Hey @user4381, welcome to the Elfsight community 
I understand your desire to benefit from a Forum widget, as it really sounds like a cool idea! Unfortunately, we don’t have any recommendations at this time, and I’m sorry to say that we don’t currently have plans to include this widget in our upcoming releases 
Forums are becoming more popular as customers do more research before making purchases. A community forum plugin widget would give control to elfsight customers to manage where these questions are asked and provide factual and accurate information about their site/products.
Many thanks for sharing your thoughts!
Glad to inform you that we already have such an idea in the Wishlist! I’ve added your comment to the related topic where we’ll post all the updates 
It is hard to believe that something this popular is still not implemented.
Absolutely understand your frustration, @Genius_Goals. It’s true that a number of votes plays a significant role in shaping our development roadmap. However, another crucial factor is the complexity of the project.
While the idea of a forum widget sounds really great, it’s not easy to implement as a widget. We hope to decide on the concept of the Forum widget in the future, but, unfortunately, it’s not likely to happen soon.
Thank you very much for your interest!
Point of Feedback: I think the ultimate frustration is that this is something that has been marked at “Coming Soon” but it’s ultimately not coming soon. Elfight has said it’s coming for it looks like at least 3 years now. They have it on their website with a (2024) next to it. It’s not an implication that it’s coming soon. You’re telling us that it’s coming soon, and then when we ask for an ETA and for years now you’ve given this vague answer. If it’s not coming soon, don’t say it’s coming soon because, ultimately, it feels like poor customer service. It feels like you’re keeping us on the hook with no alternatives in the meantime. Please take that into consideration when you’re marketing this because it honestly makes me not only not want to wait but not want work with elfsight.
Hi there @Ellyn_Schinke 
Your feedback totally makes sense, and I am really sorry for the frustration caused by this!
Firstly, I’d like to assure you that we didn’t have an intention to give false hopes or mislead you anyhow. Indeed, this section was initially labeled as “Coming Soon,” but we’ve changed it to “Gathering Feedback” for greater transparency.
The thing is that we have 2 main criteria when for prioritization of requests: complexity of their implementation and number of votes.
The Forum widget is quite complex to develop, and I am afraid it won’t be live in the near future.:
However, please know that we’re fully committed to developing new apps, and we are not going to abandon the idea of the Forum widget. In fact, we’ve released 3 new widgets this month alone:
As soon as we have any updates on the Forum app, we’ll let you know right away
Thanks a lot for your feedback and understanding!
You should just take out the Forum widget project in its entirety. Even with Gathering Feedback and mentioning, " I am afraid it won’t be live in the near future," doesn’t make sense. Do you have a page at your site to not ask for these so and so widgets?
Just saying
Thank you for your comment, @Asian_Pacific_Oakmon!
I understand your frustration, but let me explain how the new widgets development works:
Firstly, we keep this forum for you to share your ideas and suggestions, and we welcome all your thoughts. But not only the level of feature popularity does the job, we also study use cases, evaluate our technical capabilities, so we form our roadmap only on the basis of all these factors.
Unfortunately, currently we really don’t have plans to include the Forum widget to our shortlist, and we want to be transparent about this. But we’re keeping this discussion open for further ideas and use cases — we still hope we’ll get back to this project in the future 
I run an organization that has childcare providers as members and I would like to have a forum space where they can chat with one another. Nothing elaborate, but I did not see a Widget already made for this!
Developing a forum is likely more complex and developer-intensive than it may appear. There are many technical requirements, such as ajax loading, notifications, databases, storage, security, message formatting… along with additional considerations like SEO and chat visibility. The need for customization and styling options can add further complexity. This is why forums aren’t typically considered “widgets”—they’re more interactive and dynamic. If you’re looking for a simpler solution, a comment widget might be a more straightforward way to allow chats non-real time discussions.
I think you have a bold request—best of luck! The Elfsight team is amazing, and if they managed to create a blog widget, perhaps they could create a forum widget as well. I’m just not sure if there’s enough demand for it.
@Shelley_Summer @Dan1 happy to welcome you to the community, and thank you for your comments!
