Break up Forums

Started by AdamM • 10 replies • 1965 views

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AdamM (Utah)
Posts: 13

Posted:

This website is fantastic and it rapidly growing. Can I suggest that you break up the forums into different categories so we can more easily find information?

I use forums on our HOA Website and we use a free one called Web Wiz Forums that works really well.

Just an idea. I tried searching for something this morning and the search results were over 12 pages long.

Thanks,

Adam

hoatalk (California)
Posts: 599

Posted:

Hi Adam,

Thank you for your recommendation! We love to hear new ideas for the group.

We have considered that in the past and decided not to split the forum. The reasons were:

(1) One message could fall into many categories.
(2) Making people click into multiple forum areas would dramatically cut the viewers in each area, so less people would see each message and less replies would be posted.

#2 was the biggest reason we have one giant forum. You will notice that old messages sort to the bottom, so active topics are always easy to find and reply to.

However, we agree that with thousands of messages now, it gets a bit harder to search past messages. There is a wealth of great advice in the forums now and making it easier to find is a good goal.

One solution we are considering is a Message Directory or Message Browser that would be a Yahoo style directory of all topics. Each topic may appear many times in the directory under different headings. However, we may need volunteers to help categorize messages, depending on how it works out. We feel this would make searching easier while allowing the most people to see each new message. In other words, the Message Directory would be a separate page in a Research Library we are also working on.

We'd love to hear comments on this idea or any other improvement suggestions.

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SwanB (Washington)
Posts: 199

Posted:

I think breaking up the forums would be an excellent idea. I certainly wouldn't have a problem moving from one forum to another to review what was going on, especially with the ability to be notified when someone replies to a specific topic as we have right now.
I also don't see a problem with a search at the main website or any of the forum websites on a particular topic bringing up multiple hits from different forums and archives. Couldn't this happen?

MikeS1
Posts: 668

Posted:

I like it the way that it is now. It's very easy to search for any topic. Great Site.

AdamM (Utah)
Posts: 13

Posted:

It looks like there are differing opinions. I currently visit over 10 different sites with forums and this is the only one that doesn't have things broken out be general topics (Board Meetings, CC&R, Legal, Assessments, etc.).

I was searching for a discussion on statements yesterday and I couldn't find what I was looking for quickly.

Is there a possibility to try it and if it doesn't work then go back to one forum?

Adam

SwanB (Washington)
Posts: 199

Posted:

AdamM: I am always curious as to what sources others have access to. Would you be willing to offer up the urls of the other forums you find helpful?

AdamM (Utah)
Posts: 13

Posted:

SwanB,

They are not HOA Forums. This is the one forums that I have found for HOA Boards to discuss issues on.

The other forums are web developing and web hosting forums.

http://support.jodohost.com
http://webwizguide.com/bbs/
http://www.candypress.com/CPforum/

There are a few others for games and other hobbies I have, but you get the idea.

Adam

AdamM (Utah)
Posts: 13

Posted:

hoatalk,

Any thought of breaking these forums up? I try and keep up, but there are hundreds of posts between the times I can check the site.

If the forums were broken up I could choose which main subjects I want to focus on and subscribe to that.

Thanks,

Adam

hoatalk (California)
Posts: 599

Posted:

Posted By AdamM on 06/19/2006 7:39 AM

hoatalk,

Any thought of breaking these forums up? I try and keep up, but there are hundreds of posts between the times I can check the site.

If the forums were broken up I could choose which main subjects I want to focus on and subscribe to that.

Thanks,

Adam

Adam, Maybe you could suggest the categories you have in mind? That may help us look at this a different way.

In addition to the concern above that people will not want to click into many forums, causing message views to fall, we have a concern that most messages would end up in the General forum anyway (which I'm sure we would have to offer). The other issue is what to do with the over 4,000 messages already out there. Manually moving them all to new forum categories would take weeks of effort.

Also, what did you think of the Message Browser idea I listed above? Might that solve the problem and allow only one forum?

All suggestions are certainly welcome. Thank you.

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hoatalk (California)
Posts: 599

Posted:

PS - That's also the purpose of the regular update emails we send. They list all new topics since the last update, so you can subscribe to any new topic you like and you don't have to check the site so often.

Also, the Read/Unread icons indicate all messages you have seen or not seen.

I hope this helps.

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WalterM (Michigan)
Posts: 4

Posted:

Personally, I prefer the current messages to be listed as they are as I have learned and thought about things I did not intend because I read the all of the messages.

However, a seperate function to research items would be the greatest.

Thanks for the forum by the way!

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