Forum update coming, what do you want?

[MJ DeMarco]

The forum software is due to be updated and as I embark on this project (it can take some time) I'd like to hear if there are any features you'd like to see. Unfortunately, I won't be moving platforms so I do have some limitations on what can be done, and not done.

I also have access to developer who might be able to implement non-custom features.

Some things I've identified:

1) The search function sucks balls. This needs upgrading.
2) Content discovery is poor. There needs to be better categorization for content discovery, for example, if you want to find posts on YouTube or eCom.
3) Custom notifications on what you want notices on.
4) More options to ignore certain content.
5) Keyword notices: Get notified when keywords appear in posts.

Obviously I can listen to suggestions, but they are often dependent on the platform which the software uses, which as many of you know, I do not like.

 

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[MJ DeMarco]

Would anyone have an interest in a Random Lifestyle, Hobby and Enjoyment thread?

This thread would be very similar to the Random Chat thread except related to specifically to lifestyle updates from members. For example, if you're hiking up a mountain, share your pics. If you're entering a boxing competition, let us know. If you're at a conference, post pictures.

If you're on a fishing boat and drinking a margarita, let us know!

I love seeing and hearing what others are doing around the world.

Very similar to the desktop thread which showcases people's workspaces.

Basically something like this which I posted the other day...

https://twitter.com/i/web/status/1660096568337506304

View: https://twitter.com/MJDeMarco/status/1660096568337506304?s=20

 

[SEBASTlAN]

I doubt there is an extension for this, but something similar to Quora where if a similar question has already been asked multiple times before, it will show them the other threads then ask them to confirm if their question is unique before posting.

 

[MJ DeMarco]

You can now choose a Dark Mode style.



To do so, scroll to the bottom of the page and select "Style Chooser" and select "DARK MODE"

It's not the best IMO and there are some random contrast issues, but it should be a decent patch until the forum transitions.

 

[farahead]

Id love to see who is the creator of the thread when browsing threads not just who wrote most recent reply.

 

[heavy_industry]

@MJ DeMarco

Here are some suggestions:


1. On desktop, there are 5 blocks that cover like 60% of the height of the website:

• Statistics
• Latest activity
• Recent top post
• Quick content filters
• Ongoing chats

Some of those panels are useful, but I think it would be nice to have them in a more compact format, or add some of them as sidebars (e.g. the top post).

This would prevent having to scroll all the way down just to be able to see the actual forum categories.

---

2. Bundling all notifications for a single post into a single one.

So you would get 1 notification "20 users liked your post", instead of 20 different notifications.



I don't have any objections, I love waking up to this thing.

But it would be easier to navigate the notifications if there were bundled together as described above.

---

3. User categories boxes

It would be nice to make them more easily distinguishable, by color-coding them, and adding icons.

@MJ DeMarco Please let me know if you want me to make some high quality ones. This is just a draft:








(I'm sorry @Andy Black please don't ban me)

 

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[Togata]

A dark theme would be really cool, background color in black and font color in white, like what Youtube, Gmail, and other platforms use.

my eyes get tired when I read content with a white background color, I'm sure I'm not the only one.

would be cool to be able to switch between normal mode and dark mode.

 

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[MJ DeMarco]

Heads up...

I likely will be getting off the Xenforo platform and moving to a new forum system in the next 60 days. I'm done waiting for Xenforo to put forth a platform that doesn't feel like it is stuck in 2008.

This platform hasn't evolved into the current era and is currently mostly dependent on 3rd party developers (many of which are terribly frustrated as I am) and unfortunately, it has made this place tougher to manage, grow, and facilitate.

The time has come and right now its just a matter of scheduling the move.

Advanced warning: It will be disruptive. It will be risky. And it will be a culture shock around here.

 

[Subsonic]

A filter for "threads" in the user content tab.

So for example if I want to read all threads Jonny boy posted I could just choose that filter instead of going through 70 pages of Likes and responses.

 

[MJ DeMarco]

Actually I just found the feature I was looking for already exists.

The fact you just discovered this is also a problem.

 

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[MJ DeMarco]

When you follow someone it should notify you when they post otherwise why follow them

Logic defies the developers of this platform.

"Big news! Our software now allows you to email your forum users!"

Wow, only 22 years late.

 

[MitchC]

When you follow someone it should notify you when they post otherwise why follow them

I don’t think people should be able to limit who views their profile, makes no sense, if I see someone post I want to be able to go and see all their other posts

Bring back the city and country location option to profiles

Bring back the rep $$ bank thing

 

[heavy_industry]

Lots of great suggestions and ideas, keep 'em coming!

