Forums

[aquariancore]

I have three more site to get up and at least two are going to need forums. How about suggestion what you like and dislike in a forum.

[deanac24]

Well that is easy...lol. I hate spammers. DUH! Really, I think that getting traffic to your site and forum is most important at first.

[Andy]

Something I don't like, aside from already mentioned spam, when forums use "Custom Indexes" .. now these may aim to look more professional, but they're often much less usable.. I like it much more when forums use the universally accepted or default index,

[aquariancore]

Could you explain custom indexes to me?

[paperclip]

That would be my question as well.

[mtatum4496]

Keeping the pages as clean as possible so they load quickly is always a good plus, especially if you want to draw the participation of the millions of folks who are still using 56K dialup. A slow loading forum will cause them to give up and look elsewhere.

[aquariancore]

How do you rate the free forums like SMF and phpbb and such. Which are the best and which are the worst. I am in the process of switching from a SMF forum to a VB with a link directory in one. I have to decide on the other whether to keep it SMF or change.

[mtatum4496]

Several of my favorite message boards are set up on phpbb. One of the things I have noticed is that they never seem to have any down time and I always connect to them on the first try.

[Andy]

Could you explain custom indexes to me?
[/b]

When I say "Custom Indexes" I mean where Forums use alternative style forum indexes, for example SitePoint. An example of the default and most widely used index would be R21. Most forum software use the same style index which makes them very usable as visitors become accustomed to the layout.

Hope that helps,

Andy

[aquariancore]

I see your point thank you.