Custom Pages for rules or a board?

[Former Member]

I have wondered this question...(for a roleplay forum)

Is it better to have your forum rules/info/credits etc in a BOARD or CUSTOM PAGE(s)?

For me, CPs are nicer because I don't have to exit a board, click a new thread, read, etc. It's faster to read and provides more information. More organized, everything is together.

However, a guidebook or board for info is actually on the forum as a thread, and counts as more posts. otherwise it makes your new forum look empty.

What do y'all think?

[Derek‽]

For rules, I don’t think it really matters. Rules are usually all found in a single location, so they can go anywhere. And whether it’s a custom page or a thread, the link can easily be added to the forum’s navigation menu for quick access. How a person wanted to format the rules might be the deciding factor in which type of location to place them, I would imagine. I wouldn’t recommend anyone get fancy with their presentation of important information, but posts don’t natively support div elements, so that poses a limitation in how the rules can be formatted. But again, keep important information simple and easy to read.

I probably wouldn’t create a board exclusively to hold a thread for rules, though. That seems unnecessary when the thread could easily be placed in another, more naturally trafficked location.

A knowledge base of information should be categorized and sorted, which is exactly what a forum does. It would be a waste of an admin’s time to create custom pages for this information when the forum provides the tools to accomplish this task in the form of boards and threads.

I don’t think an admin should worry about whether any of this contributes to the thread/post count, though. The priority should be in making sure the data is well organized and easy to find, not on falsely inflating the appearance of activity.

[Kami]

I'm going to half agree, half disagree with Derek here, because in my experience it really depends on the kind of forum you have.

My experience is predominantly with RP and other team/collaboration-oriented genres (eg: gaming clans) so I prefer to use custom pages since it allows me to better organise larger blocks of information to make sure they're not overwhelming for people to read -- options for this within a thread are limited or would require the use of a plugin (that has had issues in the past when the plugin malfunctions due to an excess of data being written to it).

Sure, I could use threads and stuff, and I do for more "database" type things, or content that I'd be editing frequently, but for information that is mostly static & conveying a large amount of information I'd use a custom page. I can use HTML / CSS / JS directly to impact how the information is displayed for a better user experience as opposed to having long blocks of text or a tonne of Spoiler tags in posts / multiple threads.

I'd also go the custom page route for any professional / corporate forums for the same reasons + an aesthetic more in line with many corporate sites.

However, other forums that have less information to convey in their rules (such as a general chat forum, or something more casual with simple behaviour guidelines), I would use a single thread sticked & turned into an announcement to be available globally -- no need for a separate board, I'm totally aligned with Derek on that.

[Retread]

May 15, 2019 12:50:23 GMT -8 @majority said:

However, a guidebook or board for info is actually on the forum as a thread, and counts as more posts. otherwise it makes your new forum look empty.

A single-post thread in a board that is only open for Access but not View (so it won't show up in the category), only counts as one post. So the post count part is trivial.  I also would make sure no one can post to the rules thread.  That's just an opportunity for clutter and complaining.

By the way, you can have a board set up so the mini-profile is not displayed. That's handy if you prefer using the post editor rather than writing the html and css for a custom page, but still want to take advantage of the full width.

You can add the link to the thread in your Navigation tab of your forum settings.

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Of course if you prefer, a custom page will get the job done too. A custom page does have the advantage of being the home page, but I don't think I'd do that for a rules page.

[Retread]

May 15, 2019 13:34:52 GMT -8 Derek‽ said:

I don’t think an admin should worry about whether any of this contributes to the thread/post count, though. The priority should be in making sure the data is well organized and easy to find, not on falsely inflating the appearance of activity.

Agree 100%.