How often to redesign

@bauss you should have a few different designs so that people can choose what design they want to use.

 

I usually make my own through the style generator that vBulletin has installed. I put a few colours together and see if they work out.

 

IPS has an awful history of making users redo their entire forum layouts and from what I hear it'll happen again in IPB 4.0

With that said I'm not fond of updating other than keeping the forum secure. The site's main page is Wordpress and has had the same layout for years.

 

I'd rather have just one design for my forum that works well with our logo so we can build a brand. I don't want my forum to be viewed with multiple themes, because that'll cost more, and it will make our design less memorable. We only need one theme, and then focus on other parts of our site.

 

With most forums you will get a default style which is really ugly. But you need that style there as is because it's there as a back up just in case the one that you want to use is playing up on you and not rendering correctly.

 

I love making themes so I tend to redesign probably more then I should.

 

It may just be my luck but whenever I mess with an established site's design Google promptly reminds me they don't like changes. I think it's super easy to lose Google trust and so hard to gain it that I don't risk changing templates very often.

They keep track of change dates, check your adsense account to see that they even track ad changes.

 

I suck at designs just because I lack the sense of colors and have near-zero idea on what colors should be good. That said, I normally refrain from redesigning my website. But yes, I do keep tweaking in terms of structure and codes. And at the moment, I am re-doing my entire website. It needs to be made or better, turned into responsive as that is the in thing today. So yes, the redesign is being done after around a year.

 

I hear the term "responsive design" everywhere lately, Sidi, and in 2013 I can tell you that you probably don't need to worry too much about joining the in-crowd to have one of those templates.

People like standards, check your site analytics and find the most popular screen resolution being used and ensure they have an excellent experience at that size. Add a mobile only option for anyone to switch to and size the content to the browser size that is the next smaller than your most used size for best results.

Responsive means the site will stretch, and unfortunately that can often make it break.

 

If you've got a good website, then you really shouldn't be redesigning all the time. When I say good, I mean popular. Nothing is more disorienting than going to your favorite forum and having to spend several minutes figuring stuff out. I think if anything, redesign should mean slight upgrades over time to achieve a result, upgrades that are so seamless that even the users may or may not notice.

 

I don't manage most forums. I only manage my forum. It's better to focus on a main design, you don't need a backup design. Everything will "render" correctly if it's coded properly.

 

I think you have to consider the users before re-designing a site. If they aren't complaining then nothing is broken. If you change too much too often, users never get to really settle into a site. You run the risk of losing members, plus every unnecessary tweak could result in a breakage and the site suffers downtime.