Hot answers tagged forum
7
As with any legal contract, both sides, including the user, must agree (“assent”) to the terms and conditions offered with the online service in order to create a legally enforceable “agreement.” In addition, a user can demonstrate agreement in a variety of ways, either by words or by deeds, depending on the circumstances. Online, however, the line ...
5
In a forum thread, users are likely to want to go to the start, or end of the thread fairly often, as well as possibly a particular point in the thread. That makes forum threads a poor candidate for infinite scrolling, as to get to the beginning (or end depending on how you set up your forum), someone will have to scroll through the entire thread. And some ...
5
You are trying to solve two different tasks (to provide Q&A and to collect users feedback) using one solution. Frankly speaking, forum idea does not suite any of your problems.
Feature proposals
Would you prefer to simplify this scenario or will you force a user to struggle with a forum, performing registration/creating a topic/posting a comment/...? ...
4
What's wrong with:
[First] [Prev] ... [4] [5] ... [6] [Next] [Last]
It has been commonly used in little-space-for-paging situations.
As per:
I may only edit the CSS of the original (desktop) interface to adapt
it to a mobile environment. I may not add or remove any of the already
present elements
You can remove elements with css (display:none) ...
3
Yes, the need to upload an image to a 3rd party server, then going there, retrieving the URL, going to your site and pasting it there - is annoying. It makes you work much harder to share an image and many users just decide it's not worth the trouble.
However, this doesn't necessarily mean you need to develop the whole image hosting infrastructure by ...
3
One option would be like you say, to have the root node float as you scroll down. You could even repeat this for one or two nested levels. This becomes problematic of course as you get beyond two nested levels because there's only so much vertical space. At that point I would consider collapsing the intermediate responses except the Original post and the ...
3
Looking at the screen shot above, it does seem too crowded for a mobile site. I would suggest reconsidering the UI. What is of most important? if it's not that important don't show it on the mobile or displace on to another screen. Make sure to make the clickable elements large enough to be pressed with the finger.
Have you considered a dynamically loading ...
3
The signin mecanism already accepts openID and fb connect, and the "or sign in with" albel makes it clear that you can sign in with your existing account. So there is defintely no restraint for people to sign in/up and contribute on the site.
So the real question is: what kind of topics do you expect them to post?
If you expect people to ask questions ...
3
Maybe you could have a discussion or a forum checkbox?! Using a different tab or view, like discussion section on the original Wikipedia. Personally I would go with the discussion tab from Wikipedia:
2
If you decide to go with something other than phpBB, you should be able to export/import the data. For example, there are scripts to migrate from phpBB to bbPress. I would suggest you start by comparing the vanilla installations of a few pieces of forum software (this might be a starting point) and identifying which you think is most user-friendly. Next, ...
2
It really depends on the purpose you're trying to achieve. The StackExchange system is for a Q&A-style format while a forum is meant for a discussion. While similar, these are two distinct goals and the appropriate tool should be used for each.
Could forum software be improved? Yes, of course. Most of the larger forum software will allow you to install ...
2
The idea of allowing users to customize their front page sounds great. I think the problem in your suggestion is that you split selection from content. The way you suggest it, you a) still show all users all options before they get to the content and b) list the content in a different position from the options, which feels counter-intuitive. And c) it is ...
2
Discussion forums and Q&A sites are solving very different problems.
Q&A sites are best when you want to focus on information. But to increase the information signal to noise ratio, you have to actively discourage discussion. Jeff Atwood (the co-founder of StackExchange) has written on this topic in his blog.
Discussion forums are just what their ...
2
I strongly recommend reading this excellent article on best practices for community specific design. From a design perspective and to ensure you allow for easy collaboration and contribution, To quote the article :
Browsing
Community sites, like any other website, need to facilitate browsing using design tactics > that immediately tell the
user ...
1
The smaller the amount of topics/threads you expect the smaller the initial amount of boards/categories. For example, you can start with "Technical Problems" and later divide into "Technical Problems Product A" and "Technical Problems Product B".
To find a good solution I would
a: google for "information architecture"
b: look at/search for comparable ...
1
I suggest to split this into two points:
a) Page loading speed and data traffic
b) Information context
Page Loading Speed
From a loading speed of view, it doesn't make sense to load all data. Is the user only interested in the latest response (or the few latest added messages), he has no advantage of having all the data on the site.
Information Context
...
1
One solution is to set up a forum with topics specifically dedicated to
feature proposals or changing functionality.
FAQs
Another solution is not to reserve a topic for FAQs and wait for the other questions to come. People, more often than not, will see the most commonly asked questions as they are displayed near top of forum for view, ratings, et al. ...
1
No, i wouldn´t prefer this kind of front page because the checkboxes waste place on the site and makes its difficult to get an overview.
But i love the function to select forums.
Maybe it could be a solution to show or hide the selecion with a sliding panel.
My interests wouldn´t be changed every 5 minutes. So it should be enough, when i select the forum ...
1
My philosophy is to always prepare for the worst from people and celebrate the best. That is to say that if it is possible in any way, shape, or form for a user to be malicious, some will find out how to do it and take advantage of it.
I know that YouTube does a pretty decent job with filtering explicit content, but I think Metacafe is a bit more lenient on ...
1
A very interesting question I must say, which I've seen a range of different takes on to find a solution to. Each with more or less success than the next.
I must say I'm very intrigued by how YouTube has re-designed the comment section of videos. YouTube is a forum I roam a lot and in my mind the flow in which you track responses in the new layout is a lot ...
1
For mobile, make the number of items displayed higher (assuming it is text not anything 'large') and dump the pagination. Just have next/previous buttons and have enough distance around them to reduce accidental clicking. Will your users really go past the first or second page, most don't. How are the items ordered?
1
The problem is a lot tougher than what it seemed at first. The makers of this forum clearly didn't understand that a mobile version of a site isn't just a smaller version of the desktop view.
Since you can modify only the CSS, you'll need to use display:none a lot to make the layout more user-friendly. My suggested changes (from top to bottom of the page):
...
1
Absolutely - I agree with your points. UX is all about making tasks as easy as possible for the end-user. If your site can function without user accounts, allow people to partake anonymously.
This system can be seen on Stack Exchange - people can anonymously ask and answer questions, and it works. I answered my first few questions anonymously before ...
1
We use GetSatisfaction to facilitate both. It allows you to have a conversation (though not in your traditional forum style) and mark replies as answers. It strikes a fine balance between support questions, features ideas, or just discussion points.
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