Not many Newbies?

What about using prefixes for less used areas? would allow topics to still be sorted by content (clicking one of those coloured blocks shows threads in that topic)


Would allow the merging of less used areas

 

Have you got a link to a forum that uses them, to go and have a look and get an idea how it works?

Also, when joining, what's in the greeting PM sent to new members?

 

i will have a look, my own forum is private club forum. however i will try to find a forum that uses them

while xenforo.com choose to use all the same colour for their prefixes, you can see them there
http://xenforo.com/community/forums/have-you-seen/


example clikcing on the xf 1.3 link gives this result
http://xenforo.com/community/forums/have-you-seen/?prefix_id=34

 

as for welcome pm, i honestly have no idea. never got one myself.lol

 

I know it as the 5 second rule, as often borne out by the stats in Google Analytics. From clicking the search result link, many users allow around 5 seconds for the site to catch and keep their attention, otherwise they move along.

 

Welcome to Gardener's Corner Richard.r

Erm, it would help if you posted some photos of your garden, and let us know your location so we can best advise

 

my garden is mostly a lawn and some shrubs:P i am not a whiz at gardening sadly

 

I reckon lots of questions get asked in "General" anyway.

Benefit of separate sections is that folk can read them, if they want to. But I wonder if anyone actually does that? I have found it helpful as I have restricted which forums I read, but that facility has been temporarily disabled (pending an update with bug fixes I think), but mostly I want to ignore Social forums, rather than a specialist plant sub-forum like "Cactus"

Dunno if TAGs are well / easily supported, but that might be a better / different option? Rely on TAGs and basically just have a "Gardening" forum. Might need MODs, or "Trusted Elders", to be allowed to adjust tags on posts, so that they get set to consistently sensible values.

 

I thought that (private) was the case as Google couldn't find it and was why I suggested 'a' link (rather than 'the' link), and also looked for examples on Xenforo but couldn't find anything.

In my opinion it wont simplify usage for the majority of forum members (and might even make it more complicated for some), but everybody else may disagree.

 

On the music forum I visit there is a tagging system, no one ever EVER uses it. You are, admittedly, relied upon to do it yourself...so that might be why.