter

There is no need to upload your profile picture to tlkio, just login using Facebook or Twitter and your profile picture gets embedded.

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Cons

You can moderate only one chat room

Tlk.io has a security feature inbuilt that any chat without a moderator will have its messages erased within 10 minutes. However, you can only moderate one chat per account, so if you want to have many forums on your site, this will not be possible.

Limited design style

Participants have only four theme colours to choose from.

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Was this helpful? How was your experience with tlk.io? Let us know in the comments below. And feel free to use the forum!

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