Should we be aiming for phpBB or Phorum?
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Those of you still frequenting the Sproutlore forum and watching the big yellow countdown may have noticed that the old forum is no longer open for new posts.
Just for fun I thought I'd check how many posts it had received... In the last 3 years, 5 months and 12 days we've posted 20,060 messages in 1,367 threads.
Not bad, but some of you will remember that there was another forum before that one, called Phorum, so I thought I'd check that one too... In 4 years, 2 months and 5 days, we posted an amazing 144,825 messages in 4,597 threads.
That seems a massive difference. When we switched over, most people commented that the new one looked slicker, but a few commented that they preferred the simplicity of the old one. Well, looking at the numbers, it looks like the descenters may have been right. So I thought I'd ask, what sort of forum should we be aiming for?
Out of the box, the Drupal forum is very simple - probably too simple, and I've spent the last six months trying to make it look more like the phpBB forum. That's the great thing about Drupal, it's flexible enough to be like whatever forum system we want, with a bit of tweaking.
So if you can tell me what features you'd like the forum to have - and what features you'd like left out, I'll do my best to keep as many people as possible happy (though, of course, there's no pleasing everyone).
Personally I favour quality over quantity. 
I don't think the lessening in posts is too much to worry about. With the rise of facebook and myspace for social interaction, every forum has taken a significant hit in it's post-rate, as friends communicate their lives on those sites instead of forums.
I think most of those who complained about the complexity were actually complaining about the split into multiple fora, with guidelines for each, rather than about the additional features; they wanted to be free to toot about whatever they pleased, wherever they pleased.
Doesn't seem to have become an issue on here yet, but cutting and splicing of threads for mods was very handy for keeping the areas that are supposed to maintain a high-relevance level free from toot, while allowing the toot to continue unhindered elsewhere.
The old smiley set would be nice, these ones don't feel right somehow.
Polls would be nice too.
I cut my teeth on phpBB,so that's the style I prefer. I'm not sure what a drupal forum is, but if it's that sort of snakey style the forum had when you first started this one up, I absolutely hated it. I find it a nightmare to navigate and can't sort out who's replying to what.
Stick with what you're doing, it's getting better all the time.
Oh and I agree about the smileys, I really miss the blushing one, I used to use that one quite a lot.
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All shall reap as the sow...except the amateur gardener
Would be nice to have the old thumbs up
I like where it's going the phpBB is the best one for me.
I think we should expect post counts to be lower, both for the reasons Tim says & The Golden Sprout has become more of a Members Forum. In the previous one the majority was available to non-menbers & as such the Members bit was mainly ignored. On here it's the other way round. But casual users won't pay just to toot on the main forums. That said I like it this way round...
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Just have fun
Another thumbs up for phpBB here.
The old old Phorum was great, but I prefer the way we have things divided up into sections like on here, and phpBB does it better than anything I've seen.
Just to make it clear, we aren't using either phpBB or Phorum, I was just asking which style of forum we ought to be aiming for.
I agree with you the nature of the web has changed and a lot of the things people used to post on forums now gets posted on Facebook, Twitter, MySpace, etc. This is no bad thing as a lot of those posts are better off off the site. I hope we'll always keep talking toot, but the quality of toot being talked has hopefully risen.
It's difficult to judge how the post count has fared since the move to the new site - we've been live since January, but back then the new forum had a lot of usability issues, so the move over from Sproutlore has been a very gradual one (which I think is a good thing as it made it a lot less painful).
I agree that the move from an open forum to a more member-based one may change things. Whether that will result in less posting remains to be seen. I'm hopeful that the members areas will foster a greater sense of community, as everyone who's there has made the same committment of putting their hand in their pocket. Sometimes people are more willing to open up if they know the whole world isn't watching.
The moderation issue is a good one. The new gaffer hasn't said anything about moderators yet, though the member-orientated nature may lessen the need for that too. Moderation features are certainly possible if we need them.
There are certain forum features that I deliberately shy away from. One example is "ranks" based on the nomber of postings. I think these serve no useful purpose other than to encourage people to post inane comments to boost their post count. I also prefer to minimise the amount of junk that distract from the posts, such as buttons for half a dozen different IM clients. I realise I need to trim the sidebars further in this regard, but hopefully we're getting there.
Some small changes I'm looking to make soon are adding people's real names to the panel beside the posts, as I often forget who people are, and adding a small badge to indicate who's a proper club member.
And I also agree the old smilies were better. I'll do my best to drag them over soon.
James
Keeping the big flywheel spinning...
That's a lot of info, but I think I agree with it all.
I don't know what "buttons for half a dozen different IM clients" means though?
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Just have fun
Yeah I though so
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Just have fun
If only that were the case.
In this case, though, my point is that I don't need to see a button for MSN, AIM, Yahoo, ICQ and a few other chat clients under every message posted (we could consider having that sort of thing on the profile pages, but not every post).
James
Keeping the big flywheel spinning...
, and adding a small badge to indicate who's a proper club member
You mean we have improper club members? Nobody offered me THAT option!
*Sulks*
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All shall reap as the sow...except the amateur gardener
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