Increasing activity on the forums

[Edgar_in_Indy]

Hey Davies, and anyone else who contributed, I think that the new website is great. Thank you for all of the hard work.

The only suggestion I would make is to maybe reduce the number of subdivisions in the forum. I know when I first looked at it, I didn't know exactly where to go. Everything was potentially of interest to me, but I didn't feel like clicking back and forth into a dozen or so different areas, especially since the site seems to be a little sluggish (at least here in Indiana). I think that the forum might flow a little better and generate more conversation if it was reduced back down to a general discussion area without all of the subdivisions. Or maybe have a limited number of divisions such as: "General Discussion", "Bulgaria News (non-church)", "Technical Issues".

I know that other people will have differing opinions, and changes are easier said than done, but those are just my thoughts.

Again, thanks for all your hard work in creating such a sweet web site.

Edgar Lucas
Dec '98 - Dec '00

[Richard Davies]

Hi Lucas,

Thank you for your feedback. Your comment couldn't have come at a better time as we were recently discussing ways to increase activity in the forums. Your suggestion is definitely worth considering. Does anyone else have an opinion on this topic? Should we reduce the number of different forums or leave it as is?

[wittles]

The variety of forums isn't a big deterrent to activity in my opinion. If possible, get some sort of announcement made over at the other board telling people to post here (though I haven't been there in a couple of years so that might have already been done), move posts from there to here, etc.

[Richard Davies]

If possible, get some sort of announcement made over at the other board telling people to post here

Yes, that has already been done. In fact, the old site now automatically redirects everyone to this site.

[Brinton]

I've also felt there are too many sub-divisons on the board.  It's very confusing to naviagte it all, and have to click back and forth all the time.  It was nice to be able to just click on the forum and see the messages.   

From my experience as webmaster of the old site, you will see ups and downs in forum use as well.  There will be times when no one will post for days and then--especially when new groups are called--you'll see alot more activity.

Good luck with what ever you plan...

[Blindspot]

I tend to agree.  Simple is better.  Four should be enough.

[Richard Davies]

Thank you to everyone who's contributed their opinion on this matter so far. Your feedback is very helpful to us.

It seems like the biggest issue you have about having many different forum categories is that it's more difficult to check them all for new messages as opposed to having to check just one category. I thought I'd offer a couple of suggestions that can help you with this.

• If you are logged into the forum, there should be a link at the top of the page that says "Show unread posts since last visit." Clicking this link will show you all of the new posts (from all of the categories) on one page.
• Inside each forum category, there is a button labeled "notify" that when clicked, will e-mail you every time a new topic is posted in that category. This makes it easy to monitor categories that interest you for new messages.
• There is an RSS feed located at http://www.bulgariasofiamission.org/forum/index.php?type=rss;action=.xml that you can use with any RSS/News reader program (i.e. Google Reader, NewsGator, FeedDemon, Bloglines, Newshutch, etc) to monitor the forum for new topics and replies.

The categories were initially created in the hopes that we'd have many users and very frequent postings. Under these conditions, it's ideal to have some organization of topics into various categories as not everyone will likely be interested in every posting. However, it appears that we were too optimistic with our original predictions and I agree that we should consider scaling back the number of categories a little. Irregardless though, the suggestions above should help you keep up with new messages and replies in the forums.

[Brinton]

I just thought of another thing...

I don't know if people are aware that none of their information was transfered to this site from the old site.  Have you thought of putting up a a blurb to that effect? Also, I remember that, some people come and sign up and create a profile, but never come back, or they check back every two years or something to that effect. 

When I first started my site seven years ago, it was very slow going in the very begining.  I think as time goes on, you'll find that people will re-discover the old site is now this site and sing up and participate here.