There was a time when adding community to your Website meant setting up a chat server and linking it to your site. Nowadays, fierce competition and the general maturation of the Internet and its related technologies have raised the bar on community. Internet users now expect much more than just chat when interacting with a community; they demand advanced and integrated features such as instant messaging, forums (message boards), single signon and the ability to present and organize their content into topical categories in an intuitive and attractive manner.

Forums (or message boards) allow members to post messages to a board that remains available for users to see for days, weeks and even months after it was posted. This technology is an ideal complement to chat rooms, which, for the most part, expect you to be present in the chat room at the time a message is sent.

Members form associations and relationships with other members of the community, frequently spanning many different chat rooms. Instant messaging and the related technology of Buddy Lists give members a way of knowing which of their "buddies" are currently online anywhere in the community, as well as a way to directly chat with them one-on-one.

Chat rooms, forums and instant messaging are all valuable tools for your community, but it's essential to tie these pieces together into some sort of categorized hierarchy that makes sense. Members first want to see an attractive categories list from which they can choose an interest or topic (i.e., News, Education, Technology, etc). Administrators can typically customize these categories to be appropriate to their particular site. Underneath each category are groups that bring the different technologies of chat rooms and forums together into an attractive package that gives members a place to go to find the information and people they're looking for.

Having to sign up and sign on to different areas of a Website is a big nuisance to members. It can make your site appear to be a slapped-together patchwork of non-integrated products. Members want to sign on once, then have access to all other parts of the Website - including community. Single Signon gives you the ability to provide this capability. With the addition of just a few simple lines of script, your community is seamlessly tied to the login system used on your Website.

Addressing all these aspects of community, ChatSpace 4 is Akiva's leading-edge solution for enabling customers to easily deploy strong and effective communities. Users expect a lot more from communities these days and fortunately, ChatSpace 4 lets you give it to them. To learn more about ChatSpace 4 or to get a free trial, click here.

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