This is indeed a very interesting request, and we completely understand your idea of connecting people directly on your website with chat options, categories for different topics, etc.
However, @Dan1 is absolutely right—this task is quite complex due to multiple factors, and it’s likely beyond what can be developed as a widget. That’s why we’re upfront about not being able to consider this request at the moment.
But, I do have some good news We have another request from you, which is a Comments widget exactly, and I believe this has a much better chance of being released: Widget for comments - please!, so feel free to vote for it to stay updated 
I would LOVE to have this feature for my pet loss support website! Please do consider bumping it up on the list of projects. There is nothing “out there” like this anywhere—I have looked, and the closest thing is a very rudimentary embeddable forum through Bravenet. One feature I’d really like to see with it, is the ability for members to upload photos from their computer or device to a post.
Thank you!!
Thank you very much for such a detailed comment, @Sandra_Ferrell, and welcome!
Your idea sounds fantastic, and I agree — a forum could be a great solution for your use case. I’ll be honest, though: the concept of a Forum widget is quite complex for several reasons. Dan actually broke it down really well:
However, the request for Comments widget sounds much more realistic, and our team has already had several discussions about its potential development: Widget for comments - please!
If a comments widget could serve as an alternative for you, I’d recommend upvoting the idea. It has a much higher chance of being released
Thanks again for your support, we always love hearing from you!
Hi Helga!
Thank you so much for the response back and the explanation from your developer as to why this might be a bigger “ask” than one might realize. I did want to mention that Bravenet has an embeddable forum that I think operates as a widget. Would it be worth checking it out to see how theirs works? I haven’t been too impressed with Bravenet support or pricing, so it is not a particularly good option for me. Also, I was hoping to find a forum widget/plug-in that would allow photos to be uploaded and shared. Bravenet’s platform does not offer that (it is a pretty basic forum with limited functionality).
A comment widget might work for me, but would there be an opportunity for uploading images to it? That’s something I would really like to have, as I think it will improve engagement and interest. Also, could replies be posted by others?
There are a lot of standalone forum platforms available (I have used Proboards in the past with moderate success), but having a discussion board/forum embedded within my site would be huge.
Again, thank you so much for your thoughts and for the explanation that you included with your response! I will continue to keep my fingers crossed that your team might consider pursuing this project at some point…let me know if there is anything I can do to help further the cause.
Take good care,
Sandra
Sandra, thanks again for your constructive ideas and suggestions!
It never hurts to take a look at what others are doing — in fact, I’d say it’s good practice! I really appreciate the examples you mentioned, and I’m sure they’d be useful for our dev team
As for the option to upload images, it’s hard to say for sure right now, but you’re more than welcome to suggest the idea in that thread! Your suggestions really do help shape our development.
Regarding replies posted by others… Do you mean any logged-in person should have the option to leave a comment in a thread? If so, I believe that’s how the Comments widget should work.
Overall, while I doubt we can start working on a Forum widget soon, we truly appreciate your input. Who knows — your suggestions might be great food for thought for our devs!
Once again, many thanks for your contribution!
Can we fast track this forum thing please, it seems to have been “in consideration” for 3 years.
Hi there, @Sharks_Volleyball
Thank you for the feedback!
As Helga mentioned above, creating a Forum widget is quite complicated due to a variety of factors, which makes it something we can’t currently pursue as a widget at the moment.
However, we have a request for the Comments widget, which seems to be more feasible, and our team has already had some conversations around its development. Feel free to check out this discussion: Widget for comments - please!
If you think the Comments widget might work for your needs, feel free to upvote the idea. It has much greater chances to be released
Hey Helga! I just wanted to say that im really excited on the forum widget! 
Great Idea!
Hi @Maxim_smith, many thanks for your comment!
Well, although I absolutely understand your excitement about this idea (and I wish we really could meet your expectations)m I’m afraid it’s a bit too complex for us at the moment
To be honest, this idea feels beyond the scope of the typical widgets we create, so we wouldn’t want to encourage too much hope for its release.
For now, we don’t have plans to consider this widget in the near future, but we never know what the future may bring