New Widget: Random Threads

[M@rc]

Some forums have a lot of threads and a small member base. The trending topics can get the most attention and the majority of people don't go digging for new topics through several pages in a forum section. Once they get tired of what's trending, they may simply seek a different forum or head to social media.

I thought about a Random Threads widget which can be put in their face (eg. widget positions, a dedicated Widget Page, etc) to gather interest to threads they may not have seen before while on the site. They could keep refreshing the page until something catches their attention. For example, returning to the homepage shows them a refreshed list and they might find something interesting.

 

[JackieChun]

This could potentially help forums with huge numbers of threads as it would improve internal linking for random URLs (temporarily, obviously) and influence the search engines' decisions to index additional pages.

 

[FTL]

This is not so different to the recommendation system on YouTube with its side panel of video suggestions and that works very well, so I think it would work here too. Upvoted.

 

[Demon_skeith]

My forum has roughly 60k threads ranging back to 2007, would love to look over to see an old time topic get a bit of new life

 

[nodle]

I wouldn't mind having something like this to randomly bring up old threads as well. It gets my vote.

 

[TimeWizardCosmo]

I would like this also. Some of our threads go back to 1999, would be nice to give some of those some visibility.