Forum update coming, what do you want?

[Andy Black]

I've wondered what it would be like to have a ChatGPT AI tool trained on all the posts of all members with over a certain User Power %. So for the people always asking for a mentor, that AI might be something of a mentor.

Yeah, me too. I think I'm on repeat.

 

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[MitchC]

Been in a couple of forums that use Discourse and I’ve been perfectly content with that. Great mobile support + search functionality, which are my biggest two annoyances.

I looked at Flarum myself back when it was in beta and we needed a forum of our own. Looks to mimic Discourse mostly.

Another addition that might benefit the forum, though it has nothing to do with the forum tech: better explainers. For example, the post ratio. When you join, nowhere (in my recollection) does it mention *why* it’s there, what the perks of a high percentage is, what one needs to do to gain speed points, etc. I assume it’s to stimulate high-quality posting, which I’m a fan off, but the system could be clearer. Getting speed points feels like a draw of the lottery sometimes.

Speedway is another thing. I thought that was a feature of the past. Only learned in this thread it isn’t, yet I’m still not sure what exactly it’s for and where it is?

Speedway is like a mini INSIDERS

You need a certain amount of posts and it’s not indexed by google

So it’s for for slightly personal or sensitive things

 

[Bence Ur]

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.

I'm here for the forum-style layout.

I loathe the layout of the Reddit groups, Facebook groups, Slack and Discord groups.

If you want to build and grow a community, you need a proper forum engine like XenForo (or like Discourse, Flarum etc.).

 

[Saad Khan]

Fix the search function, bet that's why no one uses it

Suggestions

When typing in a word, generate a few suggestions below the search bar just like google search engine. No one wants to search, load a webpage, only to find that it wasn't what they were looking for. Repeat this process mutiple times over and the user gets frustrated.

 

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[piano]

1) Remove the User Power %

Oh I wonder why

Btw, can we please add a dark mode for this forum in the future?
It's less attacking on the eyes and drains your laptop power less if you're on the go.

 

[Serito]

A thread-to-pdf button which allows to print booklets of (gold) threads. One third of the page should be reserved for personal notes.

 

[MJ DeMarco]

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.

 

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[Andy Black]

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.

Is it just me or are none of them loading on phones?

 

[MJ DeMarco]

Is it just me or are none of them loading on phones?

Interesting, I've been having trouble getting them to load all morning.

If that is the uptime I can expect, I can scratch Discourse off the list.

 

[Fox]

I actually think the current forum layout is decent.

 

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[Andy Black]

View attachment 51152

I actually think the current forum layout is decent.

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

Now if we could just find a layout that encourages people to not create new threads about content already done to death...

 

[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.

 

[YouCanDoThis]

Interesting, I've been having trouble getting them to load all morning.

If that is the uptime I can expect, I can scratch Discourse off the list.

For what it's worth, the two forums that used Discourse I frequented at never had any downtime. You can self-host it if you want, I believe, so that might be the reason why (don't know if they did).

Not discounting your experience or steer you towards Discourse — maybe I just had a lucky draw, or you a bad one. Just want to provide actual experience using this so you can make an educated decision. Flarum looks solid too.

 

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[hrsh777]

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.

I have recently joined this forum and this is the first forum I've ever joined and used. I like the user experience. But I find it hard to search for threads on the topics i need.

Also I find it hard to look for popular threads posted by users on their profile.

 

[Robdavis]

@MJ DeMarco; would it make sense to setup a sandpit? So create a forum with no content on a new platform where we could try it out and see if we like it?

MJ suggested that he wants to consider Invision and Flavum.

So, for example, Invision would give "us" a free thirty day free trial. Obviously anything that was posted in there would be lost at the end of the period.

Flavum will offer us the demo area which is available here:

Flarum

Flarum is the next-generation forum software that makes online discussion fun. It's simple, fast, and free.

flarum.org

You can log in with user "admin" and "password" and the demo site resets daily.

This might make it possible for us to compare the two different providers if we created a pair of sandpits.

P.S. We could always post the links to the sandpits in the speedway or INSIDERS if we wanted to restrict the number of users.

 

[BizyDad]

Also I find it hard to look for popular threads posted by users on their profile.

I second this. I understand people wanting to hide their profiles, but being able to at least see what threads they started would be cool.

 

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[Andy Black]

I wonder what's the closest to LinkedIn.

I bring up LinkedIn because of the wide age range that use it, and why they use it (business/career/professional development).

