[wp-forums] Forum makeover

[Les Bessant]

OK, these are my general thoughts on the forums. Partly response to other
posts, partly my own meanderings..

Thinking back to when I started with WP, despite years of using forums, I
found the WP forums hard to use. And it's quite clear that a lot of new
posters have similar problems.

The first problem is the layout of the front page. At the top is that huge
tag cloud. Now I know that a lot of people believe that tags are the best
thing since sliced HTML, and they're probably a whole new paradigm and lots
of other things, but for people who just want some help, that block is a
confusing mess. I certainly never give it more than a glance. Now that might
be because I'm an old fogey who just doesn't get it, or it might be that it
really is a waste of screen area. If a list of tags is really needed,
wouldn't it make sense to put them in the sidebar, where people who want
them can find them, and the rest of us can see some actual information above
the fold? 

Next down is the list of recent posts. At busy times, things drop off this
so quickly that it's not really all that useful, either for responding to
questions, or seeing if someone just asked the same question five minutes
ago. Personally, I'd like to see this moved either to its own page or to the
bottom. It would be more useful to have an "unanswered posts" count next to
each forum. Or the more usual forum thing of telling visitors how many
unread posts they have (might or might not be doable, or desirable here, but
it's a thought).

Then, at last, we have the list of forums - regardless of the software
used[1], this is what I expect to see near the top of the page. That's how
people get an idea of what the forums are for, and what areas they can post
in, and it really needs to be the first thing they see.

And the right-hand sidebar is largely wasted space. Given the narrow fixed
width design[2], the sidebar either needs to contain useful information, or
should go. FWIW, it took me a while to notice that posters' names were
hiding over there - it's not the obvious place to look, and the subtle grey
on grey colour scheme does little to make them stand out.

If we're going to try to enforce what amounts to an acceptable use policy on
people, we really need to balance this by making the thing a lot more
user-friendly. If it's easy to comply with the rules, people are more likely
to at least try to comply. Well, some of them, anyway.

If we are going to give the forums a makeover, we should think carefully
about the current headings - are there enough, are the names and
descriptions as clear as they need to be, that kind of thing.

Once we get that far, each forum does, as Podz suggests, need a fixed post
at the top (and for visual clarity, this needs to be spaced out from the
actual posts below), describing what the forum is for, and what it's not
for. I'm not sure about the full list being in each forum - that *will*
confuse people, you can bet on it. The overall description belongs on the
front page, before people get into individual forums. I also think that
"sub-forums" are a useful idea - kept to a sensible number of levels, of
course, but it would help people ask questions in the most appropriate
places, and help people find questions that they can answer.

I actually like the idea of the third party section. This could have a
sticky at the top which could contain links to other support resources
(Gallery, etc...). On the "front page" question, as I've said, I don't think
anything should be there, but if we are keeping that structure, then I would
agree with hiding the third party questions.

FAQs? Yes please. Need to be kept up to date and improved as time goes on,
but worth having. Some people do read them, or at least scan them enough to
find what they're looking for.

Closing threads if people get overexcited - absolutely. I like the standard
response thing for that, too.

Closing old threads would also help. There seems to have been a spate of
people responding to something that last saw the light of day in 2004 with
what is really a new question. Perhaps a link for "start a new thread on
this subject" at the end of closed threads? It would also mean that the new
question is flagged as "unanswered", which should help with getting a
response.



[1] No, I'm not going to attempt to get into the argument about the software
- I've seen some sites using BBPress that were laid out in a much more
usable manner, so I know that's not the problem
[2] Not a bad thing in itself, but it does create some limitations
________________________________

Les Bessant les at lcb.me.uk
Losing it[1] - http://lcb.me.uk/