finding a Forum for my website (wpForo?)
March 26, 2017 6:09 AM Subscribe
I've paid a Web designer to create a neighborhood-focused website for my little town (I am not tech-skilled). The most important part of it will be the Community Forum, providing a better level of public conversation. The platform is WordPress, but the current Forum page (and "manual" registration) is already proving to be too awkward to gather momentum.
For whatever reasons, we decided to forego the plugin wpForo, and choose something simpler. (Here is this new site.) Can anyone provide an example of a site that does use wpForo? I would like to see how it displays, before going to the trouble (and possible expense) of changing over. And I'd welcome any other suggestions for enhancing the site.
For whatever reasons, we decided to forego the plugin wpForo, and choose something simpler. (Here is this new site.) Can anyone provide an example of a site that does use wpForo? I would like to see how it displays, before going to the trouble (and possible expense) of changing over. And I'd welcome any other suggestions for enhancing the site.
Best answer: The two most important things, I think, are not necessarily the choice of forum, although that is important. Here are two things that are independent of the specific technology that most people seem to overlook:
1) Involving stakeholders in the selection and configuration of the system, not because they are experts, but both because they aren't experts and because having a role in putting this together will increase their willingness to use the system. This can be as simple as a few phone calls to ask, "what do you want to see work differently" or "what are you most worried about", made to people who you think will be important to making this work.
Or having a little informal "user testing" where you give them a simple task ("post something", "find a post about your neighborhood") and see either how to streamline things or _how to improve your instructions_ to people. You don't have to do whatever the participants say; these sessions will also give you a chance to show and explain to them the difficulties and conflicting priorities you are dealing with. One or two other key people who are invested and enthusiastic can be key to helping other users and building momentum.
2) Guiding users by having really well constructed onboarding or FAQ documentation -- ideally, in stages, so that brand-new users get what they need to see how this can be useful, maybe just as readers, and then people can gradually discover how to do things before they have a pressing need and get frustrated. Instructions and FAQs are frequently designed for one class of user, often people who are similar to the people who wrote them. Item #1 above can do a _ton_ to mitigate this, but keeping it in mind can help too.
3) Please focus on being useful to your users, who will probably not care how impressive, pretty, or "professional" it looks. Think Craigslist. (It seems that this is what you _are_ trying to do with this design, but don't be swayed if someone tries to derail you. Also, yes, the images are much to large - the page makes them _look_ small, but if you right click and view the image by itself, you can see that it's really a problem -- maybe your BBS should automatically resize the image [on the server] as it's uploaded).
Good luck! This is an awesome thing for you to do.
posted by amtho at 7:03 AM on March 26, 2017 [2 favorites]
1) Involving stakeholders in the selection and configuration of the system, not because they are experts, but both because they aren't experts and because having a role in putting this together will increase their willingness to use the system. This can be as simple as a few phone calls to ask, "what do you want to see work differently" or "what are you most worried about", made to people who you think will be important to making this work.
Or having a little informal "user testing" where you give them a simple task ("post something", "find a post about your neighborhood") and see either how to streamline things or _how to improve your instructions_ to people. You don't have to do whatever the participants say; these sessions will also give you a chance to show and explain to them the difficulties and conflicting priorities you are dealing with. One or two other key people who are invested and enthusiastic can be key to helping other users and building momentum.
2) Guiding users by having really well constructed onboarding or FAQ documentation -- ideally, in stages, so that brand-new users get what they need to see how this can be useful, maybe just as readers, and then people can gradually discover how to do things before they have a pressing need and get frustrated. Instructions and FAQs are frequently designed for one class of user, often people who are similar to the people who wrote them. Item #1 above can do a _ton_ to mitigate this, but keeping it in mind can help too.
3) Please focus on being useful to your users, who will probably not care how impressive, pretty, or "professional" it looks. Think Craigslist. (It seems that this is what you _are_ trying to do with this design, but don't be swayed if someone tries to derail you. Also, yes, the images are much to large - the page makes them _look_ small, but if you right click and view the image by itself, you can see that it's really a problem -- maybe your BBS should automatically resize the image [on the server] as it's uploaded).
Good luck! This is an awesome thing for you to do.
posted by amtho at 7:03 AM on March 26, 2017 [2 favorites]
bbPress for classic phpBB functionality, or BuddyPress for more of a Facebook-like social site.
