Large & Bulky!

[racingtrader]

I bought my Xenforo License today and will be getting ready to make the switch over. I love the SEO, Social and Mobile friendly features compared to the current platform (Vbulletin) I have been looking around and trying to find other forums that are 4 and 5 levels deep with sub categories to see how I can clean it up when I make the transfer this week. Any ideas how to keep all of the sections but have them better organized and visible?

Our site is called Racing Trader - Track Forums & Classifieds

Open to all feed back on how to improve!

 

[Alpha1]

I would really consider to cut down on nodes at this time, so that nodes feel more active.

 

[racingtrader]

I would really consider to cut down on nodes at this time, so that nodes feel more active.

I'm not sure what you mean by nodes? do you mean sub categories?

 

[Alpha1]

Forums are nodes in xenforo.

 

[oO5 Dynasty]

Yeah in xenforo, the forums/sub forums are called nodes.

 

[racingtrader]

Learn something new everyday, Thanks @oO5 Dynasty & @Alfa1 I have thought about cutting out the first 2 levels and narrowing it down to states & track names. It will still leave a massive amount of tracks, think that will help if I am only 2 levels deep?

 

[Alpha1]

I would remove all track named forums and combine those in the parent forum. Use prefixes to distinguish between tracks. This way your will have bulky forums with activity instead of track forums with 5 threads in it.

 

[thedude]

+1 on what @Alfa1 is suggesting. It's better to expand as you grow than to start off with a huge number of sections/subforums and appear like a ghost town.

 

[racingtrader]

I would remove all track named forums and combine those in the parent forum. Use prefixes to distinguish between tracks. This way your will have bulky forums with activity instead of track forums with 5 threads in it.

+1 on what @Alfa1 is suggesting. It's better to expand as you grow than to start off with a huge number of sections/subforums and appear like a ghost town.

I agree, it does look like a ghost town! So your suggesting to have just each state and province which would narrow it down to 60 from 2000+ & have a prefix for each track. Never thought about that I am going to try it on the Xenforo demo and see how it looks. Great Idea!

 

[racingtrader]

I spent the last hour trying it out and I'm really happy with the look of it! Thanks for the tips @Alfa1 I will update this when we go live with XenForo to show the difference.

 

[oO5 Dynasty]

I spent the last hour trying it out and I'm really happy with the look of it! Thanks for the tips @Alfa1 I will update this when we go live with XenForo to show the difference.

My Website will have a lot of sections when it launches also, but i took a very creative approach called Thread Showcases! My website has not launched yet, but the way i showcase my Nodes or page nodes, brings sooo much life to them even if theirs no content in them. The way we Showcase the sections will make the board members, want to interact with soooo many Showcases on my site. So i guess what im trying to say is, even if your site may seem like a ghost town in many of your sections. Thinking of a creative way to get members to post in these sections faster could work out.

 

[tajhay]

My Website

If thats the one listed in your signature, you should create a thread. Im sure you will get a lot of useful advice on here. For example, playing a song on load, and navigation is so non user friendly.

 

[oO5 Dynasty]

If thats the one listed in your signature, you should create a thread. Im sure you will get a lot of useful advice on here. For example, playing a song on load, and navigation is so non user friendly.

I don't wanna showcase my site, but thanks for the advice. I designed the site to fit how i want it to work. So I'm fine with everything that my site does. Plus I'm not finished with the design, sooooo when its all said and done my board members will be happy. Plus if anybody doesn't like the site, then its just not for them.

 

[n00bsaibot]

I agree, it does look like a ghost town! So your suggesting to have just each state and province which would narrow it down to 60 from 2000+ & have a prefix for each track. Never thought about that I am going to try it on the Xenforo demo and see how it looks. Great Idea!

I would consider possibly going even wider... as in regional for the node. Then use a combo of tags and prefixes to narrow down.

 

[racingtrader]

We have the forum set up and running now, I have started changing the forum categories around. I'm at the point I need to start creating a prefix for each of the sub categories and then move the threads from the category to under the prefix. Is there a quick way of doing that?

 

[sbj]

Batch update in ACP should be able to do it.

 

[racingtrader]

Batch update in ACP should be able to do it.

I didn't realize just how many sub categories there was, even using the batch update and manually adding prefixes its taken about 8 hours to move 10%.

 

[racingtrader]

Ok, To update I am 99% done moving the old sub forums to prefixes and cutting back on Categories. We have gone from 2500+ down to under 100 and still reducing. Anyone else have any feedback now that we have the site live and almost finished reorganizing lay out?

The site is http://www.racingtrader.ca