Starting a forum with only one subforum?

Discussion in 'Managing Your Online Community' started by Akela, Jul 11, 2012.

  1. Akela

    Akela Regular Member

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    I have a slight tendency to over-organize and thus end up with too many forums in the beginning. :)

    So, with Hockey D, I went with the radical idea of only one forum.
    To avoid the depressing look of an almost empty index page, I redirected it to the subforum itself.

    Good idea? Bad? Have you ever thought of starting a forum with only one subforum?
     
    Akela, Jul 11, 2012
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  2. AWS

    AWS Administrator

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    I actually think it's a brilliant idea. It reminds me of the original forums. Only thing I would do is turn on threaded mode. I think that works better for the way you have it setup.

    There used to be an off topic forum that was very popular that did the very thing you are doing. They used vbulletin and turned on threaded mode. It was a great experience.
     
    AWS, Jul 11, 2012
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  3. GTB

    GTB Regular Member

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    It's something I liked with UseBB, that had the option to run the forum in "Single Forum Mode", just what you've done there when it uses one forum as the homepage you land on. It makes moderation easy because there's no moving threads around on to other forums. And it helps make a new community look populated fast using one forum with a few topics listed on it early doors.

    Not a bad idea. different from the norm. Something I did for a while when using UseBB and liked the idea of it.

    It could possibly be an added feature for XenForo in 1.2. The ability to run it in single forum mode as an extra option like UseBB can. It's the only other forum software I've ever seen with that neat feature. And you could switch from single forum mode to full mode (using more forums) once getting populated with topics making it worth expanding the forums and moving some topics on to them.
     
    GTB, Jul 12, 2012
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  4. Svoboda

    Svoboda Adept

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    Yeah, it is an interesting concept for sure. Only thing I could forsee is a lot of dupe topics if you're really not quick to moderate since stuff will get pushed down quickly when the board gets super busy. I'd work some more on the style, the blue and red clashes hard IMO.
     
    Svoboda, Jul 13, 2012
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  5. Akela

    Akela Regular Member

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    Just to follow up, the idea seems to be working out. Some of our members have already suggested splitting up the forum, while others argued against the idea because they like seeing all the new content as soon as they login.
     
    Akela, Jul 25, 2012
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  6. CallieJo

    CallieJo Regular Member

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    I think it's a great idea. Especially using the redirect. You land where the content is instead of skimpy forum homepage. Brilliant!
     
    CallieJo, Aug 1, 2012
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  7. icymx

    icymx Regular Member

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    Not a bad idea. But what's wrong with starting out with 3-5 subforums in the beginning? It's when you have 20 empty subforums that something's wrong.
     
    icymx, Sep 3, 2012
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