I’ve not tried to use the site on mobile.
On desktop, I can see a problem that may be contributing to low participation, but it’s probably inherent in the forum software and not something you’re doing yourself.
With most forums there is a clear way to see all new posts since the last visit. That could be either that:
- there is a specific mechanism to show all unread posts, or
- new posts always appear at the bottom of a thread, preferably with a selective quote and a backward and forward link and the option to display in sequential or threaded order
I’ve not found a way of turning off the threading here and the Latest Activity section shows at most one post per thread rather than all unread posts. That means:
- If a person who has not been here for a few days comes back and clicks on one of the Latest Activity links, they will be taken to the newest post in that thread.
- Unless they scroll up after reading that post, they will not see any other new posts on that thread.
- And worse, if there are new replies to old posts, they’re unlikely to spot them at all because they will be buried in the middle of old posts several screens back
The result is that the site, to occasional visitors, probably appears even less busy than it actually is. And if a new visitor replies to multiple posts in the same thread on the same day, most repeat visitors will probably only find the newest one of those replies.
I’ve no idea how that can be solved with the present software, unless there’s some hidden feature that’s not presently being used that can display all unread posts to a returning participant.
Ed: Focusing activity on fewer pages (both to ease navigation and make it seem busier).
We have forum pages and blogs. The user interface for replying to blogs is different from replying to forum pages.
Examples:
- blog replies cannot contain images. I’m not sure whether that’s inherent in the software, or something you have chosen.
- blogs don’t show up under Latest Activity but instead appear under separate headings Latest Blog Posts and Latest Blog Comments.
- blogs appear prominently on the site’s home page, even if they have no recent participation, but forum threads appear only with less visibility in the Latest Activity panel and therefore show up only if they have recent participation
My thoughts:
- Could blogs be posted as threads (or threads be posted as blogs) so that they all use the same user interface for replies? And/or …
- Could the site home page be dynamically generated according to recent participation, so that threads and blogs both show up equally, with the recently replied threads and blogs be shown at the top?
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