Xamuel.com now has forums 
You can check them out here. It took a lot of work and I’m not even half finished yet. There are still a ton more features to add.
One of the main reasons for going to forums was, I was never quite satisfied with how blog comments work. They work alright on very new posts, but I’m a writer who writes for the long term. No matter how old an article may be, lively discussion is still welcomed and invited. With the classic comment system, if someone comments on an older article, the general readership probably won’t notice. But with forums, the commented thread will get “bumped” to the top of the list, putting it back in the public eye
So from now on, comments will be closed on all the articles themselves, but every article will contain a link to the forum where it can be discussed. In fact, in a short while, the comments currently existing on the article pages, will disappear. But don’t worry, no comments will are deleted: they’re just moved to the forum. Even now, all the existing comments have been loaded into the forums. That includes all the comments from when this blog was hosted by blogspot. Finally, all the discussion which was lost in the transition from Blogger to WordPress, has been restored!
Right now, the forums are a little bare bones. I’ve got a lot on my plate, but it’s proving a lot of fun, so the work is more like play. My next major goal will be to incorporate BBCode so that you can discuss things with fancy, high-tech things like bold and italics 
Something awesome happened which I take as a very good sign. When I submitted the initial forums sitemap to Google Webmaster Tools, it turned out the number of URLs was exactly 311. That’s a sort of lucky number for me. I tend to see it everywhere, similar to how some people report seeing 11:11 everywhere.
One of the areas where I’m really stretching my muscles is in the visual design department. The current layout at the forum isn’t carved in stone at all, in fact that’s another one of the big goals I have, is to revamp it to make it really look good. I’m just grateful we have CSS nowadays and I’m not having to manually insert style instructions all throughout the html!
I’ve already had some requests for moderator status, and I’d gladly knight some mods, except that moderation isn’t actually programmed in yet Right now, we’re talkin’ about the Wild Wild West of boards. There’s gold in these hills, I tell ya!
I’ve noticed a pattern from this latest endeaver and from the Connections Project. When I start a new Web2.0 project, I have a fairly clear vision of how it’s going to work overall, based upon my current knowledge of PHP/SQL. And that bird’s eye vision is pretty right-on, but I inevitably run into all sorts of technical details I didn’t see, and which force me to stretch and expand that knowledge I started with. By the time the project is reaching public launch, I’ll inevitably have discovered some new tricks which I wish I’d known about from the very beginning. The next program I whip up, I’ll be starting from this stronger position, but the pattern will inevitably repeat itself. That’s how learning goes It’s how I mastered C, and it’s how I’ll master anything. I might have to go back later and completely rewrite some of the original code from scratch =P
Now that I’ve got discussion boards set up, besides fleshing them out (and fleshing out the other things I’m running), it’s time to consider what build next. I’ve got so many great ideas, the hardest part is just deciding on one and running with it. I really feel like I’ve discovered a new set of wings or something, which I had all along but somehow failed to see. The only thing more exciting than the future, is the present
FURTHER READING
Announcing: The Newsletter!
Blogspot Static Frontpage Generator
The Halting Problem
Computer Programming In My Life