Frode789
Well-known member
Okay.. So I'm working on a new project, and I need some help on the best way to organize my board game forums.
I have about 15 standard forums, which is visible on the forum index. That's ok.
Then comes the database of board games, which will consist of thousands of games eventually. Each game in my database needs to have its own forum. So naturally I would need to hide them from the node list. The same goes for group forums I'd imagine.
Also, the plan was to not split up the game forums too much. So I wanted to do prefixes for "news", "rules", "strategy" etc. And just keep everything about a game in the same forum.
But then you have those games that may have 5 expansions, and that's when things get tricky..
A) The most natural way of doing it: Sub-forums for expansions. So they are nested within the main game forum. But it will split up things, and many expansions are very small, so it doesn't make sense to split them from the main forum. (this is a problem another website has. Some expansion forums are not used much. Or people get confused and post in the wrong forum. While some questions may be relevant for several expansions, and cannot be divided to a single expansion..).
Some big expansions may warrant this segmentation, but it may not be beneficial as a default rule. I think..
B) Experimental approach: One forum for everything on a game (and its 5 expansions), but heavily utilizing prefixes. So prefixes for main game/expansion A-B-C etc, and then comes the regular prefixes as well (news, rules etc). So I would need multi prefixes.
Would this look too chaotic?
Another problem with doing this is that I have a "game-bar" in the forum, which allows users to easily get back to the "database" section of that game. But since the game is linked to a node ID, I now cannot link the expansion game pages to that forum. It will only display the main game. So the user has visited an expansion in the database, they go to the forum tab. So far so good. But then they click into it, and suddenly the game bar on the forum says "main game", so they have no easy way to get back to the "expansion" page.
See images:
In the forum. Game bar linked to node ID.
The forum tab in the database.
Kind of important to get the structure right before I start mass-adding stuff and then later find out I have to change things again.. Suggestions and input very welcome.
Did I miss something? Another approach I can do?
The other site that is huge on this area (BGG.com), has some big issues with lack of user-friendliness and good design etc. So I need to get this well done.
I have about 15 standard forums, which is visible on the forum index. That's ok.
Then comes the database of board games, which will consist of thousands of games eventually. Each game in my database needs to have its own forum. So naturally I would need to hide them from the node list. The same goes for group forums I'd imagine.
Also, the plan was to not split up the game forums too much. So I wanted to do prefixes for "news", "rules", "strategy" etc. And just keep everything about a game in the same forum.
But then you have those games that may have 5 expansions, and that's when things get tricky..
A) The most natural way of doing it: Sub-forums for expansions. So they are nested within the main game forum. But it will split up things, and many expansions are very small, so it doesn't make sense to split them from the main forum. (this is a problem another website has. Some expansion forums are not used much. Or people get confused and post in the wrong forum. While some questions may be relevant for several expansions, and cannot be divided to a single expansion..).
Some big expansions may warrant this segmentation, but it may not be beneficial as a default rule. I think..
B) Experimental approach: One forum for everything on a game (and its 5 expansions), but heavily utilizing prefixes. So prefixes for main game/expansion A-B-C etc, and then comes the regular prefixes as well (news, rules etc). So I would need multi prefixes.
Would this look too chaotic?
Another problem with doing this is that I have a "game-bar" in the forum, which allows users to easily get back to the "database" section of that game. But since the game is linked to a node ID, I now cannot link the expansion game pages to that forum. It will only display the main game. So the user has visited an expansion in the database, they go to the forum tab. So far so good. But then they click into it, and suddenly the game bar on the forum says "main game", so they have no easy way to get back to the "expansion" page.
See images:
In the forum. Game bar linked to node ID.
The forum tab in the database.
Kind of important to get the structure right before I start mass-adding stuff and then later find out I have to change things again.. Suggestions and input very welcome.
Did I miss something? Another approach I can do?
The other site that is huge on this area (BGG.com), has some big issues with lack of user-friendliness and good design etc. So I need to get this well done.
I might hit 1000 some day, but I will be able to clean some old games (only allowing them to have a discussion thread, like resources, not a dedicated forum/prefixes/whatever). So I think I would be able to keep things in check.
