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Forum layouts in the future?

Hi there, its been a while. :)

I see the activity and not the least the overall tone, is still positive and forward-leaning here on Elkarte, great to see.

Has anyone pondered over new ideas or ways to show the trusty ol forum layout past years? Seeing as FB/Instagram/snapchat are here to stay a long while yet, having a dedicated discussion area seems more and more a thing to reach for - as these others are hopelessly badly categorized as opposed to a forum software.

But thing is that forum layout generally haven't evolved much..to the point where you can actually easily build using the same "table look" as old time forums  by just CSS today. But should also the way a forum interacts and show itself, change now? Thoughts?

I look at Flarum and see potential there. But being "simple" doesn't necessarily mean better.

Re: Forum layouts in the future?

Reply #1

Agreed 100%! 

Just a ponderance, why does a site truly need categorization?  You mentioned flarum. They make a great case for categorizing by color code rather than navigation. Let's face it: one of the reasons Fakebook is so successful is it's navigational simplicity. Combine that with the fact we are information junkies. We love digital overload. We want to be overloaded without the burdens of flipping between pages. Current forum templates don't provide it. So do we truly benefit from categorizing?  I'm thinking not....


.....ajax. Because we utterly despise pageloads even though there truly isn't a rational reason for it.  But for that moment the data isn't in front of us.

But that's just me talking.  ;D

Re: Forum layouts in the future?

Reply #2

I find Flarum looks good, easy to navigate..but the color coding is just in the way, it doesn't help in locating where I am IMHO. I like the categories in trad. forum software, but I am thinking they have to think more ahead. Or - from my point of view as a designer - how they should present themselves in a way that gets me faster to what I want to read.


Re: Forum layouts in the future?

Reply #3

Glad to see you around @Bloc‍  ;)
Until now @Jorin‍ made a nice template for elkarte, but due to a disk failure the files were lost. It wasn't xcoded, it was only graphical files.

Another interesting theme is the flarum style made by @inter you can find it here https://www.elkarte.net/community/index.php?topic=4010.0

If I start to talk about social networks VS forums I'll never finish. :) I manage a brand car community and despite for every model there is a fb group my forum is still doing fine. The medium age of my members is between 35—50 years old. Initially I though it wouldn't be easy for them to use a forum but they aren't a problem  What makes me wonder is that newbie and young members are asking why we aren't moving or create a fb group because "they don't like foruns" :(
sorry for my bad english

Re: Forum layouts in the future?

Reply #4

Hi Bloc. long time no read, everything fine?

hmm... tough topic.
IMO copy&paste social networks in forum is pointless: if people are looking for a social network they should just use a social network-like thing, not a forum.
That said, on the definition of "forum" YMMV.

Since I started Elk, I've never been happy with the classic board index on the main page, but to be honest I have no idea what to replace it with.
I'm not convinced by categories/boards as well, but I don't have handy any "ready-to-use" alternative.
A couple of things I experimented in the past could help, sure, but I feel they would not be bulletproof and not everybody will like them, especially because forum owners nowadays are (let's face it) people that used forums for some 10/20 years and want a forum. Stop.

But this is a talk, so I can go wild.

I think that the main page should indeed not be a "board index", probably may have the dual-nature so dear to many social network sites:
  • for guests it should present a "context" (explaining what the site is about) and some "call to action" inviting to register, then some connection to the rest of the forum to discover the content,
  • for logged users it should be a "stream" of recent posts/topics showing the activity.

The organization is a bit more tricky, but I think classic categories are not really that helpful anymore: people do not entirely know where to write, they just tend to pick the first place and slap the content there.
So, a possible alternative are the "classic" tags, but tags are pointless if people use them randomly as they tend to, so a solution I tried long ago could be a starting point to devise a solution: auto-classification of posts. What I did in the past something very easy: any time a user was using an hashtag, that was captured and added to the list of "predefined tags", then for any message posted from there on, the script was searching inside the post any instance of the tag and was auto-linking it, basically removing the needs by the user to actually add tags. Of course this was rough and brutal, to use it on a wider scale it would need a lot of refinement, especially if used to actually separate the content into categories (i.e. each tag would represent a category on its own). Here, of course, there could be a several variations, for example "categories" could be dynamic, showing only the most trending, or static defined by the admin a priori, or each user could define their own categories, etc.

