design ideas for forum front page

The Nabble team is trying make design changes to the forum front page. We'd love to hear what you think.

Our questions are:

1. The current forum front page shows both the forum structure and the list of threads, for example, here, and here. Do you like this current design? If you don't, how would you like to change it?

2. phpBB and vBulletin separate the forum structure from the thread list, for exmaple, phpBB,  vBulletin. With this design, when you go to a parent forum, you only see the list of child forums, and you need click another link to see the threads. Do you like this design?
 
3. GoogleGroups shows some threads from each child forum, for example, here. How do you like this design?

We'd appreciate your thoughts.

Factually speaking I actually like the way the forums front page is designed, though lacking some color(which I really don't care) I think the interface is clean and clutter free to work.

The only change I would suggest is some eye-candy/color to the pages.

Thanks for great work.

I think the designs for the second one are good for categories, but I don't think they should replace forums (well, it might be cool to have this so that all forums also had category views, and just get rid of the category/forum distinction).  So, in essence, I guess maybe I do like the original new idea.

I'm not too keen on the Google groups style.  I kind of like most things about the Nabble layout; mostly, I just think it needs some aesthetic adjustments (and I think the new views help for the actual posts, but the forum screen is still the same style, except for colors and such, if you change them).

Keep it as is.  I'm a member of a phpBB forum that recently subdivided a single forum into 3.  The practical impact of this was to see recent posts in all three forums you had to click into and out of each.  The end result has been one of the sub-forums has continued on as the original had and the other two sub-forums have languished.  So the way you have it, showing the latest posts from all child forums in a single view, really is the way to go.

That said, I do have a couple notes:

Maybe it's something I'm doing wrong, but the repetitive links in the top left of my forum are a real head scratcher.  Specifically, "Forum | Tagruato" both linking to the same place.  What's up with that?
I brows using IE7 on my old broke down computer at home.  The "new view" "threaded" doesn't load.  It could be an IE7 issue, it could be my computer.  Just thought I'd note it.

Lastly, thank you.  Your forum rocks and what you've managed to do with it rocks and the fact that it exists rocks and yes and have some idea of what has gone into making it what it is and am all the more appreciative because of it.  Honestly.  

Now if only I could figure out how to get people to participate...

p.s. One feature that was nice in a threaded forum I used to frequent (Slate's The Fray before it was upgraded) was the ability to expand all threads (show authors/dates/subject lines) from the forum front page, both individually and as a whole.  In this way, you could get a taste for a thread or see if someone you like is in it before deciding whether or not to enter it.  It's a feature that was common in old-school threaded forums.  bspeak is an example, (you have to register to expand/collapse the threads).

Thanks for your input. Please see my response below:

Tagruato wrote:

Keep it as is.  I'm a member of a phpBB forum that recently subdivided a single forum into 3.  The practical impact of this was to see recent posts in all three forums you had to click into and out of each.  The end result has been one of the sub-forums has continued on as the original had and the other two sub-forums have languished.  So the way you have it, showing the latest posts from all child forums in a single view, really is the way to go.

Thanks for the input. We will keep the current view, but we will make it simpler. We will also provide a standard phpBB/vBulltin view, just because a lot of people are used to it. We can also add another view - the view you asked in your other post. The forum owner can select a default view for his forum, and the users can select his own individual view as well. The forum view options should be available in a month or so.

With the standard phpBB view, we will also provide a link at the top to "show all threads" - this will allow users who are stuck in phpBB view to view all threads from all subforums immediately.

Tagruato wrote:

Maybe it's something I'm doing wrong, but the repetitive links in the top left of my forum are a real head scratcher.  Specifically, "Forum | Tagruato" both linking to the same place.  What's up with that?

Good point. The two links are for the breadcrumb trail. So, if you navigate to a child forum, you will see the full bread crumb trail. But I do agree with you that the two links are redundant. Also, it seems that the links don't need to show in the top forum page.

So, how do you like the breadcrumb trail to be?

Tagruato wrote:

I brows using IE7 on my old broke down computer at home.  The "new view" "threaded" doesn't load.  It could be an IE7 issue, it could be my computer.  Just thought I'd note it.

Nabble should work fine with IE7. What error did you see? Also, can you try clear cache and see if you still get the same error?

Tagruato wrote:

Lastly, thank you.  Your forum rocks and what you've managed to do with it rocks and the fact that it exists rocks and yes and have some idea of what has gone into making it what it is and am all the more appreciative because of it.  Honestly.  

Thank you!

Tagruato wrote:

Now if only I could figure out how to get people to participate...

Yes, that's the hard part.

New view/IE7 - When I try to switch it gets as far as showing the "Loading..." message for the post I'm in.  But like I said, my home computer is a pos, so that's probably the problem.

Breadcrumbs - I like the current format fine but for the redundancy.

One other thing now that I'm thinking about it.  With embedding, the "Forum Name:*" = Title can be redundant as well.  Perhaps the ability to resize it, or an option to not show it.

The 'new view' option gives me nothing on some lists (e.g. the Gails mailing list) except the first post in a thread. I'm using Firefox 2.0.013 on WinXP. This thread I'm posting in now works fine with new views.

It was a good call to keep the option to see old views, many thanks.

Cool. The new views work on every forum/list with my nice new MacBook Pro. However, the new views seem to be written such that, on Safari at least, the option to view the previous page does not work as you would normally expect to do. It seems to require a double click on the left arrow and I haven't figured out how to go the previous page using track pad gestures.

Please regard this as a request to continue to provide & maintain the old style views.