Proposed Forum and Subforum Layout Change

[Loklorien s'Ilancy]

Hopefully at some point this month, we'll be making the upgrade to vB5. There's a decent amount of background work that will go into it, and making further tweaks to our existing layout and features will be null and void once the switch is made. As such, I have mostly stopped doing a lot the stuff I was doing since I would only have to go back and do it all over again. Why do something twice when you only have to do it once, yes? To that end, I feel it would be a good idea if we addressed our forum layout. It's been bandied about that we add some subforums, and I'm all for that. But, we should probably nail down what we want so that we don't have to hem and haw over stuff after the switch; we can have what we want spelled out so it can be implemented immediately.

I was thinking something like this:



General
* Introductions and Adverts
*Communications
*General Discussion


RP Discussion
*Star Wars RP Planning and Discussion
*General RP Planning and Discussion


Star Wars Roleplay
*The Galaxy

*Faction Homeworlds
- Bothawui
~ Recruitment Center
- Ossus
~ The Landing Pad
- Coruscant
~ Recruitment Center
- Tanaab
- Bespin
- Onderon, Dathomir, and the Hapes Cluster


General Roleplay
*General Roleplay
*Mutants Unite!
*World of Darkness


Hobbies
*Star Wars
*Box Office, TV, and Other Media
*Gaming
*Sports Hangout
*Artist's Medium


Archives
*The Great Library


And of course the staff stuff at the very bottom.

I've mixed up the order a little bit, as I feel we are at our hearts storytellers, and what we love should be as close to the top as possible. But, that's just me. I do feel that the other factions would benefit from a subforum of their own, as Ossus has, but at this time I'd rather leave it up to others in those groups to make that decision.


Thoughts and/or comments?

[Ndonsa]

Looks good to me! Probably add a 'recruiting center' type forums to the Alliance and the Empire? We desperately need new rpers in those factions imo.

They'd serve as places for new characters to get started at.

[Loklorien s'Ilancy]

Yeah, I agree we need peeps in both of those camps. Many of us do have Alliance and Imperial characters, but I also know that we've all got fingers in a lot of other pies, heh, so the only thing I'm concerned with is making a place that new folks want to get in with. If that makes any sense.

A 'recruitment center' for each of them would be great

[Ndonsa]

Should we scratch Bespin and make it Jovan Station? Could just move the Bespin threads into Star Wars rping.

[Loklorien s'Ilancy]

Either that, or tuck Bespin into the Imperial forum. Only issue there is that to my knowledge it's a hotbed of Black Sun stuff, despite being an Imperial holding.

[Ndonsa]

Well it's not exactly a hotbed of activity, just the one casino there with Sanis and Mikey based there. Doesn't bother me tucking it into the Imp forum/s, as we do most of our Bespin threads in the main forum anyway. I just don't think it's going to get more use, but you never know I guess.

[Droo]

I like the idea of the roleplaying forums moving up, since that's where the bulk of our activity comes from. Signed!

[Twopio]

Eleutheria is going to have a base of operations on Dantooine. We have six distinct RPers so we meet the 5 for a group forum, and I believe it will be useful to us.

[Kale]

Since we're getting close to subforum bloat again in the Faction Homeworlds, we could potentially move a couple subforums into the Star Wars Galaxy - particularly the ones that aren't faction-specific. We may end up with something like this:


Star Wars Roleplay
*The Galaxy
- Jovan Station
- Bespin

*Faction Homeworlds
- Bothawui
~ Recruitment Center
- Ossus
~ The Landing Pad
- Coruscant
~ Recruitment Center
- Tanaab - The Sith Order
- Dantooine - Eleutheria
- Onderon, Dathomir, and the Hapes Cluster


Links to Jovan and Bespin would appear at the top of the Galaxy forum, with all the Galaxy RP threads visible underneath. This would put Jovan and Bespin in a more visible location than tucking them into the Bothawui and Coruscant forums - which wouldn't make geographical sense anyway. They're meant to be galactic hubs of commerce and diplomacy, and just like with the Homeworld forums, we can include a little flavor text description for each one.

