Comments on: Never camouflage your forum

By: Online community metrics: numbers you need to pay attention to | Community Building

Tue, 15 Dec 2009 19:51:20 +0000

[...] purpose, you’re not offering anything unique, you’re advertising in the wrong places, your community is too hidden, or you’ve gone for form over function. I don’t think you could go more basic than the [...]

By: 95 things I have learnt in 9 years of community building | Community Building

Tue, 28 Apr 2009 18:13:28 +0000

[...] Never hide your community – it doesn’t belong behind a ‘community’ [...]

By: Jonathan Mark

Jonathan Mark — Sat, 11 Apr 2009 14:22:11 +0000

Well you would have to make the whole site look good not just the forum. Also you shuld match themes or colour co-ordinate. People don’t like sites with bad designs especially when they are cluttered with information.

By: Martin Reed - Blog Author

Martin Reed - Blog Author — Wed, 26 Sep 2007 17:03:50 +0000

Smiley – I’m glad to hear that your tweaking brought you such positive results. It just goes to show that a website is never ‘finished’; it needs constant tweaking and improvement.

Barry – You’re right; minimising clicks is essential. No part of your site should be more than three clicks away. I am not a regular user of Digitalpoint so cannot compare the effectiveness of contests held there as opposed to SitePoint. Thanks for bringing DP to the attention of other readers, though.

By: Barry Cox - Scottsdale Realtor

Barry Cox - Scottsdale Realtor — Tue, 25 Sep 2007 23:30:05 +0000

I think what you did is great. I agree that having the forum on the front page is the way to go. Anytime you can minimize clicks I think you are better off.

Also a creative idea about having a contest over at sitepoint. Digitalpoint would probably be a good place to do that as well. Thanks for the idea.

By: Smiley

Smiley — Mon, 24 Sep 2007 18:50:46 +0000

I think it looks better myself. You’re much more ‘up’ on these things than me, though. Your advice is greatly appreciated.

One day after taking your advice and moving the forums link up in the priorities, I have 4 new members on the forums, all 4 have posted. So, genuine members.

The chat room hasn’t suffered a fall in visitor numbers, so in this case, a success!

I’ll give Crazy Egg a go later – off out for a curry and a few ales now, though! Rewarding myself tonight. You know, I haven’t been out ONE night since changing servers, been working non-stop to get the site’s momentum going.

By: Martin Reed - Blog Author

Martin Reed - Blog Author — Mon, 24 Sep 2007 16:49:48 +0000

Smiley - Only you can determine if it looks better and only you can determine if playing around with your site's layout will help you reach your goals. It's always a good idea to have a play around with things and see how they affect visitor interaction. Perhaps you should even try giving crazyegg a go to help you work out exactly what visitors are doing when they get to your site.

By: Smiley

Smiley — Sun, 23 Sep 2007 21:43:10 +0000

Okay, I moved things round a little bit. Here’s the two screenshots of the main page now. The top half and the lower half.

http://www.imageshock.eu/img/980583,ae2ar.jpg

http://www.imageshock.eu/img/980610,bdagi.jpg

Does that look a bit better? It’s a good idea switching them around actually, because Chat Rooms is right there on the left on the main navigation anyway. People looking for a chat site are automatically programmed to skim the page and scan for “chat rooms, click here” so they’ll easily find them. They would be more likely to skip over “discussion forums”, though.

I’ll let you know if I notice any results from moving forums up on the main page.

By: Smiley

Smiley — Sun, 23 Sep 2007 16:34:42 +0000

You think I should put the link to my message boards above the link to the chat client?

I’ll give it a try, can’t hurt to experiment. A few people in the chat client do ask “where are the forums?” when myself or a regular asks “would you like to join the forums?”, even though there’s a link at the top of the client etc.

I’ll put it above the chat link on the main page and see if I see a rise in guests on the forums.

Thanks for the tip, I’ll experiment with it now.

By: Martin Reed - Blog Author

Martin Reed - Blog Author — Sun, 23 Sep 2007 15:09:09 +0000

Hair Loss – It’s a great image, isn’t it? I get almost all of the images for this blog from stock.xchng.

Smiley – I would suggest making the link to your chat forums a little more prominent, perhaps through the use of an image right near the top of your index page.

I understand that you consider your forums to be #2 to your chat forum at this stage – however the way the link to your forum is hidden, anyone would think it was priority #52!