Publishing an illustrated, problem-solving "tips" section on our eCommerce store has been one of our most successful marketing efforts. This content, which mostly consists of instructions for homeowners to solve common problems, brings a steady flow of organic visitors who are prospects.

We're thinking about testing a public "Q and A" discussion forum for potential customers, likely using one of the available CMS for PHP (like bbpress, phpBB, MyBB, etc.), to see if this brings additional traffic.

Has anyone hosted this sort of forum, targeting mostly prospects (as opposed to a support forum for existing customer)?

If so, what CMS software did you use?

Are there any pitfalls or lessons you can share?

And, what sort of traffic or other marketing results did this produce?

Thanks in advance for any comments.

- Paul D.