Interesting... actually there is a forum I used to go to they were first UBB, then they switched to WWWThreads, first everyone was complaining, but it didn't take long and everyone was discovering the powerful features and got used to the slightly different "feel". I wouldn't want UBB on my site, and I hardly go to any UBB forum except occasionally the one on the Gossamer Threads "Links" support site. After trying out a number of other forums and installed various forum scripts on my site, I am sooo glad I found w3t, I wouldn't want anything else. But, like you say, you can't please everyone... since I have w3t, my forum has become much more active, much more people have signed up. Great! []/w3timages/icons/smile.gif[/]
Oh, you guys have my sympathy! I got the same thing from one of my moderators. It took quite a while for my users to get used to W3T. Mainly, people failed to understand that they can totally alter the display of the thing to whatever works best for them personally. Once i got that across everyone has been very happy with it. But first I had to explain the whole threaded vs flat conflict and that with another board we'd be stuck with one or the other and 50% of the people would always be uncomfortable with it, and them how to change to display to function like their favorite boards, whatever they were.
People just don't want options. They want it to look the way they want it to look when they step in the door. And folks who like flat mode find it durned near impossible to understand that others find it totally confusing and vice versa.
I actually tried a demo version of UBB (amongst others) when deciding on what forum software to use. I was put off by the message-in-a-file format (database back ends are so much more efficient and save a lot of disk space) and the fact that it is flat format only (at least as far as I could tell).
Mind you, everyone is allowed their preference ... this is mine so now my users have to learn to like it!!![]/w3timages/icons/wink.gif[/]
I find the most compelling arguement is that those other boards, however pretty they might seem, simply can't take the strain like one with an SQL backend.
I'm not really talking about the appearance of the forums, but the "theory" of display... as in flat vs threaded and expanded vs collapsed. I hack up W3T to have a UBB-ish appearance because I think it's a tidier page layout. But the issue I always come back to is the "theory" of display.
People who find threaded mode hard to follow will always find it hard to follow, no matter how neatly you present it. And the same for people who prefer flat mode. I can not read fully threaded bulletin boards (as in threaded and threads expanded). They make my eyes cross. Just too many words. []/w3timages/icons/smile.gif[/]
So if I set my default to flat mode, the people who find flat mode confusing complain. And if I set my default to threaded, the people who find threads confusing complain. And W3T is wonderful because it allows each user to set their own prefs for that, and that's what I keep trying to explain to people. But I have a hard time getting the users to realize that they *can* set it up do display the way they want. The users, in exasperation with the default display, write me and beg for me to replace it with BoardX that is their favorite.
[]/w3timages/icons/tongue.gif[/] And I try to explain... this board is like Burger King. You can have it your way. Everybody can have it their way. If I install BoardX, you will have it your way, but the people who don't like it your way can't have it the way they like it.
My major problem is getting people to understand that they can set preferences and what those preferences mean.
And all this brings me back to a separate post I made about having a set of instructions for using WWWThreads!
I think that if users had a manual to refer to then they would find using WWWThreads much easier. After all it is a fairly complex system. We should also remember that a lot of our visitors arn't inquisitive (I guess that webmasters are by nature[]/w3timages/icons/smile.gif[/]).
Yeah, you're right Simon. I've added some to the FAQ, but that isn't enough. There has to be some front door that people are forced to go through before registering or something like that. If people read my FAQs they would understand about the user prefs, but they don't even look. I need a way to put it a bit more in their face.
Tell me about it! Half of the email I get could be avoided by people reading the FAQ. Even adding buttons with text on them doesn't seem to have helped a lot!
The biggest request I get is about how to post a question. Most people don't seem to realise that they have to select a board first.
I know what you mean! I have a HUGE welcome message now - that has helped considerably :-) Not only do I refer to the FAQ in it - I tell them a lot of the features of the board, how to set their profiles etc. I *think* most people do read the welcome message LOL
was the case! I checked my board's private messages via phpMyAdmin and it showed that at least half the "Welcome" messages had the status 'N' - New, i.e. unread. I've edited the e-mail with the password some, to point out the preferences, option to change the random password to something easier to remember, but it may be best if a URL could be given to a manual, which should be linked in the main menu as well. Of course, the manual needs to be written first...
I've added a link to them from the forum itself so hopefully people will send me less 'How do I post a message?' emails! I will convert them to a more generic format in the next day or so.
I just went over to WolfUK's site. Signed up as a new user, within three (3) minutes I had a email with password. It took longer to file in a profile that to get signed up.
Your user instructions are very good. If we could only following the instructions. I have not spent much time at your site, but first impression is a that appears that it will be among the great ones.
Ah, it's just HTML. I don't know what others think, but certainly don't do this on my account. No matter what you do, I'll still have to adapt it a bit to my site, so I may just as well start from the version you have up as any other. No reason for you to go to that trouble.
Do you mind if I include these in the main distribution? It seems that everyone has taken a liking to your instructions so this might be beneficial to everyone else. If you don't mind, will need to know what email address you want listed in the THANKS file.
As big as the THANKS file is getting I'll probably end up making a web page for it as well, something like credits or something to list all of the people who have contributed to the program.
I really do appreciate everyone's help on everything. It seems like the base WWWThreads community is starting to get a little stronger. We have had some repeat visitors for the past year like Eileen, MattyJ, Rlevant, etc. And it seems like we are getting more that visit frequently which really does help.
No problem! I was actually going to ask how I can hack the system to include an instructions link in the links list (next to the FAQ link).
One thing you might want to look at is terminology. I think of the whole system as a forum and then boards within the forum (boards being in categories). You might want to change some of the terminology so that the whole system is referred to as a the forum software with forums being within categories. I'm not sure about this because in some areas your routines call the boards boards and in other areas they are called forums! For example, you create boards but within a board you can look at the Forum Information, after posting you Return To Forum, etc..
Yeah, I know. I guess I'm the wishy-washy type[]/w3timages/icons/smile.gif[/]. I'll work through in the next main release and try to get everything referring to forums, instead of forums/boards/places to post/blah blah blah.
I'm changing mine all over to discussions and forums -as in "discussion forums" ... a board is, well, tired! And while these are messages, discussions is more friendly. Yeah, IMO.
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