Also, question: are the Recruitment Centers and Landing Pad intended to be OOC receiving areas for newbies to introduce themselves and post their bios? That makes more sense to me than dedicated areas for IC arrival threads; I just wanted to be sure.

[Twopio]

The idea for the landing pad was to have an IC place for new Jedi to arrive at and be greeted. So after following the links in the So You Want to Be A Jedi post they've done their bio and then ...they don't know what to do. Having a clearly defined "post here IC newbies" forum then there's a more obvious next step to take. I have had new Jedi hopefuls ask me what they were supposed to do after their bio was posted up, so I think it is a useful forum to have.

[Serena Laran]

^^pretend I posted as Serena

edit: I like the idea of Jovan and Bespin as subforums off the Galaxy forum.

[Atreyu]

My 2 cents.

1. Rearrange forums with roleplaying on top
Yes x 10,000. Currently when I visit on my 1366x768 resolution laptop you can't even see the roleplaying forums without having to scroll down. Given that they generate 90%+ of our traffic I think it's a no-brainer.

2. Subforum shenanigans
Not a roleplayer so I defer to the rest of you guys on this one.



Since we're talking forums I thought I'd like to bring up the non-RPing side of the messageboard. As mentioned above RPing occupies by far the bulk of our traffic but on the main forum page the non-RPing side of things take up nearly 50% of the real estate, with most of the forums being dead quiet. Whilst traffic will hopefully improve as we close in on Ep. VII I was thinking maybe merging some of our general stuff in together will make it a lot easier when we just want to chit chat instead of having it spread all out. Just a thought.

[Ndonsa]

Technically we could put MU and WoD as subforums at the top of General RPing.

[Droo]

While I'm not sure I like the idea of all the extra sub forums (and nor do I think they're necessary, personally), I support moving MU and WoD to the General RP forum, since those places are only ever active periodically.

[Ndonsa]

Really I think each group's leadership should be able to have the subforums they want to have. The leadership being the mods of that group.

[Droo]

We went through a lot of effort to unclutter the forums, and I think it's not enough to consider just whether group members want extra forums or not, but whether or not they're needed. Forum layout and ease of use and accessibility have wider reaching implications than the needs of a few group members. I think so at least, and I would be less inclined to go digging through the subforums of subforums of subforums, especially when they don't have much going on in them. How do you think potential new members will feel?

[Arya Ravenwing]

I guess it all comes down to if Groups have the autonomy they used to have on the boards, which I suppose is 'no, they don't.' Groups used to be hosted on separate forums until we were invited to/allowed to have our boards hosted on the main site. Each group was it's own thing, had it's own moderators and it's own forums and ooc discussion area.

If the definition of 'group forum' has changed, then I suppose that should be addressed. If the whole board belongs to the whole board and there is no such thing as a group as it used to exist ... The point being we used to have all these things and it was never a problem. Sure, we had a list on the front forum page of all the groups, but was that really such a big deal? When we are putting them all under one main page heading, then they all automatically become subforums, which yes, leads to a lot more clicks.

So then, should we just have groups host themselves off of the main theholo.net site?

[Atreyu]

I think moving the groups off the site entirely would be a bad idea as they just wouldn't have the population to support themselves, not to mention the hassle of having to re-register at every single group board a roleplayer might want to post at. Stand alone group message boards are a legacy of the old ezboard days (when 'global accounts' made it easy to go from one board to the next) but that era ended over a decade ago.

(sorry I know I'm not a roleplayer, but I think the idea of moving the groups off board is just a really, really bad idea)

[Lilaena De'Ville]

I think moving the groups off the site entirely would be a bad idea as they just wouldn't have the population to support themselves, not to mention the hassle of having to re-register at every single group board a roleplayer might want to post at. Stand alone group message boards are a legacy of the old ezboard days (when 'global accounts' made it easy to go from one board to the next) but that era ended over a decade ago.

(sorry I know I'm not a roleplayer, but I think the idea of moving the groups off board is just a really, really bad idea)

It wasn't a serious suggestion.

[Atreyu]

Oh good then.