Forums Layout

Hello, just wanting to put it out there that the layout of the forums surely does suit the new abilities and formats of what the Sponge Powered system will be and look like.

Much kudos, and I hope to be able to make some suggestions on improving the current layout and it’s structure. Thanks for taking the time to read this!

Thank you! I mostly set up the category layout quickly to make sure it would work. It will be improving over time. Changing the layout is super simple with Discourse.

Well it looks very nice in its current state. I can’t wait to see how it will be in the future.

That is great, I suggest adding in a general discussion area for everything Minecraft related, as well as an area for Forum Rules.

In the works.

My first thought is, too much white! I’d love to see a nice, maybe darker, background.

Ya a dark/darker background would be wonderful.

I have already admitted this on #sponge, I am having difficulties to get used to this “new forum paradigm”. Nothing too serious, though, but I am definitely missing the more “traditional” forum experience.

At this moment the members of this board are the guys tightly related to or interested in the project itself. Most, if not all of them are skilled enough to digest and master the usage of this forum software. However, the vast majority of visitors that will (hopefully) very soon start visiting and using the forum might find themselves lost or confused.

Depending on the intentions behind establishing this forum, I see 3 possible scenarios:

• You have created this forum for yourselves. You are satisfied with it. Who doesn’t like it or can not learn to deal with it can freely leave.
• The main driver for creating this forum is to have a proper place for the whole community, which consists of the currently present project team and interested individuals, but also of huge number of users of projects deliverables. Both groups are equally valuable to you and you will try to tone down a little bit the obvious differences between discourse and more traditional forum solutions like IPB, phpBB, SMF and the likes.
• You value all the users the same. We have started working with Discourse, and that’s it. Let’s hope that it will be easily used, accepted and understood by everyone. If it proves later on to be a serious problem, you’ll think about something.

Please consider this post as a constructive criticism, if you consider it at all.
No ill intentions or trolling intentions behind it.

Other than that, good luck guys with everything! Looking forward to witnessing the birth and life of one beautiful and fruitful community.

What about discourse do you find hard to use?

There is a dark theme, but last time I set up a Discourse forum it wouldn’t let the user switch themes (yet), so it’s applied to everyone…

You have probably noticed how many people have expressed that they are realizing that it is different, yet they are willing to get a grasp of it. The fact is that it is different from the traditional forum software. Depending on which one do you usually use, these differences can vary from person to person.

Having established that it is different, I would like to give an overall comment about how different it is for me.
It looks too bland for my taste and it lack some form and structure offered in other forum software. Discourse is much closer to general commenting system than what I need or expect from forum software, to be honest.

Don’t get me wrong, I don’t have a problem using it. I am an IT guy, I will be able to use whatever you throw here. I’m just pointing out that there might be some space for concern about the average visitor and their experience.