Admin Morrigan 1,826 Admin Share Posted July 5, 2019 So Forum structure is a huge part of running a roleplay on a forum specifically. How you setup your forums makes a difference to how the user experiences it, how easy it is to navigate (this does partly go in tandem with theme but that's not the discussion here). What I'm curious about is how you like to structure your forums? What helps you make these decisions? Do you change them to suit your needs as the site grows or you determine the importance of the forum? I know for sure that I don't like to go deeper than 1 sub forum. So: Category > Forum > Subforum Beyond that forums get lost because now users have to hunt through not only forums to find a location or what they are looking for but an additional subforum too. I've honestly always been against this. I have seen some decent use cases that are less annoying overall because they are less of a hunt. So it would be like: Category > Place > Houses > XYZ's house That is an acceptable use of a sub-subforum to me because I'm not having to hunt through all the other subforums to find the characters houses. Give me your insight I'd love to see. 2 1 Profile set made by myself and original Artwork by Fae Merriman, my daughter. Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
StormWolfe 557 Share Posted July 5, 2019 I really dislike gazillions of forums to wade through. Nope, nope, nope, not a fan! Currently, my two IPS sites only have 1 forum for IC posting. I may have to give up and change it when we finish the current plots. Not sure. Don't wanna. My swords and sorcery site will have to start out with a couple of IC forums and subforums. Seriously though, we'll only add IC location forums as they are needed / requested. If no one is writing in them, why have them? Someone somewhere went to sleep and dreamed us all alive. Dreams get pushed around a lot, and I doubt if we'll survive. We won't get to wake up, dreams were born to disappear. And I'm pretty sure that none of us are here. ~ None of Us Here by Jim Stafford ~ *your one-stop RPG resource site! Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
Kit the Human 759 Share Posted July 5, 2019 What they said! I typically get lost in sites with lots of forums, and if they're not all being used, it just makes the place look empty. Same deal with subforums. If I'm considering putting a subforum in a subforum I'll restructure. My preference for RP areas is essentially Category (RP) Main location (like town, island etc) -- Notable social location Rest of the World Usually a couple more places as the setting demands, but that's the nutshell. I'll add a forum if one place is seeing a lot of use and consider merging or dropping if a place isn't seeing any use. 1 1 PSI: an Occult Investigations RP Roleplay Architects: Grab a friend (or many friends!) and just write. You can also find me at: Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
alternate.pseudonym 4 Share Posted July 5, 2019 I too hate seeing too many forums and subforums. It's hard to find things, and they often look inactive. My new site has most of the information in a webpage/handbook, rather than a forum to makes things even easier to navigate. For IC I only have five boards. One each for the two major towns and one for the state. Then I have one for communications texts, emails, letters etc and finally other places. Other places is the only one to have subforums, one for the rest of the world and the other for weirdness like alternate histories, dreams and things. 1 After the Scourge Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
Arceus 1,082 Share Posted July 5, 2019 Most of the time, I'm gonna have the basics, and those will be main forums. Do we need it? Then I'll make it. If I feel like I don't know for sure that the site's members are going to use it, then I'll hold off and see how it turns out. I'll also try to avoid nesting too deep because tbfh it just looks damned messy to me. Commit dammit!! Side-effect of being OCD I guess. Never did figure out why it looks messy to me, it just does. I also don't like sub-forums in general, so I'll normally try avoiding using them at all. I'm not 100% against it to the point of going out of my way to avoid it, but I do try to pare stuff down and make sure I don't end up needing sub-forums. OOC boards are another story; I'll sub-forum those all the live long day, and usually do because it's just neater to look at. Finally, I don't like being super-vague. I hate it. I won't do it. You'll get actual, specific locations - if only a few. No, '[city], suburbs, outskirts" junk, it'll be like, downtown, streets, transportation, public services, etc. Several of those will probably be skipped until the site has need of it, and that's also fairly dependent on what kind of site it is. That works for a modern, for example, but it didn't quite translate directly for my Bleach site. ... but I did do similar. Nothing's locked down. I will expand it over time, if we need more later, but usually the site doesn't really. Once all the boards on there are being used it tends to kind of freeze right there. Idk. Maybe it's just nobody's cared enough to ask for a new forum. -shrugsies- 1 I am the darkness, always watching, always listening, ALWAYS THERE. (If you're interested in Plain of Ice, message me, it's private. Bleach site, non-canon.) Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
omnitricks 16 Share Posted July 15, 2019 As a player, the less clicking I have to go through to get somewhere the better. So too many subforums would easily tire me out especially if I have to go back and forth looking for information. Although a contrary thing I'd like, is that I can find everything I want in the same place. While it sounds like the first I understand some forums' culture is to archive threads so it will become neater and easier to manage bu then I wouldn't be able to find the history of events/the location/the organization as easily as I'd like. For me this is because I'd like to briefly skim through the recent events my character ought to know so I can refer it in the whatever thread I'm in so it doesn't feel like my PC is only interested/tied to his own thing. Then really, some of the things which really trouble me are colour schemes nowadays. Sites seem to adopt colours which are neither friendly to my eyes or for me to use in the office without the risk of people going "what the heck is he doing other than work?" And as a mobile user (since I sometimes wouldn't surf in the office) I find image heavy site to be bad both for my bandwidth (especially sites which support animated pics/vids) as well as cluttering up my already tiny phone screen. 1 1 Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
Huskerdust 625 Share Posted July 15, 2019 (edited) The less the better. I really hate scrolling for miles. Plus it’s really ugly if they archive or they just opened and it’s miles of blank space. Edited July 15, 2019 by Zozma 1 Reality is an illusion. Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
Nevermind 64 Share Posted July 16, 2019 I agree with you, @Morrigan. I personally don't like to dig through subforums in a desperate attempt to find the right thing I'm looking for. As far as I'm concerned, the simpler the better. It doesn't make much sense to me for a site to have ten sub-forums when three would suffice. My biggest issue with it, and with forum structure in general, is when you are first exploring a site as a new member, it can be incredibly intimidating when a site has fifty different forums and each forum has fifteen subforums. Organization is fantastic, but there is a line where too much organization actually starts to become messy and overly complex. Separate what you need to separate and do your best to keep things simple, clean, and to the point. Not only will it make it easier on yourself as an admin, I think members will appreciate it as well. 2 1 18+ multi-genre community. no application. no word count. Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
Camy 4 Share Posted July 17, 2019 I'm in the same boat, there have been many times where it's been overwhelming and adding the site's skin/theme also goes into play for me in this area. If it doesn't feel comfortable for me, then I'm out. Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
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