Ban @heavy_industry

This update will improve the quality of the forum and reduce spam.

 

[MJ DeMarco]

I must admit, I like the layout compared to Discord, Slack, Circle, Skool, and Facebook groups.

There's a survivor bias here.

The people who are OK, or tolerant with the current forum layout are still here.

The people who didn't like the layout, and didn't find what they were looking for very easily, LEFT. We're not hearing from those people because they simply aren't here.

 

[Guest-5ty5s4]

Id love to see who is the creator of the thread when browsing threads not just who wrote most recent reply.

View attachment 48878

Plus one for this. Much needed feature.

 

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[eliquid]

There is no way to "ignore" someone who has the "This member limits who may view their full profile."

Can you add that to their profile, so we can ignore them.

 

[Spenny]

How about having a beginner section which is open to the public, and then those that prove they deserve to be part of the community get promoted to "Fastlaners" user group - or something like that.

Basically having 3 tiers of users:

• Beginners (public)
• Fastlaners (private)
• INSIDERS (private and paywall $)

I agree with this, Id prefer to have less idiots, but my only fear is that people may not even have access to active contribution. Is my annoyance a priority over giving people an opportunity to contribute (just like when I first started)?

The intros section is a key example of this. We get so many drive-bys. But if you have a brain, you learn pretty quick you have to find a way to contribute to others if you want to be a part of the community. Wether that be liking stuff, saying thank you, putting in two cents, making insightful posts, doesn't matter.

The forum is absolutely life changing, the beginning of empires are built here. I'd hate to think we'd scare people off because the positive feedback loop is not there.

 

[MJ DeMarco]

@MJ DeMarco I strongly recommend the platform Skool. It is PERFECT for this community. It's intentionally designed for high-quality and organized community discussions, and in my experience so far, has massively succeeded at this.

It works perfectly in any browser and has a great mobile app for both iOS & Android. You may know who Sam Ovens is, he was huge in the info product space, and this is the platform he's developing for it. He's funded it himself, so the only people influencing the platform are his team and actual user feedback gathered in the platform's free community.

Check it out here: Skool: Community platform for creators

If you click the "See It In Action" button it'll show you a 77 second overview of what you can do on the platform, then put you in the Skool platform's free community so you can experience how it works firsthand. No signup required.

Additionally, the SEO design of Skool (especially for public groups) is unbelievably good.
Sam explains how they engineered it for maximum visibility here: Public Groups - SEO Indexing · Skool Community and there's an example of a post in a public group ranking #2 on Google for it's keywords here: Skool SEO · Skool Community

There's also a universal search function built-in that will search the entire community for any keyword or phrase you type in. You'll instantly be able to see every time a specific word or topic has been mentioned across all comment sections and individual posts since the start of the community.

If you decide you like it but don't want to set it up yourself, I'm happy to do it for you. I genuinely believe it would be the best move for this forum. There isn't a single platform alternative I've found that's better than this when it comes to community interaction.

I like the format and it looks really promising.

However, Skool doesn't look to be a forum-first platform, but more than an educational platform focused on selling courses. I don't sell courses. They also have no information on converters -- forums generally offer migration and conversion kits. I can't just start a new forum and leave all the posts/users here behind. There are over 1M posts here.

I'm also not inclined to risk a forum with 15+ years of history to a new platform that looks to have only been around for a year or two.

 

[MJ DeMarco]

Respectfully, I disagree. I think people are here for the content and discussions first, not for the forum style layout. Personally, I find this forum layout a pain in the a$$ from a user perspective. It’s inefficient to use on mobile and desktop both. I’d much rather be in a simple & familiar-feeling Facebook-style UI community than on a different forum platform that poorly mimics what Reddit already does better.

The benefits Skool holds over FB & Reddit are the post organization features and the total lack of distractions. There’s no noise, no ads, and it’s geared to reward users for quality discussions. Skool could absolutely be used to make the Fastlane Forum a high quality & easily accessible place for users to visit both on mobile and desktop.

You work for the company? It sounds like you do.

 

[Fox]

I actually think the current forum layout is decent.

 

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[BizyDad]

It's a little thing, and I understand why it might not get implemented, but I would like to add a few more links to my signature.

The main reason I changed my sig is to find certain threads that I started, so if I could filter the "my content" tab to just my own threads, that would also be helpful.

 

[GuestUser4aMPs1]

Bring back Rep$$

(Pre 2018 members: IYKYK)

 

[GuestUser4aMPs1]

@MJ DeMarco

I had a quick look at Xenforo. They are UK based and only seem to have 3 employees (possibly including the two directors).

