Rant: I hate the Forum Home, it sucks.

Alfa1 said:
Tiles are not very useful for information display. Not unless you have 6 forums or less to display. More than that becomes confusing.
Tabs are very useful, but it hides content in the same way the subforum dropdowns do. Only a small % clicks on it unless each tab offers something highly attractive. (like different content types)
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I liked the tab idea, it was very popular with both admins and their members - we had a flashing light indicator if there was new posts, which meant it was easy for members of a forum to know instantly which categories had new posts, it worked very well for a lot of sites.

but I am not sure how SEO friendly it was, back then it wasn't the hugest of concerns, and we suggested sites use a the IPB LoFi theme which was designed for bots. It also wasn't very good if you have a majority of Guest visitors, as you say some information was hidden making it harder to find unless you knew what category it was.

The overwhelming feedback we had though was that members loved it on the sites that had it.

You could have multiple rows too. I hate scrolling to China down a long forum list, so do a lot of people, and this really tidied up the Forum Index.

I was intending to recreate it for XF, but lost the will to do so during the "dark days", I might yet, dunno if the market is still there for it, and it would be totally different now of course, we had to use a HUGE amount of JS to get it to work in IPB.


itab_2rows.gif
bluesteel.webp
 
Digital Doctor said:
aka, this page.
http://xenforo.com/community/

It's so long and boring.

It's not a Xenforo thing. It's all forums. Every one of them.

What does your look like ? Did you mod it ?

Surely something better could be done ?
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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.
 
Rho Delta said:
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.
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Just because a popular idea is out there, it doesn't work for everything, especially a forum. Many threads don't have or need an image attached, there's no 'consistency', etc. Forums are better suited for tabular style layouts or some type of consistent layout.
 
King Kovifor said:
Just because a popular idea is out there, it doesn't work for everything, especially a forum. Many threads don't have or need an image attached, there's no 'consistency', etc. Forums are better suited for tabular style layouts or some type of consistent layout.
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Agree to disagree.
 
King Kovifor said:
Just because a popular idea is out there, it doesn't work for everything, especially a forum. Many threads don't have or need an image attached, there's no 'consistency', etc. Forums are better suited for tabular style layouts or some type of consistent layout.
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PinForo is not intended to replace the Forum or to have images within threads. Neither is it dedicated to images only - the image is not the core element.

Please read up on the PinForo-thread first, in order for you to understand its features/structure/psychology/noise-level/purpose, etc.:
http://xenforo.com/community/threads/turn-xf-into-pinforo.29887/


:rolleyes:
 
Rho Delta said:
Agree to disagree.
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Yes, I disagree. But something that radical to the forum industry is better suited for an add-on, since well, this is a specialized type of site. None of my sites center around images enough to do this. If I had to actually recode something as fundamental as the home page or threads to function like a forum does, without requiring images or a 'pinterest' clone set up, I'd chose a different software. And a lot of other people would. I've seen you post this suggestion in reference to quite a few things. Forum home page, the RM, etc., and its been met with people thinking its neat, interesting, or a cool idea, but would alienate a lot of customers.
 
erich37 said:
PinForo is not intended to replace the Forum or to have images within threads.

Please read up on the PinForo-thread first, in order for you to understand its features/structure/psychology/noise-level/purpose, etc.:
http://xenforo.com/community/threads/turn-xf-into-pinforo.29887/


:rolleyes:
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I've read it. I disagree with it. But he's suggestion the homepage be replaced with it. to turn it into 'pinforo'. It'll alienate a ton of people and make XF less appealing.
 
King Kovifor said:
I've read it. I disagree with it. But he's suggestion the homepage be replaced with it. to turn it into 'pinforo'. It'll alienate a ton of people and make XF less appealing.
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you do not need to put a thing like PinForo onto the Homepage.
Just put it into the Resource-Manager.

Each webmaster can decide whether to have the RM placed onto the Homepage or not.


To be honest, how many webmasters are going to use the Resource-Manager for files and files-downloads ? And how many of your users will use the Resource-Manager to upload or download files ?