Source: Just gave a presentation about these at WordCamp Miami :)
posted by Meagan at 7:09 AM on March 26, 2017 [1 favorite]
Source: Just gave a presentation about these at WordCamp Miami :)
posted by Meagan at 7:09 AM on March 26, 2017 [1 favorite]
I couldn't figure out how to register until I reread the text on the page. Using the contact form as a registration method isn't good. I'm guessing that you did it so to 'control access' to the forums or what not, but it's startlingly ineffective.
I suggest you integrate Facebook connect or some other login integration l that lets users just click once to talk/discusss.
posted by suedehead at 8:17 AM on March 26, 2017 [1 favorite]
I suggest you integrate Facebook connect or some other login integration l that lets users just click once to talk/discusss.
posted by suedehead at 8:17 AM on March 26, 2017 [1 favorite]
[Not everyone uses Facebook, or Gmail, and probably you especially want participants who aren't on Facebook.]
Complicated stuff can work if it's clearly explained a bit at a time (rather than all-at-once wall-of-text).
posted by amtho at 10:21 AM on March 26, 2017 [1 favorite]
Complicated stuff can work if it's clearly explained a bit at a time (rather than all-at-once wall-of-text).
posted by amtho at 10:21 AM on March 26, 2017 [1 favorite]
Response by poster: Thanks, these are very helpful. I have done some vetting with neighbors but will hold a series of 'open house' demos to get more buy-in. I'll pass these suggestions on, but would still like to see an example of a site that uses wpForo.
posted by mmiddle at 10:21 AM on March 26, 2017
posted by mmiddle at 10:21 AM on March 26, 2017
NextDoor does the same thing.......sorta. check it out before you get too much invested in a stand alone website
posted by patnok at 1:09 PM on March 26, 2017
posted by patnok at 1:09 PM on March 26, 2017
I assume the forum at the wpForo website uses that plugin.
posted by humboldt32 at 1:42 PM on March 26, 2017
posted by humboldt32 at 1:42 PM on March 26, 2017
Long ago - like circa 1994 - I set up a website and a listserv for my neighborhood. Long story short: over a period of years, I also made several attempts to set up a BBS/forum site - but it never took off. As near as I could tell, the involvement threshold was just a bit too high. On the other hand, participation with a listserv is basically reading and sending emails.
In the meantime, the listserv worked really well. It went through several hosts - I think we started on go.com, and eventually made its way to become a yahoogroup, which is nice because it automatically archives all of the traffic. Search is slow, but if you really need to find the name of that landscaper from two years ago, you can find it.
I guess my point is that you might want to consider some kind of listserv-with-archive instead of a forum/BBS, especially if you've got users of all ages and skills. I'm sure you could find something better than yahoogrouops - although yahoogroups is a very attractive host in that a) it is a very mature system, and b) it's free.
A few years ago, our friendly HOA asked to take over the website (and after all these years, I was more than happy to let them have it). They rebuilt it - and included a forum/BBS - which got virtually no use. Around that time, people created a neighborhood Facebook page as well as a NextDoor page - but the listserv is still used and reaches more of the neighborhood. And recently, the HOA quietly removed the website forum/BBS.
The moral of this story is: you may want to consider a listserv. Or some kind of integration between a listserv and a forum/BBS.
posted by doctor tough love at 5:24 PM on March 26, 2017
In the meantime, the listserv worked really well. It went through several hosts - I think we started on go.com, and eventually made its way to become a yahoogroup, which is nice because it automatically archives all of the traffic. Search is slow, but if you really need to find the name of that landscaper from two years ago, you can find it.
I guess my point is that you might want to consider some kind of listserv-with-archive instead of a forum/BBS, especially if you've got users of all ages and skills. I'm sure you could find something better than yahoogrouops - although yahoogroups is a very attractive host in that a) it is a very mature system, and b) it's free.
A few years ago, our friendly HOA asked to take over the website (and after all these years, I was more than happy to let them have it). They rebuilt it - and included a forum/BBS - which got virtually no use. Around that time, people created a neighborhood Facebook page as well as a NextDoor page - but the listserv is still used and reaches more of the neighborhood. And recently, the HOA quietly removed the website forum/BBS.
The moral of this story is: you may want to consider a listserv. Or some kind of integration between a listserv and a forum/BBS.
posted by doctor tough love at 5:24 PM on March 26, 2017
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Your web designer should know better than to load up your homepage and subsequent pages with those giant, non-optimized images. Sot sure what theme and WP setup you're working with but bog standard WP would trim those down automagically.
posted by humboldt32 at 6:53 AM on March 26, 2017