I know, this has (directly) nothing to do with the layout, but the content needs layout and if you change the content also the layout should change. :P
Bugs creator.
Features destroyer.
Template killer.

Re: Forum layouts in the future?

Reply #5

Tags could be a solution, i started to use and test them into a xf forum, but they did not worked for me as I expected. Most of the inserted tags were useless and somehow too "social " and less technical (eg #my_new_car, #i_love_my_car, etc)
What worked for me were topic prefixes, but this is a feature that existed into forums before the apparition of social networks, so nothing innovative for forums. 
sorry for my bad english

Re: Forum layouts in the future?

Reply #6

IMHO, tag are useless until there is a good algorithm to extract them from the text. The old SMF site i recently upgraded to Elk did have tags. But no one bothered to set them correctly, and i admit, i was too lazy too.
(at the time the tags were introduced i was just a normal user of that site, not mod or even admin).

As to the front page: it strongly depends on the character of the site. www.bassic.de (Xen) for example has a nice portal which seems to be partially created automatically, but definitely with some manual intervention. My personal entry point to that site is the "new posts" view showing the most recently upgraded threads. But as soon as it becomes to posting i need the forum structure, and more or less al of the other users contribute correctly to the supplied categories.

In www.music-electronics-forum.com (vBulletin) the entry page is an activity stream which i find inferior to the   static "latest posts" view. Again, users do respect the categories as well.

My own little forum has low traffic. Something like a "recent posts" view as the starting page would be meaningless. And again, the hierarchy of categories is important and well respected.


Now have a look back into history: forums developed from mailing lists and usenet newsgroups. But not all of the old bulletin boards did provide categories - these became necessary because of the demand to organize and archive discussions in a way which makes it easier to find older stuff.

Facebook and similar networks usually do not provide finely structured discussion spaces. I would guess mainly because their business model works better without these spaces (btw, the Xing network has a different scope, and it actually supports forum like discussions).

So "modern" and even more "common" does not necessarily mean "adequate".

Re: Forum layouts in the future?

Reply #7

Very interesting topic, @Bloc:)

@radu81 is right, I made a few templates of possible future themes and layouts for ElkArte. I cannot code (just a little SQL), but I am great with graphics I think, so there are only images and words describing my ideas.

SQUARE uses tags and shows no classic board index, but a list of recent topics and then all the rest. The list can be expanded by the user by clicking on "load more" at the bottom of the page. No categories, but tags.

Circles 2 shows a different board index. It's a chronological thing. Posts from today and yesterday are the highlights, followed by all the rest.

While working on it, a new idea came to mind:
https://www.elkarte.net/community/index.php?topic=4741.msg34469#msg34469

And that's the old design radu was talking about:
https://www.elkarte.net/community/index.php?topic=3016.0

General thoughts about the topic: I would not compare facebook with a classic forum. With Facebook information isn't in the foreground. Information which you can still find after weeks and months. With Facebook things that are as unimportant as possible are shared as quickly as possible.  ;)

With a forum information must be stored and retrieved in a structured manner. Many discussions are conducted over weeks and months, threads have a long half-life. The categories may not be the problem, but the static table view looks rather old-fashioned and outdated.

Are there no ways to code the whole thing more dynamic? Maybe with blocks or categories that the user can create or sort himself? He can show or hide which categories that interest him, he can create categories himself and sort threads according to personal importance? A kind of favorite collection maybe? If we do not provide categories, what then? How do we ensure the selection of threads which interest the user and which do not? Tags can be a way. If the forum would tag threads itself, wow!

Re: Forum layouts in the future?

Reply #8

Thanks all for the interest in this topic. :)

Quote from: emanuele – Hi Bloc. long time no read, everything fine?

hmm... tough topic.
IMO copy&paste social networks in forum is pointless: if people are looking for a social network they should just use a social network-like thing, not a forum.
That said, on the definition of "forum" YMMV.

