Organizing Your Boards

[Beatle Aimee]

I'm doing a severe cleanup of my board. For example, I had about a million and one boards on different aspects of computer stuff, so I made one Computers and Internet board (with a subboard for "Links"), moved all the posts there and deleted the rest of the boards.

I also moved some posts to theur PROPER boards. And I combined some boards about the Beatles that weren't being used into the general board. B-)

Also...I have a category for Fun for example jokes and games and such. the boards had only a few topics each. I combined the posts into a new board called Fun And Games made the description say it was for games, jokes and silly Beatles what ifs (yes, we're obsessive with What If's. don't ask why), and moved the board to the random category before deleting the fun category as it was empty after I did that.

Also made a admin only board for deleted and locked threads just for my reference only.

[JP]

Seeing as this is 'Organizing Your Boards' I thought i may post this as a suggestion and to ask of opinions of others.

I'm sure many other Board owners will agree, when a board has been made and there is a number of threads in that board, but you want them in a certain order for whatever reason, its so hard to arrange? A new system needs to be introduced to make this easier.

[Gamoc]

I think that organization is very important with a board. If you create a category on a Harry Potter Board called Hogwarts grounds with a board that says Gryfindor hous, then that shows that you didn't put much thought into it. It is good to have organization, here is a good order.

• Top category
  
  • News/rules
    
  • Introductions(first possibility)
    
  • Suggestions
    
  • support(for your board)
    
  
  
• general
  
  • General Board
    
    • Introductions(possibility)
    
    
  • Affiliation/advertise
  
  
  • Affiliate
    
  • Advertise
    
  
  
• Category on theme
  
  • Board 1 on theme
    
  • Board 2 on theme
    
  • Board 3 on theme
    
  • Etcetera etcetera
    
  
  
• Possiblity of other categories here
  

This is a basic outline of how your board could look.

If you had no organization whatsoever, your board would definetely fall a part. The biggest reason being that users probably do not want to look through all of the boards for a certain board that they wanted to post in, and the whole they should have bookmarked it is not going to work on this one.

Those are my opinons on that.

[Sven]

It all depends really. I personally place Announcements which includes Rules and a FAQ at the very top, the first board which is guest enabled. Then its Suggestions or Support guest enabled. and Intro and Farewell.

Then mine being a design forum I have Graphics being the bigger part of the forum followed by coding.

Then I have an OT section including Fun n Games, General and Show and Tell

Almost all my boards have a sub - board in them though.

There is definete logic in placing boards. Boards you want to be official and important go on top. Boards that make up the main section of a forum go in the center and the boards that are usually spammed are at the bottom.

[Sun Dragon of Ra]

I going to use a Gaming board that i help run as an example

It has 7 Category

Each Category has 2 to 5 Boards
Then Each Board has sub board the most is 15 in one Board
We are still working on lowering them

Our Category's Are
General Board Area
Neopets, Pogo & Teams Area
TCG, Video Games, & Other Games
Yu-gi-oh! Area
Pokemon Area
Megaman & Rockman Area
Bleach Area

at this time it only has 8 members but we are hoping to make it grow i think a good site need at less 3 Category's if not more to keep every thing sepreat i hate it when you click on something and it all runs together that is why each of our Category's help try to sperate a lot of the stuff i have seen a lot of other boards do wrong

[HoudiniDerek]

I tend to rate forums in GOAYB and I tend to talk about a Layout of boards as one of the areas to improve upon. Most people have things somewhat haphazard to my way of thinking. First off, I think themed boards are important, especially for non-RPs because it helps set the tone of the forum.

The first section almost always has the following:

Rules and Announcements Boards: To me, this should always be the top of the forum so people know where to go for things relating to the forum.

Suggestions: I think all forum-relevant material should be near the top too...so members feel involved.

(If you have introductions or character biographies and such for RPs, they should go in this section to in my mind).


The second section: The meat and potatoes of the forum.

To me, the themed sections of the forum should come next. They are the main focus of the forum, so why have them last?


Final sections: OFF TOPIC

This, to me, is where the GT sections, advertising, affiliates, etc. go. Since they are not the driving force behind the forum, why should they get prime placement at the top of the forum?


Granted, not all forums fit my model, but of all the forums I have rated in the past couple of years, most do.

[Deamonic Angel]

Thanks for some of the tips.

I have:
"News/announcements" - Latest news to members/guests
"Community" - Still both for members and guests
"My boards music theme" - The main focus of my borad but not too high to scare guests away
"General music boards" - A cross between the music and general discussion
"Miscellaneous" - For all general discussion
"Staff" - Enough said

This works well for me so I'll keep it like this. It's simple but effective.

[veggiegirl]

My member section is the last section on my board.

Personally, I prefer the boards relevant to the theme be at the top of the page.

The member section is not visible to guests.

I don't have a board specifically for introductions. I call a board 'All About Us' and most newbies who do post introductions tend to introduce themselves there. That board is also for birthdays, congratulations, etc.

[matrix934]

My Rules & Announcements is always at the top with its own category. They're one of the most important things. Who wants to go digging through categories, boards, and threads looking for the rules. I also have an Introduction Board, a general board, and a help/suggestion board in one category. Next I have a couple of boards depending on my theme. One of my forums has the theme of Pokemon so I make the boards - Pokemon Games, Pokemon Anime, Pokemon Trading Cards, and so on. I also keep and artwork board and a games board. I always keep a staff board for staff members only where we discuss topics.

[spiderwickrp]

I think that you should always put an information board first including:
~Rules
~Plot
~Races (For Fantasy)
~etc.

And then a place for people to introduce themselves, a games board, And some other stuff that I can't remember. lol! But in my opinion organizing the boards isn't the hardest part. I think it's making them in the first place. But it's not my say what you think.

[Rozic Dixon]

How can I Make Categories I need some help?

[smexie]

I think my orginisation differs depending on the baord. Generally, the formula is:

General
- Rules
- News
- Advertise
- Suggestions
- Off-Topic

Themed Boards
- Roleplays
- Discussion
- Showcase

I tend to have all information at the op of my baord, so that everyone sees it first off, then the themed boards below it. Sometimes I have, rather than a general board, a Board board (with rules, suggestions, news etc) and then an Off-Topic board (advertising, general, games etc). It really depends on my board, and how I think it looks best.

[avanna]

I also like to list subboards, but overdoing it generally makes the site look too full. I also like to have my inner character workings, rules and news in the top, roleplaying boards in the middle, and down on the page the advert., staff, games, random talk and introduction boards. I've got positive feedback from this, and members like the way it is organized. Recently some guests have told me that the forum has too many boards and they have to scroll a lot, and we're getting this fixed.

[amanda79]

I agree about the board for new members at the top. You always start at the top of a board and work your way down, if they see a place specifically for them they are more likey to post.
Also weaning out dead boards and inactive posts will help make it look clean and organized as well.

[Darion Blackwood Daniel]

I have an extended general chat so it does not have a mess. Plus unlike others that have only one net game forum, we have others to separate them from the main part to keep it organized.

Other areas are divided such as forum information.

This is to make the forum information easy to find.