IMPORTANT...What are your favorite forums sites???

[Bartman]

+1 on the paged actives. Been asking for that for a while. But the one single thing that constantly steams my clams is the search feature. If you wanted to search for an xy8 for sale there isn't a box in the advanced search for classifieds. But mainly you have to be too specific or the search returns no results. If you typed in xy8, nothing would come up. I think it should just give you all the results and allow you to go through them. I've had mtiple situations where I was looking for my OWN post and had a hell of a time finding it. Is there anywY to improve on this aspect of the site?

same reply regarding paged active threads.

search sucks, i agree, seems to be a typical problem with forums sites. have you tried advanced search? XY8, xy-8, xy 8, there is a three character minimum, that much i know.

 

[JasonV]

Check out PbNation.com I have always liked their forums. RCU is friendly as well. DIY Drones is the worst set up forum I have run into so far. I also like RCgroups but wish they would limit the thread size like PBnation

It looks like PBnation is 2014 vBulletin Solutions Inc

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[SoCal Blur]

One site I frequent is www.hayabusa.org Their forum is pretty nice but I have to say that I like the forum layout here at MRF better.

 

[kloner]

i like that outer stuff they got on that forum, the chat and such on the bottom border. Chat would be nice for people that wanna help noobies through stuff step by step.... sucks to not have it stick in the forum though, but alot of times it's the same stuff and those guys are gonna ask in a new thread over and over till they get used to searching for there answers anyhow

 

[yeehaanow]

I like the current design and workings. My only gripe is sometimes I'm not able to reply to posts when I'm on the iphone. (this is when viewing the full site, not the mobile version)

 

[rilot]

Big fan of http://forums.overclockers.co.uk but then I would be as I'm one of the moderators.
Simple layout, very strictly moderated but an enormous community. Big multirotor thread on there too.

 

[Mauronic]

Hey Bart -

Good to hear you are changing things up but if you can, do not rush this. It's a PITA to migrate to new software so you don't want to do this again.

First of all, a great expert community on a poorly designed forum will ALWAYS beat a slick forum with bad content. You fall into the first category so you have a great foundation. Sounds like you are getting some leads on software, I am not familiar with too many so I can't help there.

However, as a product guy that makes consumer software for a living, I can suggest how to help quickly understand the needs of your members and select a solution.

CRITERIA
1) What activities that most interest your members? For me it would be: Finding information, tracking topics that I am interested in, participating in discussions, connecting with people.
2) How do your members use the site? Desktop, mobile, email..
3) What are the top features that support the needs & usage patterns? For example, Search (super important and most forums suck a this -- i would invest a lot here), Navigation, Browsing, tracking discussions, PM system, classifieds, mobile friendly site, overall ease of use, etc.

You could learn all of the above with a quick member survey (survey monkey is great because people can select or rank a list of 10 things you give them) and google analytics.

SELECTING THE SOFTWARE AND HOW IT SHOULD BE CONFIGURED, ETC
4) Make a spreadsheet to score the software packages out there: criteria running down, software packages running across, score each cell. Score could be high, med, low based on how well it addresses the need out of the box. You want to avoid as much custom coding & design as possible.

I have a template if you want -- it even weights criteria. Not as complicated as it sounds, actually very easy to use. The hardest part is identifying criteria and software packages.

pete