How Would You Reorganize My Forum Index?

[taylor_smith]

Hello! I've been managing this sixteen-year-old community for so long that my brain gets fuzzy when trying to re-imagine my forum index. I need your objective opinions--no holds barred--on how you'd recreate the forum index.

Here's a test site featuring our new theme(s) (2-column layout):

http://xenforo.stratics.com/

 

[tajhay]

Hello! I've been managing this sixteen-year-old community for so long that my brain gets fuzzy when trying to re-imagine my forum index. I need your objective opinions--no holds barred--on how you'd recreate the forum index.

Here's a test site featuring our new theme(s) (2-column layout):

http://xenforo.stratics.com/

Shouldnt it be fairly self explanatory to remove non used forums? People have this assumption that the more forums you have the better it is, that is not true. You have quite a lot of forums with 0 posts. Even more so you have categories with 0 posts.

Make it easier for your users, save up on the real estate, and you will benefit.

 

[taylor_smith]

Shouldnt it be fairly self explanatory to remove non used forums? People have this assumption that the more forums you have the better it is, that is not true. You have quite a lot of forums with 0 posts. Even more so you have categories with 0 posts.

Make it easier for your users, save up on the real estate, and you will benefit.

Certainly obvious, but not always diplomatic. Say you hired someone to run your WoW section, who increased your WoW Twitch subscribers from 0 to 130 in a span of 4 days, who raised your WoW-related klout from 30 to 45, but who also asked you to make a few WoW-related forums that are currently empty. How do you do the politics?

But yes, you're precisely right in most cases. How about the non-empty forums? Should OT have its own section? Announcements forum at the top? Where do bug reports go?

Thanks very much for your insight.

 

[tajhay]

Certainly obvious, but not always diplomatic. Say you hired someone to run your WoW section, who increased your WoW Twitch subscribers from 0 to 130 in a span of 4 days, who raised your WoW-related klout from 30 to 45, but who also asked you to make a few WoW-related forums that are currently empty. How do you do the politics?

Hehe true. I would actually tell them that this is my site and i dont like clutter nah, i would actually be diplomatic about it in return and say that we can add those forums later as the main forum for that category grows and the threads need sorting. Or better yet create sub forums

As a general rule of thumb, i wouldnt ever create a forum if i didnt have 20 threads to put it in there. There is nothing worse and then going to a forum and seeing a couple of threads.

 

[Sheldon]

Take advantage of XF's thread prefixes. They seem to be really forgotten by forums. Once you get a huge amount, and feel it is needed, you can easily move them into a new forum, remove that prefix completely. Even better is the fact that you can sort by prefix. These are more powerful than people are giving credit for.

 

[taylor_smith]

This is looking better, I fink.

http://xenforo.stratics.com (test site)

(vs live site http://stratics.com/community)