STYLETHREAD -- LET'S TALK SHOP!

Hermes

another forum format to look at - phpbb

relrel · Marc Jacobs

Two things:

1. I totally thought the phpbb was you sticking your tongue out at us. Like a little kid blowing some sort of spit bubble.

2. That format is actually what I use for a message board for an online game that I play. It's pretty user-friendly, has emoticons (!), pretty good search features. I like it, but don't know any of the back-end issues it has or what sort of features are allowable versus what was actually chosen for the board that I post on. Let me go play around on that and I'll come back here and update this.

ETA: The one thing that I really dislike about that forum (might be customizable by you to fix) is that the read versus unread topics are terribly hard to tell apart. If you hover over the thread, it will tell you read versus unread but otherwise the little symbols are hard to tell apart and actually i can't tell them apart since I haven't been able to find out where it tells me which is which.

Also, the forum allows you to have forums, sub- forums and sub-sub forums...I guess so that the Family, Pets and Kids could each have thier own fourm. But that might get messy depending on how it's used.

-- Edited by relrel at 16:00, 2008-02-07

Hermes

relrel wrote:

Two things:

1. I totally thought the phpbb was you sticking your tongue out at us. Like a little kid blowing some sort of spit bubble.

2. That format is actually what I use for a message board for an online game that I play. It's pretty user-friendly, has emoticons (!), pretty good search features. I like it, but don't know any of the back-end issues it has or what sort of features are allowable versus what was actually chosen for the board that I post on. Let me go play around on that and I'll come back here and update this.

ETA: The one thing that I really dislike about that forum (might be customizable by you to fix) is that the read versus unread topics are terribly hard to tell apart. If you hover over the thread, it will tell you read versus unread but otherwise the little symbols are hard to tell apart and actually i can't tell them apart since I haven't been able to find out where it tells me which is which.

Also, the forum allows you to have forums, sub- forums and sub-sub forums...I guess so that the Family, Pets and Kids could each have thier own fourm. But that might get messy depending on how it's used.

-- Edited by relrel at 16:00, 2008-02-07

no, that's "phlbbbbt"

thanks for the great input -- that's exactly what I'm looking for. I like the idea of subcategories too... not sure what i can do about new message icons, etc., but I'll ask.

jacL · Coach

I like the other two formats better than this one.

What I like in a forum: ability to see when the last post was made and go directly to that post, copy-and-paste, avatars, PM/IM, profile information.

What I don't care about: the Whiteboard (what we have in our profiles now), chatbox, quick reply.

I'll add more if anything comes to mind.

-- Edited by jacL at 13:57, 2008-02-08

Suasoria · Chanel

I'm not seeing any avatars in that one. It would be sad to lose them.

NCshopper · Hermes

Looks-wise, it feels cluttered to me and I think our format is easier to read because there's more "white space" on ours. I just think theirs is kinda cluttered feeling.

Also, I totally agree with Suasoria--I'd hate to lose the avatars. It seems trivial, but it helps me see at a glance who has posted and it's much easier for me to remember people when they have avatars.

Other than that though, I like it. I like the sub-sub-categories, but I'm not sure how that'd be used on our forum (i.e. how useful or necessary it is).

relrel · Marc Jacobs

Suasoria wrote:

I'm not seeing any avatars in that one. It would be sad to lose them.

There are avatars on that forum engine, just possibly not on the ones you are looking at. Also, you can see new posts and unread posts...there's a button at the top of the page. Just won't be viewable all at once, unless, again, it's a modifiable option.