Forum Home Pages

What should they look like?

[rogerd]

Out of the box, most forum home pages look a lot alike - a short welcome message, perhaps, and a tabular list of forum topics, usually with topic titles and descriptions.

This doesn't satisfy all forum owners, though, and some of the most popular hacks and addons are ones that reorganize the home page or present quite different information. "Portal" type hacks are common, as are recent post lists, announcements, "shoutboxes", etc.

What do you think makes a good forum home page? How do you satisfy both new visitors and experienced regulars? What forum home page features have you seen that you find useless or distracting?

[chrisnrae]

I'm not a forum owner, but I frequent quite a few ;) - I've always found Brett's way of highlighting "good" posts on the main page to be pretty useful. Especially since the forum is so busy and some can get pushed down the recent posts list fairly quickly - makes sure people don't miss some of the more useful threads.

[vkaryl]

I like a "portal" or "doorway" format, as long as it doesn't have "antsies" all over it - like news feeds, shoutboxes, animations of whatever the board owner is doing at that point in time, the weather in violent color and noise etc etc ad infinitum ad nauseam....

I too like a "front page" list of recent posts. Which is what I use on my larger fora. The small ones have no need for anything like that really.

I keep intending to mock up a doorway page WITHOUT the things that drive me nuts. Maybe now that I'm not working I'll actually get it done!

[lorax]

My forum is actually 'behind' my main website though it does have it's own sub-domain. The top page of the forum is your standard fair of categories and forums along with links to the pertinent stuff like Register, Login, TOS, etc....

[rogerd]

I have to admit that I favor simplicity - whether it's a forum or even a non-interactive site's home page, I don't like to be presented with a dozen or two screen areas, each containing different information and/or multiple links. I guess I'm not a portal person.

The featured topics list (as used by WebmasterWorld and other forums) is handy, I think, particularly as forums get busier and bigger. The downside of this is that it does take maintenance - the forum can't run on autopilot. I've seen some forums do "Most Recent Topics" (which can be generated automatically) but this isn't particularly useful in my opinion.

[Reflection]

As a user, I just want to get to the forum. Of course as a regular forum user I know how to bookmark a forum so I go directly to it. Once there I can go to the front page if I feel like getting the "site news".

This of course is just from an experienced user's point of view :).

[Jenstar]

My current pet peeve are forums running the standard phpbb subSilver template with no modifications (or the standard template of any of the prepackaged forum software out there). I think personalization is important - not only does it make your forums look different from all the others, but a unique design can be a brand in itself.

The KISS approach works well, you don't want to lose the newbies. I find that some of the portals with a gazillion boxes with voting, polls, news feeds, top posters, yadda yadda can be overwhelming to a new person who has just arrived on the scene.

[grelmar]

My main forum is a "back-end" to a website, so I keep it pretty simple and straightforward. I have plenty of space on the website to highlight important posts or goings-on at the forum, so I don't need a fancy portal page.

I did this for one main reason. When I went to set up my forum, I noted how I like to go into a forum. If it's a back-end to a website, I have a bookmark to the main directory page of the forum, so if I just want to read posts, I can skip the clutter and get right to it. I just assumed a lot of other people would be like that. So I set it up so that would be an easy thing to do.

vkaryl wrote:

I keep intending to mock up a doorway page WITHOUT the things that drive me nuts. Maybe now that I'm not working I'll actually get it done!

Wazoo! So you're finally retired again? Congrats, I know you've been looking forward to it.