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Forum Theme Designs Ruin Online Communities
- Thread starter Ghost
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1. Whoever is in charge of the homepage needs to update it. I honestly thought the last article was the one from July 14 2019, which is three months behind.
2. Any forum theme is going to be a variant of the default theme. The theme will be evolutionary and incremental and only a couple of steps away. It won't be revolutionary or a brand new re-imaging. You really need the underlying software to be different (eg. Discourse or Invision Community's fluid view).
In general though, I agree with you that the forum index page is now one of the worst UIX choices that can hold back new sites. Modern users expect to immediately view the discussion and content, not need to navigate through categories and sub-boards. This is why I'm relentless on cutting back on forum bloat.
2. Any forum theme is going to be a variant of the default theme. The theme will be evolutionary and incremental and only a couple of steps away. It won't be revolutionary or a brand new re-imaging. You really need the underlying software to be different (eg. Discourse or Invision Community's fluid view).
In general though, I agree with you that the forum index page is now one of the worst UIX choices that can hold back new sites. Modern users expect to immediately view the discussion and content, not need to navigate through categories and sub-boards. This is why I'm relentless on cutting back on forum bloat.
Valid points. Forums aren't as appealing to many users these days because there's so much to click through before finding the content. A more Twitter like user interface might lead to more successful communities (just look at Mastodon!). There's a lot for us to change to remain successful throughout 2020 and beyond!
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