Rant: I hate the Forum Home, it sucks.

[Jason]

http://xenforo.com/community/threads/turn-xf-into-pinforo.29887/

I have been PLEADING with developers to change forums FOREVER by writing Pinforo... A forum where threads are bumped to the front page and displayed by an image with information that appears when you hover over it. Use a masonry style layout with infinite scrolling. This in my opinion is an idea worth a LOT of money.

Disagree, though I do think there's a lot of room for improvement with the layout of traditional forums.

No doubt, Pinterest is successful; however, not much credit is given to their bookmarklet, email notifications, sign up flow, target market, Facebook & Twitter integration, timing, etc., all of which worked together to make their launch a success.

No one wants to be overwhelmed with content. Yes, the more someone has seen, the more likely they're to find something interesting, but that doesn't imply that the best way to deliver content is all at once. Too much content promotes apathy. How can I possibly focus on just one thing when there are so many other things? How can I decide where I want to post knowing there are a hundred other options I may have missed? I'd rather post nothing at all. But that's not the worst part. The reason these layouts are a problem on most sites is that in the case where I'm actually trying to find something specific, it's impossible. The photos / tiles are staggered, and thrown on the page in a seemingly random fashion. There's no flow.

The layout works for Pinterest because most people don't go there looking for something particular, and because it's not crucial to Pinterest's success that the user see any one photo. It's an art site. If something catches your eye, that's great. It means the art stands out, which is more a testament to the artist. That's almost the exact opposite of what you'd want for a forum, where most people go to find posts on specific issues and have meaningful discussions.

 

[Digital Doctor]

http://www.melonhtml5.com/demo/grid_slider/
What do you think of this?

Simple.
Fits 24 forums in a small space.
Would suit a lot of situations.

Removes entirely useless things like "Last Post".

Could be good.
I like the Grid but I'd day the titles are too small for alot of forums so the squares in the grid should be bigger.

 

[Alpha1]

Its probably not useful for every situation, but it does allow a rather large amount of information to be shown in the tooltip. (up to a full article) The slider effect allows a many times 24 forums to be displayed in a dynamic manner.

 

[kkm323]

This will be a thing soon with the resizer, the version we have now is even better and prettier, our style will bring all the users to the yard ^_^

I like what you did to the site.. Very nice

 

[hugh71158]

Hmm, interesting thread.

I guess the familiar format is a good thing - but yes, old and boring.

Being a beginner at this, and trying to put something together right now, I decided to play with coloring the sections for about 10 minutes tonight. I think someone needs to tell me that it looks stupid! It's at http://www.photographerinc.com

 

[erich37]

maybe something like this ?

 

[Alpha1]

Yeah, but less static. If the left panel would be a collapsible & scrollable treeview menu then we are talking.

 

[erich37]

Yeah, but less static. If the left panel would be a collapsible & scrollable treeview menu then we are talking.

LOL... tell me how to make a "dynamic" mockup

Anyway, I do not see any benefit in collapsing and thereby hiding any Categories.....

http://buyer.alibaba.com/forum?tracelog=discussion_forums_20130419

 

[Alpha1]

LOL... tell me how to make a "dynamic" mockup

Just add a few open(+) close(-) and scroll down( ↓ ) buttons or show a few categories/nodes collapsed and the idea will be clear.

 

[DRE]

I got rid of my forum home because I felt like it took up too much space. I don't think the forum home sucks though, it's just that if you have a small community, it could look a little too much. Since I reduced my subforum to links, the next thing I'll do is try to add both discussion, message count for each node and a last poster username and last thread title to the Tooltip whenever you hover over the links. Right now I'm using Create Thread Formular but I really like the look of Quick Create Thread and turned my Create Thread Formular nav link into a Create Thread breadcrumb button instead.

 

[Digital Doctor]

I got rid of my forum home

(red added by me)

I like the idea you have here with a list of forums followed by a list of recent threads.

 

[Digital Doctor]

I got rid of my forum home

I tweaked it a bit.

I like your cleaner highlighting in the subnavbar. I find it easier to read.
I definitely like the subnavbar icons

 

[DRE]

View attachment 55003

(red added by me)

I like the idea you have here with a list of forums followed by a list of recent threads.

Thanks! They seem to like it: http://8thos.com/threads/forum-list-gone.21238/

but this would probably look weird for most forums on here cause most seem to have like 30 + subforums.

I tweaked it a bit.

View attachment 55007

I like your cleaner highlighting in the subnavbar. I find it easier to read.
I definitely like the subnavbar icons


View attachment 55008

Thanks! I wanted to do something different to it so I played around with it but I couldn't make up my mind and left it alone instead of reverting it. That's why it looks like that. I'm using fontawesome icons I discovered in one of @Matthew Hawley resources. They are very convenient. They liven up the site a little. I use them everywhere. About your mock-up, does it look good when you go into responsive? That's my issue with that. Debating on making the forum links look like buttons.

 

[Digital Doctor]

making the forum links look like buttons.

That could work.
Because your forum home is "non-standard" just including the word: Forums will make it more obvious.
I think 2 columns would be safer than 3 if you wanted a mobile style.

 

[Alien]

I'd love to see some innovative stuff done with it... I just use xenporta for now, though I haven't had the guts to alter the route location to be my default yet.

http://forums.wtf.com/portal/

 

[DRE]

That could work.
Because your forum home is "non-standard" just including the word: Forums will make it more obvious.
I think 2 columns would be safer than 3 if you wanted a mobile style.

Here we go!

 

[Digital Doctor]

Here we go!

I like it.
Add the word Forums somewhere to finish it off.

 

[DRE]

I don't want the word forums anywhere on my site. Thinking about what all I need to do to get rid of it. Google hates forums, check out my google authorship resource.

 

[Digital Doctor]

I don't want the word forums anywhere on my site. Thinking about what all I need to do to get rid of it. Google hates forums, check out my google authorship resource.

Getting rid of the word Forum won't change Xenforo's native data structure (threads) ... which is what Google doesn't like as actual articles and pages.

And you should know ... Content is King.

 

[DRE]

Getting rid of the word Forum won't change Xenforo's native data structure (threads) ... which is what Google doesn't like as actual articles and pages.

And you should know ... Content is King.

I'm having issue with getting google adsense working on my site. I don't have the time and patience to mess with adsense anymore. I even tried applying for media.net and got rejected. At this point I don't care what google thinks about my content, but only that Google Authorship works for members Google + profiles and if removing the word forum is one of the short cuts I have to get it to work then so be it.