The Staff Lounge - Making Your Forum Sing

Megan wrote: Hi Michael. Welcome to TWF! And thanks for reviewing some other sites first.

I took a look at your site when you posted your introduction and decided not to join for a couple of reasons. First of all, in your welcome message you say "Welcome to The Staff Lounge, a new feedback forum with an interesting and unique feedback concept." (emphasis added). What the heck??? Looks to me like you're targetting the word "feedbacK' for some reason and are trying to cram it into your welcome message as much as possible. That sentence means nothing to me, it does nothing to tell me why I should join your site. I also noticed "howto" in the next sentence. Then " orientaated" after that. As a forum admin I know what the benefits of registering are, so the second paragraph is redundant.

Thanks for your comments they are of course extremely helpful in times of a forums spuring development. With regards to the Welcome Message this was admittadly done during the beginning of the forums existance and i really spend alot of time developing and improving the text to create a more cohesive and accessible message. I will try and rephrase this to appeal to a more advanced and intellectual administrator market.

Quote: The second reasion is because you've put your boring forum topics at the top. EVERYONE seems to do this at first and I really dont' understand why. I do not want to talk about your site announcements. Feedback is not a discussion topic. Now I always have to scroll down every time I visit the site. Why make it more difficult for people to participate? Then there's the Articles competition taking up more space.

This is merely a generic convention which as a forum administrator i have grown up adopting, i guess if this site was trying to create a more alternative view of forum administration then perhaps i could have played around with forum layout abit more bit the usual defining feature of a layout having the usual

• Site Basics
• Site Specific
• Site General Stuff

And with regards to the Articles Competition i felt it neccessary to give it a theme positioned placement because of its importance during this month, trying to attract as many participants as possible. This is not going to be a regular forum lineup feature.

Quote: In general the forums take up a lot of space here. There's a lot of scrolling. Condensing the forum descriptions could help a lot here. Remember that you're targetting an audience who knows about forums. A simple two liine description should be enough. Most people probably don't read those anyway. I'm also noticing that the descriptions seem to assume that your members are just starting their forums - why not widen your audience to include those with established forums?

Because of the condensed length of the skin width this undoubtabally means that the forum descriptions are taking up abit too much room and your point about my target audience already being well away of general forum content and basics is an extremely good point ... as with my Welcome Message i shall spend some more time making the correct alterations and grammatical checks.

Quote: Otherwise it looks okay. I'm finding the section headings to be a little odd ("webmasters area" vs. "forum features" - those titles could be swtiched and they wouldn't be any less relevant). The "Entertainment Dynasty" label threw me a bit. Why "Dynasty"???

XD, i guess the influx of the word Dynasty is quite offputing i was trying to create an epic atmosphere around the forum making it appear a little more appealing yet not overdominating. Forum Features is more with regards to those more specific to this forum but i can easily see the coincidently misinterpretation on both parts. I shall try and make these more defineable and approachable too.

Quote: The skin is okay it's a little boring with the shades of blue but has a nice light feel. I like it better than some of the competing forums really. Relatively short list of forums once you get past the garbage at the top. The logo could use some work. The font is really boring and the words seem to be placed almost randomly. Put the tagline directly below the logo and work on the placement of "the" and "lounge". It looks like you just didn't bother trying to get the alignment right. I like the graphics to the right.

I am pretty sure the alignment of the two "the" and "lounge" phrases are correct. I agree although that the placement of the text seems to be a little offkey and isnt exactly in theme position, or applying to any recency theories which state stick it either in your top left corner or bottom right corner for maximum subliminal impact.

Quote: Oh, and scrolling down, there's also a lot of crap here at the bottom of the forum listings. I really don't care about all this stuff. Latest threads doesn't help me if it's at the bottom - there should be a link at the top (oh, right, there is). Team legend could be linked off on a new page or in the help section (because I really don't care). Same with icon legend (I run a forum, I know what those icons are doing).

The latest threads modification was merely to provide a alternative view of recent threads without taking up more space at the top of the forums where they would have undoubtabally been placed if they werent so space hungry. I dont see the neccessity of having the Forum Legend linked off onto another internal page, it is informative and only really appropiate during the context in which it is currently being displayed. I agree about the Icon Legend though and i'll get around to removing it.

Quote: Reading some actual threads - I notice you've allowed users to post really big sig threads. This really breaks up the flow of the discussion. I also don't like the placement of the user headers in between posts rather than to the side but that's just me I think.

Upon registration there is an end user option to make an alteration to the displaying of template design. From the current Modern Horizontal Postbit design to the Legacy Veritcal Postbit design for those like yourself who prefer the more conventional design. The signatures allowed are 1 image at 500x200 and no more than 10 lines in total. I find this appropiate and that actual post content is diverged.