The XenForo-Forum is perfect as it is.
The big question is: what can we do with the Resource-Manager and how flexible will it gonna be in order for Add-on developers to turn it into whatever you like ?

Can we turn the RM into some kind of PinForo ?
Can we turn the RM into some kind of Marketplace ?
Can we turn the RM into some kind of Classifieds ?
Can we turn the RM into some kind of Album-Gallery (see user bobster65) ?
Can we turn the RM into some kind of User-Blog-collection ?
Can we turn the RM into some kind of Singles-Matchmaking-Dating interface ?
Can we turn the RM into some kind of Business-Listings interface ?
Can we turn the RM into some kind of Reviews-system ?
Can we turn the RM into some kind of Sports Wagering-system (see user bobster65) ?
Can we turn the RM into some kind of Question & Answers interface ?
Can we turn the RM into some kind of Auction-site ?
Can we turn the RM into some kind of Stock-Trading-interface (see user bobster65) ?
Can we turn the RM into some kind of CMS ?
Can we turn the RM into some kind of Link-Directory ?
Can we turn the RM into some kind of Shop ?
Can we turn the RM into some kind of Events-system ?
Can we turn the RM into some kind of Whatever....... ?


The Forum itself should stay as it is.
In the end, a Forum is a Forum is a Forum. ;)


IMHO, we should not think about how to "change" the Forum itself, but we should rather think more about the Resource-Manager and its alternative uses:

http://xenforo.com/community/threads/suggestions-to-make-the-rm-more-extendable-to-other-uses.26748/

http://xenforo.com/community/threads/can-a-resource-be-a-company.33408/

http://xenforo.com/community/threads/bidding-system.30156/




BTW:
I do not want to argue with anyone here. We should just work together and generate some productive brainstorming :)
 
erich37 said:
you do not need to put a thing like PinForo onto the Homepage.
Just put it into the Resource-Manager.

Each webmaster can decide whether to have the RM placed onto the Homepage or not.


To be honest, how many webmasters are going to use the Resource-Manager for files and files-downloads ? And how many of your users will use the Resource-Manager to upload or download files ?
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I'd reread the post I initially responded to, because it was saying to replace the homepage with PinForo. I will disagree with resource manager being 'rewritten' into PinForo because I feel that to get it to work correctly, it'll be a lot of hacking, so if PinForo was coded as an add-on, that it'd be better to manage it without relying on the RM. Its a radical change.
 
Digital Doctor said:
Anyone seen a good Forum Home ?
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We have two versions of the forum list (we are on vB 3.8.2):
http://www.avforums.com/forums/index.php?do=switch_to_concise is the default because new people to the site can be put off by a HUGE list of forums.
Whereas
http://www.avforums.com/forums/index.php?do=switch_to_exp is for people who want it and is heavily influenced by Xenforo in anticipation of migrating.
I think it's important to show the top level subforums in the expanded view.
 
Digital Doctor said:
Oh sorry, very vague. I liked the Subforum grid.
The rest is pretty standard Xenforo.
Click to expand...

Still don't understand. Perhaps get to the point but I agree as I initially mentioned, the subforum gridding is the only thing that differs from the standard xf layout here. I like it don't get me wrong, but what I don't like within that screenshot is the Subforum prefix and dropdown menu, it's another form of key legend in my mind when you have a grid system clearly showing you there are subforums. It's screaming out at me and telling me "your dumb, you clearly can't understand that there are x amount of subforums". Key legends should be banned imo so if that was removed i'd give it the good ole thumbsup because i'm one of those that have never liked the dropmenu path for subforums that xf took.

It gets a partial thumbsup though :D
 
One idea I had in mind, but hadn't had time to work on, is

Left Side depicts the Forum Name and on hover it will give you the desriptions like today. (No real post info, etc)

Right side is just a running "whats new"
 
Anyone looking for a custom "Home" page / tab within the XF wrapper.. Shoot me a PM I have finally managed to do something about it... :)

A addon release is on the cards (but may be a while off yet as my focus is getting my EP projected up / completed first).

Regards, Darren
 
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