Signs of the Times - What will XF do ?

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darkon said:
No.

This is just a matter of the boards topic. For example i do have a board for a rollercoaster/themepark community. This is a very visual topic, and so the gallery is very important for us.

Pictures, articles in a CMS, Blogs etc. ARE content.
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It was my impression that the whole "content is king" thing began when Google started ranking forums according to their content/articles/anything but criteria dealing with the actual forum. Or at least that's what I inferred from AdminZone's advice on how to get your forum "found." And I assume that's why so many "forums" have basically turned into a website/blog/gallery/wiki and oh yeah - there's a forum too. Am I wrong? Was that not actually the genesis of the current one-stop-shopping-sites we call forums?

Because I don't think Google did us end-users any big favors with that. Some forums have got so much content that there's very little point in joining them - it's all been said already.

Personally I'm hoping that this software brings back forums that are actually forums. Since the conversations are SEO'd I ought to be able to search for people talking about (say) U.K. sitcoms and actually find a board where people are talking about U.K. sitcoms - as opposed to a website with articles, a blog, FAQ, gallery, and wiki about U.K. sitcoms and oh yeah, there's a forum too.
 
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To be fair, Google has started to do a pretty good job of indexing forum posts and identifying them as such, even down to displaying the number of replies and the date of the last post in a thread (albeit usually hopelessly out of date) so I'm hopeful that when presented with pages as semantically rich as XenForo's, Google will readily index and rank them according to the content posted, without downgrading their importance as 'just another forum post'.
 
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Kier said:
To be fair, Google has started to do a pretty good job of indexing forum posts and identifying them as such, even down to displaying the number of replies and the date of the last post in a thread...
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Exactly - these days I get actually posts along with the articles etc. when I Google for something, especially if I frame the search as something I might find in a post. I'm not sure if the board even has to be top-ranked for that - or at least I've come across some obscure boards searching for something specific that they just happened to have.
 
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Danny.VBT said:
Forum owners need to reassess the function of their community; there are tons of services that offer social networking, blogging, and image storing capabilities *but these are not your competitors* - online communities specialize in discussions on a particular topic. If your forum is providing valuable content and fruitful discourse on the subject, your forum will succeed.

I really think administrators are losing site of this, full software suites (Blog, gallery, CMS) won't keep users active in your forum. It's the productivity paradox applied to forums, features don't make a community, content is king!
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Would totally agree 100%. You also need to look pretty cool and offer something new to visitors. The old "why would someone want to join my site rather than the two dozen or more similar sites covering the same topic area" question.

I tend to think people join the sites I help Admin due to my glowing personality and exceedingly awesome posting style, but the other Admins tend to tell me that's not the case. We can't both be right!
 
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Jethro said:
Would totally agree 100%. You also need to look pretty cool and offer something new to visitors. The old "why would someone want to join my site rather than the two dozen or more similar sites covering the same topic area" question.

I tend to think people join the sites I help Admin due to my glowing personality and exceedingly awesome posting style, but the other Admins tend to tell me that's not the case. We can't both be right!
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I can tell you from my personal experiences...
I have a site running on 1990's technology in classic ASP.
It is one of the most popular sites I have....
Even when I tried to replace that site with a VB3 mirror image, everyone went back or demanded the old one back.

It boiled down too:
1. They were used to a certain format
2. The activity and participation went down due to #1
3. People don't like change.

Now I have seen FB make inroads into this same crowd - but that winds up being due to the mobile aspect.
It is just too easy to reply to a text and have it "post" somewhere than logging onto a site.
Granted that activity doesn't do any sites whose business is to capture traffic and revenue, but that's where I see things going real soon...
 
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Cory Booth said:
I can tell you from my personal experiences...
I have a site running on 1990's technology in classic ASP.
It is one of the most popular sites I have....
Even when I tried to replace that site with a VB3 mirror image, everyone went back or demanded the old one back.

It boiled down too:
1. They were used to a certain format
2. The activity and participation went down due to #1
3. People don't like change.

Now I have seen FB make inroads into this same crowd - but that winds up being due to the mobile aspect.
It is just too easy to reply to a text and have it "post" somewhere than logging onto a site.
Granted that activity doesn't do any sites whose business is to capture traffic and revenue, but that's where I see things going real soon...
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UGH. SERIOUSLY. Change is inevitable, get used to it!
 
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Danny.VBT said:
You're missing my point, I am not talking about already developed communities.

If you are using such software as means to collate content in a pragmatic way and spur discussion, than way to go - excellent utilization of resources, but I would still argue these features, in at least the preliminary stages, are secondary to your community.
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No, thats just YOUR opinion. It´s far away from beeing the univsersal truth.

For example, my coaster-community discusses the building, theming etc. of rollercoasters and themeparks, as well as reports from trips to park or fairs. Without pictures there would be close to zero users.
The topic of this board is very visual, so you have to integrate pictures and videos into the discussion. And you have to do it from the start.

Of course you can merge a board with a lot of other appilcations. But to be honest, this sucks.
If you merge multiple application you do have a admin-panel for every part of the community, the UI of all applications are different even if you manage to style them as close as possible and you have to find ways of merging all parts etc. etc.

Danny.VBT said:
You can integrate Flickr and Wordpress just as effectively as complete addons.
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Come on, flickr? Why should i leave an important part of my community in the hands of a webservice? Yahoo! as owner of Flickr can change their service any time the want in any way they want it.
Sorry, but i would never do this.
 
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content != text

content = information in any form

Do you start a board to get a google-ranking?
If not, than you should start with the content that people want (just a reminder, poeple are those wiered things on two legs walking around outside of your window, talking, selling you stuff etc.), that may be only text, but it may also be text and pictures and videos and sounds and and and.
 
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Content = information
Media = content in specific form.

I guess we will have to agree to disagree, darkon. Do you need videos and pictures to have a discussion about theme parks in a bar? at a party? Why would an online social setting be any different?
 
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Do i need a bulletin board to talk to someone at a bar?

It´s really more than just helpfull for some topics, if everyone knows exactly what they are talking about. And a picture may say more than thousand words.
 
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