Quote: Just saw this on a thread too: "What's not tolerated?. Discuss What's not tolerated?, on The Staff Lounge, for all your forum feedback resources. We provide you with hints, tips, articles and discussions on how to acheive forum success. Managing your Community." Looks like another attempt at getting to the SE's. Doesn't do anything for the user other than take up space.

Indeed the text is there for Search Engines to gobble up, and lets face it vBulletin although void of their best efforts isnt content search engine friendly, therefore sticking in more content relevant keywords in the showthread template is a neccessity for a higher SERP for those topic pages.

demonhale wrote: Well I tried to join to see the actual rug jug of the site, it works quite ok, the forums and threads works fine, but take the finer points of what megan has said, they are generally what I want to point out at too... I noticed that there are discussions in your forums pertaining to user registration and member turnout seems to be decreasing, also there was a thread discussing your having too many ghost users (those that egister but are never active)... Anyways doing a little SEO here and there is good but putting a lot of text and uneeded ads for this is not really needed... Mainly these ghost users are intimidated by the way things are scattered in the forum, also theres too much text indicating you havent post more than 10 or havent posted yet, and some other requirements which is quite annoying if you see it all the time and its way up in the top... You should redesign the site to be more credible, congrats to your members base BTW, seems youve got somethings worked out quite well...

The idea of placing the activity monitor at the top of the thread helps members ensure that they are aware of the newer features avaiable to them, and undoubtabally being a resource focused forum activity will not be generated in short spurts but overtime by a majority of members. Therefore having this notice displayed constantly helps ensure thats memebrs are continually aware of this fact. I shall try and shorten down its text impact though to help focus more on post content instead.

mscreashuns wrote: The skin is okay. It is boring, but it works, which is always a plus. The logo is a bit misleading. In fact, it looks like something I've seen on a graphics program. Anywho, it looks like an art website. Also, why do you want to "make your forum sing!". I don't think the concept of singing pertains to this situation.

It is good that you have some actual content up. A lot of sites I've seen struggle to even get any articles submitted and it's annoying, because how are you supposed to actually get any advice?

I wish you the best of luck, and if a few changes are made, I might join in the future.

Thanks for your positive feedback, the concept of making the forum sing is that most forums are actually unaware of how to optimise their forums for their audience and memberbase and with our help we can ensure they are influxed with the correct and appropiate hints and tips for their message boards. Metaphorically speaking, awaking their board, or making them sing.

Megan wrote: Reading over your responses there - it seems like you're more interested yourself and the SE's than what your members want. I am a member at one of your competitors sites. Not only a member - a paying premium member. Now, that site isn't perfect and I could be lured away by the right setup. You have an opportunity to capitalize on what your competitors are doing wrong but you don't seem to be taking it.

I am sorry that you have misinterpretated my responses in that way. I am assuming that the competitor you are in reference to is "The Admin Zone"?

Quote: Just taking a closer look at your post counts - people seem to be posting a lot in the forum specific areas and general chat but not in the actual topical forums. Something to consider. And the article thing is an announcement in every forum - isn't that enough? I really don't care anyway.

The activity within more generalized forums is a conscious worry but it is surely something that will divulge once a more administrative audience has been gradually introduced. Which with the help on the promotion on related forums should induce could help produce a much more relevant forum community. The announcement in all forums i felt was a neccessity, this is a board-wide event with encouraged member participation. What better way to induce activity?

Thanks for your Welcome message rewrite, it is much appreciated and has been applied as we speak.

jcprov21 wrote: First off all i like the lay out, and in my opinion i like light colors. It has the right amount of forums for the amount of members/new topics. As a forum runner myself i have accually bookmarked this site, and will be encourgeing my other staff members to join.

Excellent news, getting positive feedback from forum runners surely means we have to be doing something good. I am glad you feel our ratio of forums to content is appropiate, i often see too many forums which overkill the forums in a dire attempt to over a broad and detailed approach, often intimidating the user into posting somewhere ... anywhere. I was hoping this more minimalistic approach could help simplify the whole process and make it more user friendly.

subodh wrote: You leave much space to both sides. See your site in mozilla.

Do you mean Mozilla, or Firefox? I am viewing my site under FireFox and it looks fine to me.

robfenn wrote: Firefox's creator is Mozilla...

Yes, but Mozilla offers two browser based clients, Mozilla and Firefox.
I have made a couple of updates to The Staff Lounge, including a brand revamp, new forums, new navigation reshuffle and the implementation of a sidebar. Your feedback please

SearchBliss wrote: Wow, after reading this thread, I'm just going to step aside. Why post this information? Why not? Ouch!

Sorry i dont quite understand what you are referring to here?

lsgworldl wrote: very nice site will join and hopefully get advice for my own forum so you have got one more member from

Thanks for your feedback