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#1 2008-12-18 10:40 am
- Nefarious
- Tuning Fork
- Moderator
- From: 45°22"N 84°57"W
- Registered: 2002-09-30
- Posts: 7998
Friendliness of forums design
Yet another survey by me. I'm designing a forum for heavy usage by paid members. I want an appearance similar to MacLife Forums.
One of my issues is "tags". A site such as DailyKos allows original thread posters to tag their first post with tags (keywords). Example thread: Environmental thread with energy tags. This particular story has only 4 tags submitted by the original poster: energy, drilling, public lands, natural gas.
Q1) Do you feel that tags are convenient and effective ? Q2) Would a Google search engine and a Forum search engine do a sufficient job than tags, or other mainstream search engine ? Q3) Do tags detract too much from a clean appearance ? That is, do the advantages of tags outweigh the benefits of a clean interface ?
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#2 2008-12-18 1:13 pm
Re: Friendliness of forums design
Nefarious wrote:
I want an appearance similar to MacLife Forums.
I find both the appearance and "friendliness" of MacLife Forums a pain.
Here is an example of free forum software: http://www.yabbforum.com/
or: http://www.phpbb.com/
An example of use: http://tums.org/forums/YaBB.pl
There are many free packages of forum software available.
Computers never do what you want them to do; only what you tell them to do.
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#3 2008-12-18 2:05 pm
- Donkey Butter
- jerk face
- From: over yonder
- Registered: 2005-12-14
- Posts: 2449
Re: Friendliness of forums design
I'm not a fan of tags, so I would opt for a clean forum.
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#4 2008-12-18 8:14 pm
Re: Friendliness of forums design
Ugh, YaBB and PhpBB suck. I love punBB. They updated it to 1.3 recently which is completely different than this. I'm actually surprised and sad that the Admins at M|LF haven't upgraded the forums here yet.
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#5 2008-12-18 8:32 pm
- Nefarious
- Tuning Fork
- Moderator
- From: 45°22"N 84°57"W
- Registered: 2002-09-30
- Posts: 7998
Re: Friendliness of forums design
I should mention there's going to be some internal "forum" tags as well. Moderators and experienced users will be able to mark tags so that a tag might appear in different sections simultaneously. For example: if two languages were used in the original post (say, English and Spanish), the thread would appear in those sections of the forum.
Naturally, the designer would have to do some surgery on the software.
-----
Anyway, I'm trying to focus on the appearance of a forum to start.
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#6 2008-12-18 8:47 pm
- Cobalt60
- Member
- Registered: 2002-04-17
- Posts: 1388
Re: Friendliness of forums design
Jasoco wrote:
Ugh, YaBB and PhpBB suck. I love punBB. They updated it to 1.3 recently which is completely different than this. I'm actually surprised and sad that the Admins at M|LF haven't upgraded the forums here yet.
What? And blow our post counts and archives? :-)
I'm not a doctor but I'll take a look!
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#8 2008-12-18 11:18 pm
- mahakali
- anti-razor
- From: easter egg
- Registered: 2002-11-06
- Posts: 5592
Re: Friendliness of forums design
What I miss from forum software is the ability to put a thread into several forums. The mechanism should be similar to tagging but the 'tags' are not keywords but forum titles. You can also say it's kinda like crossposting but the difference is when you crosspost, you're creating more than one threads. When using 'tag', you only create one but people can view/reply it from more than one forums.
Posts about privacy or RIAA, for example, could fit into everyday tech and minithink but so far they'd only go to one forum. There are also some posts about tips in the mag. They're usually filed into Mac|Life Readers. Since there aren't many go to that forum, those posts usually get low response.
1. Instill fear.
2. ???????? (use your imagination)
3. Profit!
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#9 2008-12-19 1:49 am
Re: Friendliness of forums design
Cobalt60 wrote:
Jasoco wrote:
Ugh, YaBB and PhpBB suck. I love punBB. They updated it to 1.3 recently which is completely different than this. I'm actually surprised and sad that the Admins at M|LF haven't upgraded the forums here yet.
What? And blow our post counts and archives? :-)
???
It's the same forum. It takes a quick 5 minute upgrade of the database and uploading of all the new files.
punBB 1.3 is quite a bit more advanced than 1.2 is. It's a complete redesign inside and out. If the admins want to stay up on all the security updates they'll have to upgrade sooner or later. The best part is extensions that don't require downloading and uploading manually. It's all handled on the Administration panel (Like WordPress does with upgrading) without having to touch an FTP tool.
I highly recommend it to the admins here. Whoever they are.
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#10 2008-12-19 5:02 am
- mahakali
- anti-razor
- From: easter egg
- Registered: 2002-11-06
- Posts: 5592
Re: Friendliness of forums design
Answering your questions about tags, they can be useful as long as:
1. They aren't required.
2. It's not only threads that can be tagged but also posts because the purpose of tagging is to make it easier for you to find something and it won't help if you have to go through the whole thread to find what you're looking for. Keep in mind that some threads can be more than 10 pages long.
3. Anyone can tag a post/topic, not just mods or thread starters. In this case, people are allowed to make their tags public or keep them private.
A search engine is pretty good but misspellings and alternative terms can degrade your search result. Also sometimes keywords aren't mentioned in a thread.
I don't see the relation between tags and unclean appearance. You can use a special page to list tags and only display the most popular ones on the sidebar, for example. Or avoid using 'tag clouds', If I'm guessing correctly, cause I think they can be distractive.
1. Instill fear.
2. ???????? (use your imagination)
3. Profit!
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#11 2008-12-19 6:07 pm
- Macskeeball
- Member
- Registered: 2002-02-07
- Posts: 8014
- Website
Re: Friendliness of forums design
Jasoco wrote:
I highly recommend it to the admins here. Whoever they are.
The people with the power to update/modify the forum software probably won't see your posting about 1.3 in this thread. Posting a thread in Forum Feedback is your best bet for that.
tech writer for hire
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#12 2008-12-20 5:48 pm
Re: Friendliness of forums design
That's where this thread really should have been posted anyway. I didn't create the thread.
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#13 2008-12-20 5:53 pm
- pancakeparty
- Member
- Registered: 2008-12-20
- Posts: 2
Re: Friendliness of forums design
I especially love vBulliten. It's very sleek and has many features!
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#14 2008-12-20 6:06 pm
- Nefarious
- Tuning Fork
- Moderator
- From: 45°22"N 84°57"W
- Registered: 2002-09-30
- Posts: 7998
Re: Friendliness of forums design
Jasoco wrote:
That's where this thread really should have been posted anyway. I didn't create the thread.
I'm not interested in modifying this forum's structure. I'm making my own. The section "Forum Feedback" is for the MacLife Forums.
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