How often do you add features to your community?

[Cedric]

I'm curious about how often you make changes or introduce new features on your community. While it's great to keep things fresh with occasional updates, we all know that features alone don't build a community.

• How frequently do you add new features or make significant changes?
• What kind of updates have you found to be most beneficial for member engagement?
• Do you have a strategy for balancing new features with maintaining a stable and reliable forum environment?
• How do you gather feedback from your members about potential changes or new features?
• Have you ever introduced a feature that didn't go as planned? How did you handle it? Did you see no engagement on those features?

Eager to hear some thoughts.

 

[Katrina]

For Christianity Haven, members don't want new features. The owner put up some holiday theme where they all get little hats on their avatars and they threw a fit. They simply want good discussions.

 

[zoldos]

I love to tinker with the theme, and I've also been adding new add-ons to enhance the forum. My efforts seem well received!

 

[Dismal_Bliss]

Once in a blue moon anymore. I used to buy 3rd-party add-ons, hack the template code, write my own code, and more. These days though, almost everything I need comes "in the box" and I just announce new features whenever the IPS devs introduce a new feature. Then my community thanks me for it as if I was the guy doing the progranmming, lol.

 

[Ravenfreak]

I don't really add new features to my communities that often. If I feel that a feature will benefit the community later down the line, I'll add it. I like to focus mainly on content than adding new features.

 

[Shawn Gossman]

For a while, I started trying to add something new each week to make a new forum fully featured.

But in reality, I think that's where I start to fall with my forums. I try to add too much and do too much in the process.

From here on out, I'll add the very basics to modernized functionality but other than that, I'm keeping everything forum-simple and "lite" until there is a large demand for things by a majority of members.

I think it's easier to manage that way, it's less overwhelming. Does anyone else agree with me on that one?

 

[zoldos]

For a while, I started trying to add something new each week to make a new forum fully featured.

But in reality, I think that's where I start to fall with my forums. I try to add too much and do too much in the process.

From here on out, I'll add the very basics to modernized functionality but other than that, I'm keeping everything forum-simple and "lite" until there is a large demand for things by a majority of members.

I think it's easier to manage that way, it's less overwhelming. Does anyone else agree with me on that one?

As long as my forum is unique, I can agree. I've never run the same site twice, and pride myself on customization.

It's good now tho IMO, so I'm focusing on content and memberships. 😀

 

[Page]

I have not added many features in a long time, mostly as it may cost money to add new options or time and also new features might fail and no one is interested. Most members end up doing the basics and that's the Forums. Easy, basic and fast.

Since the IPS marketplace is now gone, it is hard to keep track of what's new.

 

[Nomad]

I do not ad features frequently but if needed I add new categories.