Subforums - When is it too many?

Edrondol

Well-known member
I was talking with another mod the other day and we debated about the role of subforums. He hates them and refuses to use them, making his forum one big grip of threads. While I see the good in that with everyone always being in the same forum, it makes it hard as hell to really find anything.

Contrast that with mine, which I see has probably too many subforums breaking down topics in to manageable chunks.

So what's the answer? If we had topic prefixes I could see having one big forum and they'd HAVE to use a prefix (such as Forumopolis or Fark) but other than that I think you almost have to chop it up a little.

Thoughts?
 
And this is where thread prefixes can come in handy.

Is it easy to search on Prefixes ?
or is it such that you can filter a forum on prefixes ?
Can you force someone to use a prefix ?
For non-enforced prefixes, what is the compliance rate ? accuracy rate ? How often are, in reality, more than 1 prefix needed ?
 
Subforums are better than prefixes, more better way to manage a forum... I hate forums that are too big when they can be sized down... also makes the forum more active with posts if you size it down and make some forums into subforums... anyways can you share the link, just curious.
 
Subforums are better than prefixes, more better way to manage a forum... I hate forums that are too big when they can be sized down... also makes the forum more active with posts if you size it down and make some forums into subforums... anyways can you share the link, just curious.
Depends.
I have a classifieds section that uses thread prefixes for US states. It's better than having 51 subforums, many of which would hardly get used.
Thread prefixes could cut down the use of subforums in some cases.

New name, ay?
 
Depends.
I have a classifieds section that uses thread prefixes for US states. It's better than having 51 subforums, many of which would hardly get used.
Thread prefixes could cut down the use of subforums in some cases.

New name, ay?
Yea, its my last name :P
 
The two that I mentioned - Forumopolis and Fark - both extensively utilize the Prefixes. Forumopolis uses very, very few subs and those are mostly archives & such.
 
this is why I am wondering about whether it is possible to sort Threads alphabetically.
I have not thought about pre-fixes, but that is a great idea in order to avoid having many many sub-forums.....

What is the best way to have the Forum structured when I have like 300 different topics ? What is the best considering the XF-development going forward ?
 
We use prefixes for our events forum to separate which state or canadian province they might be in. We also use them for our craigslist/ebay/kijiji finds forum.

I think more then one level deep below the forum index then it gets to be too much and often they are forgotten about unless you display them all on the main index in some way.
 
I must tell the truth, part of this was brought on because I clicked on a sig link from here and was amazed at the sheer number of subs that this person (who will be nameless for now & forever so please don't ask) had on their site. And the site just looked...dead. Some subs had only 1 or 2 threads in it and I wondered what the point of that was. Isn't that over-saturation?
 
I would think that if you don't have at least 20+ threads per forum then it would be kind of senseless and make them feel empty. At least span two pages.
 
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