Since I started Elk, I've never been happy with the classic board index on the main page, but to be honest I have no idea what to replace it with.
I'm not convinced by categories/boards as well, but I don't have handy any "ready-to-use" alternative.
A couple of things I experimented in the past could help, sure, but I feel they would not be bulletproof and not everybody will like them, especially because forum owners nowadays are (let's face it) people that used forums for some 10/20 years and want a forum. Stop.

But this is a talk, so I can go wild.

I think that the main page should indeed not be a "board index", probably may have the dual-nature so dear to many social network sites:
  • for guests it should present a "context" (explaining what the site is about) and some "call to action" inviting to register, then some connection to the rest of the forum to discover the content,
  • for logged users it should be a "stream" of recent posts/topics showing the activity.

The organization is a bit more tricky, but I think classic categories are not really that helpful anymore: people do not entirely know where to write, they just tend to pick the first place and slap the content there.
So, a possible alternative are the "classic" tags, but tags are pointless if people use them randomly as they tend to, so a solution I tried long ago could be a starting point to devise a solution: auto-classification of posts. What I did in the past something very easy: any time a user was using an hashtag, that was captured and added to the list of "predefined tags", then for any message posted from there on, the script was searching inside the post any instance of the tag and was auto-linking it, basically removing the needs by the user to actually add tags. Of course this was rough and brutal, to use it on a wider scale it would need a lot of refinement, especially if used to actually separate the content into categories (i.e. each tag would represent a category on its own). Here, of course, there could be a several variations, for example "categories" could be dynamic, showing only the most trending, or static defined by the admin a priori, or each user could define their own categories, etc.

I know, this has (directly) nothing to do with the layout, but the content needs layout and if you change the content also the layout should change. :P
I am thinking something similar actually..tags are fine enough, but maybe be a hassle to maintain properly. One thing I've seen on other scripts are suggestions on categories, that is, you "suggest" keywords and the script provide some optional tags - or in our case categories/boards - based on those. It would perhaps mean that while constructing boards and categories, the admin should also supply keywords that users will "hit". A suer would not need to search for an appropriate topic and the admin maintains the order in boards..well, more or less. :)

And yes, its perhaps not about layout, but actually it also is: because templates would have to make this look good. If you used the above approach a boardindex would actually be just 2 main sections: 1) searching for a topic to read/reply(using same "suggestion" algorithm) and 2) post a topic using same suggestion. Around this could then be constructed the other items like a simplified listing(collapsable perhaps) and the infocenter. 

Re: Forum layouts in the future?

Reply #9

Quote from: radu81 – Tags could be a solution, i started to use and test them into a xf forum, but they did not worked for me as I expected. Most of the inserted tags were useless and somehow too "social " and less technical (eg #my_new_car, #i_love_my_car, etc)
What worked for me were topic prefixes, but this is a feature that existed into forums before the apparition of social networks, so nothing innovative for forums.
Quote from: bea – IMHO, tag are useless until there is a good algorithm to extract them from the text. The old SMF site i recently upgraded to Elk did have tags. But no one bothered to set them correctly, and i admit, i was too lazy too.
(at the time the tags were introduced i was just a normal user of that site, not mod or even admin).

As to the front page: it strongly depends on the character of the site. www.bassic.de (Xen) for example has a nice portal which seems to be partially created automatically, but definitely with some manual intervention. My personal entry point to that site is the "new posts" view showing the most recently upgraded threads. But as soon as it becomes to posting i need the forum structure, and more or less al of the other users contribute correctly to the supplied categories.

In www.music-electronics-forum.com (vBulletin) the entry page is an activity stream which i find inferior to the   static "latest posts" view. Again, users do respect the categories as well.

My own little forum has low traffic. Something like a "recent posts" view as the starting page would be meaningless. And again, the hierarchy of categories is important and well respected.


Now have a look back into history: forums developed from mailing lists and usenet newsgroups. But not all of the old bulletin boards did provide categories - these became necessary because of the demand to organize and archive discussions in a way which makes it easier to find older stuff.

