KickstarterForum.org

[Shuzza]

I second that! I have in my settings to open in a new page, but this must override and then I lose you and hop off to internetland......

[sbriggman]

Good point. I'll work on that tomorrow.

[sbriggman]

I've made the change so that going forward, all links will now open up in a new tab. Unfortunately, we can't easily do it retroactively, so it's just new links on the forum.

[JayRM]

Here's something that I've actually come across on many forums, so this comment isn't really specific to this forum, but many others as well. I've always thought the structure of forum-catagory based websites were unorganized. On your typical forum, you have forums and subforums and threads. When people start more and more threads with ranging topics, you start to get a collection of data that can easily crossover to different forums and subforums. For example, a forum/website about multirotors can have a forum dedicated to a quadcopter and another forum dedicated to transmitters. But where do you post information about connecting a quadcopter to a transmitter? For this website, you have people asking for feedback on their project (which I actually find the most interesting), but actually see similar threads in multiple forums. That may or may not be a big deal in the beginning, but as the site gets bigger and bigger, there's more threads to read, more data to sift through, which can get time consuming. It can be frustrating if you're reading similar threads where people arrive at the same conclusion. Yes, there's a seach function, but if you're trying to be thorough, you want to go through many threads that are similar to whatever type of information you are looking for.

So, I've always thought that tag-based forums are better to organize data. You only have one forum for people to post to, but each member would have to attach the appropriate,available tag to their thread. If I wanted to ask a question about kickstarter, I just tag it kickstarter and ignore the indiegogo and other tags. If I wanted to search for kickstarter questions, I can limit tags to just kickstarter.

[Charles]

This forum always loads kind of slow, for me. Have you considered using a different web hosting company, or a different server with the same web hosting company?

[sbriggman]

Hmm.. I think it might be due to the images and embedded videos on the side, because usually it's pretty speedy. According to Pingdom, the sidebar images/embeds are causing long load time. Will work on fixing that.

[Charles]

I've posted about numerous different Kickstarter projects, here in this forum. So, today, I thought that I would post about this forum, itself.

Visually, it is lacking. Take that blurry image in the header area at the top, for instance. If the look of this forum was a KickStarter project page, it probably wouldn't get funded.

The navigation options are deficient. It needs navigation bar, so that we don't have to click on the main Board index option or the Back button on our web browser so much, to get back to previous pages.

And, ads. Really?!? I don't begrudge you the ads, as that will be a source of revenue, but so damned many of them? Keep the one son the side, and get rid of the ones between the messages, themselves. It's like trying to get all of the golden eggs, all at once. Let the goose live another day.

Overall, I like the forum. I seem to have made it a regular destination, although that was never the original intention. You really should consider more deeply the forum, itself, as well as how you are crafting the impression that it makes with those that use it.

The ads taken to excess are visually annoying, even though they don't diminish the functionality of the forum, itself. But, to be honest with you, I think that the look of the forum, the preponderance of gray (light gray as background color and medium to dark gray in the blurry header image, combined with the green without a dark border (such as black) to demark it, visually, just makes it all sort of blend together in a big blob of blah.

As regards your personal touch on the site, as site admin, you don't come across as a stuffed shirt nor as someone who is uptight. It helps to generate a relaxed atmosphere. Thumbs up on that!

[coolinvent]

I know you have how many registered and guests who are online on your forum, but is there anyway to show how many members are actually on this forum?

[JayRM]

What about a section where moderators write articles about a specific topic that is basically a summary of what is discussed in a number of threads? At the end of the article, you list those threads as cited resources. Those articles would need to be actively developed as the threads get updated.

Like I mentioned in a previous post, I think forums, in general, can be time consuming because information is spread out between different forums and threads, and people may ask the same question over and over again if they don't go far enough back or did not search for a specific keyword.

[Charles]

I have a question - Is there a specific forum section for discussing Kickstarter projects that you are backing, but which are not your own project?