Here are documents related to the company and its accounts.

XENFORO LIMITED filing history - Find and update company information - GOV.UK

XENFORO LIMITED - Free company information from Companies House including registered office address, filing history, accounts, annual return, officers, charges, business activity

find-and-update.company-information.service.gov.uk

Would you be in a position 'ala' Elon Musk to buyout this company and appoint your own developers/team to oversee further development. Seeing as the forum is so reliant on its software to function. This would give you a certain element of control (CENTS), it would probably add value to the forum too as you'd now be a tech company lol.

Just thought I would suggest it.

MJ buying out the very software that this forum runs on because of how badly he hates it so much would be the greatest ironic twists of fate in fastlane history.

 

[MJ DeMarco]

What will be the new platform?

Leaning toward Invision Community or Flarum. Invision has a ton of features which makes content discovery and exposure much easier.

 

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[Xeon]

1) Remove the User Power %

2) Show the country names of every member next to the posts (probably below Date Joined or under the avatar)

 

[MTF]

For those of you who suggested Discourse, here are some heavily trafficked forums that use it, just to give you a feel for it.

Monzo Community

The Monzo Community forum is where Monzo users come to help build the bank of the future, and get the most out of the Monzo current account.

community.monzo.com

Motley Fool Community

A place for Foolish investors to share insights.

discussion.fool.com

Freetrade Community

Join the discussion with the community on all things investing and Freetrade.

community.freetrade.io

This forum has a tremendous amount of weaknesses, but I've isolated the 4 most pressing...

• Poor search functionality
• Poor mobile experience
• Poor content discovery, categorization, and organization (related to #1) - percolating value to be easily found.
• Antiquated forum layouts which are not readily accepted by users born after 1995, users who expect a different layout and UI.

So my decision revolves around improving those glaring issues.

Dynamite Circle (a private paid community for entrepreneurs/digital nomads) uses Discourse. Out of the ones you mentioned:

• Terrible search functionality as well. In my opinion, way worse than here.
• Terrible mobile experience because the mobile version is super slow compared to desktop. I hate using it on mobile. This forum works great on mobile, at least for me.
• Same difficulty with content discovery etc. Even worse as there's no easy way to see all categories as here (or at least with the theme the DC is using).
• Discourse still looks like a forum but a way more basic one than this one. I don't think it's suitable for a forum as big as this one. It's better for a smaller private community where you can keep everything in one category.

This is of course your call but if you try to make the forum look more like social media it may encourage shallow conversations and fewer exchanges (particularly if old timers can't adapt). Forums may look intimidating but that means that only people who are willing to put in some work will stay.

Just adding a perspective that trying to appeal to other people may lead to losing existing satisfied customers. Sort of like a traditional restaurant with loyal patrons trying to appeal to the Instagram crowd by making changes that make the existing patrons stop visiting it.

Having said that, I really like forums as they are (precisely because they're so different from social media, similar to blogs) and am not a part of your target demographic you're talking about (the ones who leave because it's too old school). Whatever you do, I'll try to stick around.

 

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[Pixcom]

I'm pretty new here but I would really appreciate a feature that would allow you to save threads or archive it in a section that you can access faster.It would help me and I'm sure it would help others too to keep a tab on interesting threads without having to search too long for them.(Not sure if this feature exists already or not)

 

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[Andy Black]

I would like to add a few more links to my signature.

Sorry. That's just for a select few.

I think you have to post over 16,682 times or something.

 

[Jon822]

Saw a meme about social media companies once that said something like "user interaction, UGC, functional code, etc. is worth millions but DARK THEME is worth billions." Pretty funny.

I love dark theme. All websites I make are built using dark themes. Anything else is too heavy on the eyes.

 

[Happyheart]

The forum software is due to be updated and as I embark on this project (it can take some time) I'd like to hear if there are any features you'd like to see. Unfortunately, I won't be moving platforms so I do have some limitations on what can be done, and not done.

I also have access to developer who might be able to implement non-custom features.

Some things I've identified:

1) The search function sucks balls. This needs upgrading.
2) Content discovery is poor. There needs to be better categorization for content discovery, for example, if you want to find posts on YouTube or eCom.
3) Custom notifications on what you want notices on.
4) More options to ignore certain content.
5) Keyword notices: Get notified when keywords appear in posts.

Obviously I can listen to suggestions, but they are often dependent on the platform which the software uses, which as many of you know, I do not like.

If at all possible, maybe people near you/state/country