 

[MJ DeMarco]

I like the user experience.

That's the point I'm making.

You like the user experience and are still here. But the 9 others that came after you didn't like it and left. I'm not hearing from them.

 

[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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[hrsh777]

That's the point I'm making.

You like the user experience and are still here. But the 9 others that came after you didn't like it and left. I'm not hearing from them.

Oh. Yeah you are right.

 

[Consolation]

As a user I like this XenForo engine. What are your issues exactly?

Discourse is also a great forum platform. A lot of communities use the Discourse platform nowadays.

But I can't see any issues with XenForo.

Migrating to a new forum engine is a huge pain, are you sure about it? What about SEO? It is always risky to change the existing URL structures, don't forget the existing backlinks pointing to the inner URLs.

I'm curious.

Have you read MJ's books? The parts where to identify problems? Not only your own but others' too.

Aspiring entrepreneurs should be able to spot or anticipate problems in an entrepreneurs' forum.

I beg for your forgiveness if this sounds harsh. sorry.

 

[Bence Ur]

I'm curious.

Have you read MJ's books? The parts where to identify problems? Not only your own but others' too.

Aspiring entrepreneurs should be able to spot or anticipate problems in an entrepreneurs' forum.

I beg for your forgiveness if this sounds harsh. sorry.

Yes actually there is a scientific way to test websites, it's called usability testing.

It is described in these classic books:

Steve Krug: Don’t Make Me Think, Revisited - A Common Sense Approach to Web (and Mobile) Usability
Steve Krug: Rocket Surgery Made Easy - The Do-It-Yourself Guide to Finding and Fixing Usability Problems

Basically you need to gather at least 4-5 users (don't forget to include novice computer users as well, the more users the better) and then record usability tests, it means that they need to use the forum, perform activities such as searching, browsing threads, registering, opening a new thread, inserting an image, replying to private messages etc. Both on desktop computer and mobile device. They need to speak during the tests (talking about their live experience) and you need to record them. These usability tests are described in detail in the mentioned books.

And here is a live, recorded usability test:

View: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=1UCDUOB_aS8


Without these usability tests it's all just guessing.

You are right, I am just a single user, I personally find nothing wrong with this forum. Even the search function is great. You need to use the advanced search functionality to refine the search.

But it is not a scientific test, you are right. You need to gather at least 4-5 users with varying computer skills, both on desktop computer and mobile, and record the proper live usability tests, like in the linked video.

By the way XenForo has a lot of themes and developers, maybe just changing the XenForo theme, tweaking some settings and hiring a XenForo developer would be a better solution, because migrating to a completely different forum engine is a huge, huge pain (and it isn't guaranteed that it is even possible to migrate everything properly, plus the SEO issues - changing the existing URL structure is risky).

Mobile experience might be improved by changing the XenForo theme and/or tweaking the settings. For example on mobile you could hide some pieces of information in order to save space, such as user badges, some sidebar widgets etc.

Maybe a XenForo expert could resolve these issues quickly and much cheaper than the cost of migrating to a different forum engine, I don't know.

 

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[Kevin88660]

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.

Not sure how feasible is that maybe a tipping feature that allows you to tip others.

 

[Boy Muhammad]

MJ, why not hire developers (or use Bubble.io) to build a new platform from scratch and pair it up with the existing database?

 

[Antifragile]

Dark mode would be nice …

 

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[Kak]

View attachment 51152

I actually think the current forum layout is decent.

X2

 

[MJ DeMarco]

MJ, why not hire developers (or use Bubble.io) to build a new platform from scratch and pair it up with the existing database?

I'm not interesting in solving the problems that plague this industry. I'm just trying to run a simple community without the handcuffs of 2010.

 

[Jrjohnny]

A small idea: an AI that automatically bumps gold, notable and other threads.

Another thing like I’ve said but different:

A thread or tab where messages that are pure gold can be found.

 

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[piano]

I second this. I understand people wanting to hide their profiles, but being able to at least see what threads they started would be cool.

I actually have an idea for how to fix this problem:

First, why do people private their profiles in the first place?
Some reasons might include:
-Don't want the public to read everything about them
-Don't want everyone to dm them

So what if you added an option, that option being:

"Only members with over 100 messages and +200% like ratio can view your profile"
(or something along those lines)

What do you guys think?

 

[MJ DeMarco]

A thread or tab where messages that are pure gold can be found.

You mean posts? Gold threads already have a tab.