Too Many Forums

Social Groups within vBulletin but it wouldn't use the Social Forums addon. The entire point is to be able to run hundreds of groups without relying on forums for each group. There is another thread here talking about using Social Groups to your advantage where I posted a large write up.

I am. It is currently on hold because I would need to rewrite the breadcrumb code to have it work correctly and I don't want to edit core files. What I want to do should be possible with vBulletin 4's homepage capabilities.

 

Thanks for the incite Wayne Luke I am following you around like a little stalker haha - I love the insights by people who know how to use programs, I am new to the whole running my own site with forums thing and have realised I have way too many boards - so what would your advice be for someone to actually cut down the amount of boards they have?

Would it be an idea to close the forums for the day to work on it and then move all the posts into one board - delete the rest and then reduce the amount of boards and move the threads into their new relevent positions?

Damn i wish I had read this 8 months ago, or asked for advice.

 

If you were looking to delete a forum or subforum, just merge it with another forum (or move all the threads first then delete the forum.)

 

I just tallied everything up and I have like 30 forums for one that is new that is way too much and so i am going to be getting rid of some after reading the ideas and suggestions on this site.

 

Glad to hear that you gained some knowledge from this thread. I used to go to town with the amount of categories and forums (back in the day) and the end results were... well, confusion from the members. :lol:

I think you'll find that fewer amounts of each will yield superior results.

 

Lol yeah I think I went to town with my site so am busy editing everything around to make it more practical overall.

EDIT: Ok I am not trying to bump this thread - or drop my forum link (as that is in my signature) - but was wondering if someone could check out my forums now by clicking here and telling me whether it is still too many categories etc I have deleted about 30 so far)

 

Try Showing Your Sub Forums In Forum Home.

 

Suggestions for SportsForce

Hi merk_aus - obviously by now you have picked up that I am new to this. However I did have a few suggestions from a "newbie" perspective that may be helpful (if not feel free to let me know if you have any thoughts... I love to learn). :p

1. It doesn't look like your "testing board" is used very much. Perhaps you could consider deleting it or rename the Network Issues forum to say something like "Network Issues and Testing." Then start a thread in that forum that allows people to post and try things out.
2. It looks like "Rugby League" is your most popular forum. Perhaps you could combine it with "Rugby Union" and just call it "Rugby." As for the Cricket, Football, and Motorsport forums it seems that they only get (on average) 1.5 posts per thread. Maybe it would be worth it to combine them with the "Other Sports" forum until the activity increases?
3. You don't have anything in the "Interviews" section. If you start to do interviews could you add this forum then or include the interviews in the "News and Announcements" section?
4. I don't know anything about the "One Aussie Premiership" and "Web Hosts Australia Shield" forums that offer prizes, but since the activity is so low after two weeks, I would ask if they are needed.
5. In your "Sports Bar" would it be better to have the "Entertainment," "Graphics Zone," "News and Current Affairs," and "Web Links" forums as a part of "The Public Bar?" I will honestly say that I am sure that I have had conversations on all of those topics in a bar before.

Sorry if that is more feedback than you wanted, but I hope it helps.

Thanks,
RR

 

Thanks for the thoughts - I will take most of what you said on board apart from a couple things such as the One Aussie Premier and Web Hosts Australia Shield - they are quiet because they haven't been officially launched yet but they are the two major competitions on my website where people could earn over $1000 worth of cash and prizes so they need to remain seperate.

You also stated that I didn't have anything in my interviews section (which made me worried so I ran there to have a look) and that forum when you click on it takes you to our interviews section where we have at least 5 interviews with sporting stars and some are open for members to ask questions now to the sporting star - so yeah that is going to stay because there is stuff in there.

As for the sports that are there - I used to have about 15 other sports but widdled it down to the most popular ones in Australia - obviously some sections are quiet as it is the off season while others the season is nearing the finals so they are all talk of people and their stupid bragging rights (yes my team lost so I am not happy).

But I have taken what you suggested on board and will be working on these things to try and improve them more.

 

I don't like it when new boards have ten million forums in them and little to no content in it. And yes, I admit that I have been bad at this when I first started out... I'm not ashamed to admit it... but really, my advice would be add probably 2 or 3, maybe four sections to start with (although I think the majority here would agree with me that 1 or 2 sections would suffice) and then when you start getting more members and becoming more active, then you can consider adding more forums. When I've been seriously hard put for ideas in the past, I had a forum called "Add A Forum" as a subforum in the Feedback section where new and current members alike can give me suggestions on what kinds of discussion topics we should have. If I liked the idea, and it didn't break our hosts TOS, and it didn't break our board's rules in general, then I would consider adding it.

 

Hi Merk - Thanks for the feedback on the feedback. Hopefully going through a review like that is mutually beneficial.

Anyway, I was wondering based on your comment above how much traffic the "interviews" section of your site gets. From the home page it didn't look like there was any content there. So, if somebody didn't know that there were interviews there, I'm wondering if they would think to click and look in that forum.

From the standpoint of this conversation I am wondering if the content would be better served if the forum was set up as an "Article" section instead. This way you wouldn't have the additional forum and you could spotlight the interviews. From your description it seems like this is a GREAT feature of your site (one that might instantly set it apart from similar sites) and housing it in a forum may be hiding it.

Thanks,
RR

 

no, its best not to start off with too many sections cause it looks empty and can be confusing...one forum i joined had about 50 sections. most of them had no posts in them, some had one or two threads in, and most posts were in a few sections. it looked really empty-some sections hadnt been posted in since 2007!!!

i started out with 15 sections in 8 categories (and a staff section but no members can see that) but we have added a few more since then-the christmas section is temporary, so doesnt count, but normally i make a new section when loads of threads are being made about a subject.

one thing that annoys me about forums is having loads of sections that are unspecific....a section for guests that they cant see, loads of sections for general stuff...one for a show that is only on for a few weeks every year....since i started making forums i am a perfectionist when it comes to layout!!!!!

 

Swim Forums only has 12 forums (including News), and I don't plan on adding more for a while. I've also removed the amount of posts/threads to help make it look less empty and give more room for the description.

I remember my first forum had 30+ sections, I've learned a lot since then :p