Rant: I hate the Forum Home, it sucks.

Monotonous ok but ugly? No. Besides how sexy can a list of links with icons next to them be? It's not a website home page people, it's a forum. They tend to be repetitive in layout and content by nature.
 
Klaas said:
Monotonous ok but ugly? No. Besides how sexy can a list of links with icons next to them be? It's not a website home page people, it's a forum. They tend to be repetitive in layout and content by nature.
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Exactly. Now if you're actually using the forum home as your site home, than yeah I agree, not that great looking.
 
I don't think the forumhome design is the issue. I think the function of it is the issue. It can be SOOOOOOO much more. I mean, think about it. How many of you actually own a large forum? If you do, then you know that you tend to see the same questions over and over (if it's a help/support/tutorial type site). People have a hard time sifting through the crap information to find the gold nuggets throughout our sites!!! I envision a core feature (hell, a mod would be a great start!) that would create a "Hot" type button (still working on what the name of the button should be but let's go with hot for now) right next to the RSS feed. This button will link to a separate page that would have a few columns for a few "categories".

Take my site for example. Say you go to Xbox 360 tutorials section and click this "hot" button. It will bring you to a page with:
Staff picked (similar to stickies)
Most replied
Most viewed
Most liked
Heating up (based on views, replies, and likes over the past day, week, month, year, whatever you pick - or just separate columns for each similar to the "most" columns - that way newer threads get as much love as the older ones)

--And then have a panel where staff can edit it in the event something becomes irrelevant and you want to make room for relevant threads.

This way people can have easier access to some of the better threads out there. It will help keep the good ones alive and help all the new people out in finding the information they need without having to ask for it.

There are so many changes to the forum softwares that can be utilized to improve our user environments. I mean, similar threads should be just below the first post or even within the first post above the signature. We should have a community wiki post so if the OP dies or doesn't come back, the thread can stay updated through a community effort (if permissions allowed it). Heck, even a thing under the wiki for most liked replies/answers in a thread with a lil exert from that post. That way people can find the helpful posts or answers in threads that extend 10+ pages in just a few seconds. I mean...how annoying is it to go to a site with a thread you find through google to have over 100+ pages and you are just looking for an answer that will work for you? It's frustrating as HELL! Yet, forum software is stuck in its presentation of information and has had this same look for how many decades now? With next to no improvement (legacy vs threaded I suppose).

Sorry for the lil rant and hijack. I just think too many times we are thinking from an admin aspect, rather than a user aspect. We are on our sites every day and know where to look or how to search for something that we need. But most of our visitors don't and I think that these types of implementations may lead to better user retention, which should lead to more informative threads and posts, more traffic over time, and more ways to increase the revenues on the site (if you have ads).

Xf was a step in the right direction in terms of making changes to the forum aspect, but we need some pretty big leaps to really make forums the #1 way to publish and find information.
 
Forum home basically is a spreadsheet with links.
The concept is from the last century.
While we do need some form of overview or sitemap, there are much better forms of content discovery.
 
First attempt:

Before:
8thOS.forum.home.before.webp

After:
8thOS.forum.home.redo.webp


Random Site example: www.8thOS.com
 
DBA said:
That image you made actually gave me an idea (which is usually not a good thing lol), basically convert the forum list to images.
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Yea. In certain situations that would work.
or better might be to make it look like an iphone / android list of apps.
ie. Image (with name underneath).
 
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