Facebook and similar networks usually do not provide finely structured discussion spaces. I would guess mainly because their business model works better without these spaces (btw, the Xing network has a different scope, and it actually supports forum like discussions).

So "modern" and even more "common" does not necessarily mean "adequate".

I agreed with @bea , we should keep what really makes the forum worthwhile. But tags are also useful, perhaps as only that as a personal "bookmarking" feature?

Re: Forum layouts in the future?

Reply #10

Quote from: Jorin – Very interesting topic, @Bloc:)

@radu81 is right, I made a few templates of possible future themes and layouts for ElkArte. I cannot code (just a little SQL), but I am great with graphics I think, so there are only images and words describing my ideas.

SQUARE uses tags and shows no classic board index, but a list of recent topics and then all the rest. The list can be expanded by the user by clicking on "load more" at the bottom of the page. No categories, but tags.

Circles 2 shows a different board index. It's a chronological thing. Posts from today and yesterday are the highlights, followed by all the rest.

While working on it, a new idea came to mind:
https://www.elkarte.net/community/index.php?topic=4741.msg34469#msg34469

And that's the old design radu was talking about:
https://www.elkarte.net/community/index.php?topic=3016.0

General thoughts about the topic: I would not compare facebook with a classic forum. With Facebook information isn't in the foreground. Information which you can still find after weeks and months. With Facebook things that are as unimportant as possible are shared as quickly as possible.  ;)

With a forum information must be stored and retrieved in a structured manner. Many discussions are conducted over weeks and months, threads have a long half-life. The categories may not be the problem, but the static table view looks rather old-fashioned and outdated.

Are there no ways to code the whole thing more dynamic? Maybe with blocks or categories that the user can create or sort himself? He can show or hide which categories that interest him, he can create categories himself and sort threads according to personal importance? A kind of favorite collection maybe? If we do not provide categories, what then? How do we ensure the selection of threads which interest the user and which do not? Tags can be a way. If the forum would tag threads itself, wow!

Great ideas there, I like the Circles2 with collapsed top menu/section especially. :)

I am not sure forums/categories should be on a users whim :) but perhaps tags could? And yes, this topic was about envising new ways to show a forum, Elkarte is very mature in every respect IMHO but it also share a somewhat old look. And yes, there are many 10-20 years running forum owners that favor these..but they will die out eventually(sorry :) ) and younger audience will appear(and is already). I think its important to renew itself. Not too often of course..but not use the same website look for 10+ years either, thats just laziness IMHO.(case in point: simplemachines site..I mean its using a design I made back in 2008!..even the non-forum parts are kept. Of course its flattering that they kept it for so long, but come on...) 

Re: Forum layouts in the future?

Reply #11

Quote from: Bloc – But tags are also useful, perhaps as only that as a personal "bookmarking" feature?

Please do not get me wrong - i am not at all against tags. I am only pragmatic: the average user will not care on classifying his contributions. It just needs to be done automatically in a good way. And in addition to a normal and structurized discussion platform. Or just as a goodie which it was in my SMF based forum.

(Always keep in mind both the complexity as well as the power Drupal has just due to its extended and granular tagging system - the taxonomies)

BTW: why is an old, old fashioned and somewhat conservative page design bad?
I did only slightly adapt my company's webpage since its launch in 2008 - and i am quite frequently getting the feedback of customers that the page design and concept played an important role why they chose to contact me. So we should always think of how we would address whom and and maybe offer different themes for different target groups.
I am actually willing to give my users a choice.

BTW: what about the progress of Circles 2? Still only graphics or already running code?

Re: Forum layouts in the future?

Reply #12

Hurrmmm...[1]
I'd prefer to see the running version of the suggested forum layouts rather than all the talkings about them.

Re: Forum layouts in the future?

Reply #13

Quote from: bea – BTW: what about the progress of Circles 2? Still only graphics or already running code?

I can't code, but I am willing to work with someone who can.  ;)

Re: Forum layouts in the future?

Reply #14

I could if i had the time. But (un-?) fortunately there are too many other responsibilities and projects.