How Many Boards Should I Have On My Forum?

[Drewz]

I seriously don't get the point when people will make a forum devoted to Superman (For example), so the admin makes a forum for Superman and yet there's 7-8 other board that have nothing to do with Superman. Boards for Games, entertainment, movies, music, jokes, etc, it's all so pointless. One board for off topic stuff makes alot more sence in my book.

[WunderBunny]

I have a board which contains 20 sub-boards. Each board represents a university. Previously, there were only five sub-boards: representing geographic regions. Under that arrangement, each thread had to have the name of the university in its title.

I am thinking 20 sub-boards is a lot to look at. Maybe I should create an extra level of sub-boards and split the 20 sub-boards across them? That means a user must click twice to see threads about a particular university.

What is the guideline for number of levels of sub-boards?

[(¯`•Stormraven•._)]

I have around 10 boards and 2 sub boards i think, its important to not go over the top with boards and sub boards, i think max of 12 boards is ok .

[Timothy]

drewz said:

I seriously don't get the point when people will make a forum devoted to Superman (For example), so the admin makes a forum for Superman and yet there's 7-8 other board that have nothing to do with Superman. Boards for Games, entertainment, movies, music, jokes, etc, it's all so pointless. One board for off topic stuff makes alot more sence in my book.

^ That makes sense. I have a policy on my site where if there's enough demand, I'll make a board for it; considering the amount of film-fans and filmmakers on the site, the reason for including a film and film-making board makes sense. That, and the emphasis is on the Batman and Superman aspects, so the off-topic conversations do not detract from why we signed up...

[clobopallymad]

Right at the start of a brand new forum, you probably focus on boards. I'd put a few up, like 3 categories and a couple of boards in each, but if it was like ana advertising board, or a sort of support board, you'd probably set it out like how PBS has it. But maybe a bit different, since it is copyrighted (is it?). But something else, like a role play board are hard to do. Start off small. I'd do it like this:

General category:
Announcments/Updates
General Board
-Introduce yourself
-Games

Themed category
Just put a few boards, like for a Support board, graphics, codes and rates, maybe advertising. For a roleplay site, maybe do a couple of categories for this, but with not so many boards.

[Former Member]

The layout of my general forum +comic goes like this:

• Catergory 'General'
  
  • 'Introductions and farewells'
    
  • 'General Board'
    
  
  
• Catergory 'Entertainment'
  
  • 'Vision'
    
    • 'Movies'
      
    • 'Television'
      
    
    
  • 'Music'
    
  • 'Games'
    
  
  
• Catergory 'Creative'
  
  • 'Visual arts'
    
  • 'Poprose'
    
    • 'Lyrics'
      
    • 'Fiction'
      
    • 'Poetry'
      
    
    
  
  
• Catergory 'Fun'
  
  • 'Forum games'
    
  • 'Comics'
    
    • 'Miscellaneous cartoons'
      
    • 'Melan cholic'
      
    
    
  • 'Roleplay'
    
    • 'Modern'
      
    • 'Fantasy'
      
    • 'Future/ Sci-fi'
      
    • 'Random/other'
      
    
    
  
  

I think its worked well so far. I know i have a lot of boards, but most of them are hidden away as sub boards so they dont make the main page look over-complicated and offputting. Its good to keep things looking simple and well organised on the main page.

[Avery ♥]

On some of my forums I have boards that contain as much as 20 subboards. The least amount I have is about two or three. Those sites are my HPRP and Pirates sites which it is kinda necessary for the amount to be high to get everything you need. Then again on some other sites that I have seen they have boards that don't need any subboards but they managed to find a board to put in there that they think will be useful on that board.

[Gamoc]

Have you read the rules of D: YP, it helps, it really does You are also not allowed to post a link to your forum here, I'd delete your post if I were you.

The amount of boards can vary how well your board will be.

The first thing that people should know that the board that they start with(General Board) is not the only one that they should have. They need to put more boards than just that. I actually suggest deleting that category and remaking it. It really helps you with the organizing.

I am guessing that the amount of boards would really depend on the type of forum that someone has. If they have a coding/designs, I would bet all they would need is a general board, suggestion board, coding boards, and graphics boards. Type does do a lot for it. If they have something that needs a lot of things talked about, then more boards are needed.

I would never suggest someone having a whole bunch of boards. A lot of harry potter forums have like 10,000,000 boards, I hate having to go down all of them. I think that if PB v5 lets you have subsub boards like the support board does.

A lot of things really vary on how many boards that you should have on your forum. Type, members, all sorts of thing.

[trophyboys]

When I made my site, I had too few boards, because I didn't want to go overboard. Now when I started to have members, they asked me to make boards for this and that. I didn't actually make all their requests but only those I thought were needed, and it worked for me. Now I have a more active forum.

[Evo]

I have 29 boards

[myke]

iforaneye said:

I have 29 boards

Please read the rules of thos board before posting. Thanks.

[Ќĩɳĝ]

I initially made the mistake of thinking that the number of boards was irrelevant. However, when I realized that I had so many that it might be intimidating as a new site, I reorganized and lessened the size of my forum.

My site in particular has quite a few boards, however I have talked to the members of my forum and they wish for them all to stay.
This won't be the case for all forums.

Remember, you can always add boards later on, and oftentimes the boards that forums ave up can be combined into one board. I've seen coding forums, for example, that have one board on javascript and another on html in the main page. Instead, you could make ONE code board and include all types of codes in subboards.

Just because subboards are helpful, though, doesn't mean they're there to overuse. Limit the amount of subboards you have to one board or people will get confused or overwhelmed and not want to take the time in those boards to figure out what every single on is for.

Make boards very simple to understand the contents and don't write long descriptions to explain what is in it. GO over the highlights in one sentence, two if you have to, and let them take the initiative to go there if it interests them.

This goes the same for board titles. Make them short and sweet. They need to say exactly what the board is about but make it catchy and/or inviting.

I hope I helped.

[msbree]

myke said:

However, a common mistake that is made, is starting off a forum with too many boards. I once saw a bran new forum with 93 boards (Wolf and I counted in amazement). Having too many boards on a young forum will always hurt the forum more then it will help it.

I wonder, which is that forum???

[myke]

msbree said:

myke said:

However, a common mistake that is made, is starting off a forum with too many boards. I once saw a bran new forum with 93 boards (Wolf and I counted in amazement). Having too many boards on a young forum will always hurt the forum more then it will help it.

I wonder, which is that forum???

Don't know, I initially wrote that 18 months ago, so it's hard to tell, I just used it as an example to try to better drive home the point of using too many boards.

[oldmanriver]

My board is an RPG and I have seven cities (categories) and lots of other areas where my members can post. I do this because I once saw a board with only 5 boards but over 200 sub-boards, which made it incredibly difficult to move anyhwere in it. I had only three threads going but it would take me up to half an hour to make a post in every thread due to the fact that I would be forever scrolling through the one hundred sub-boards. I decided to make everything on my boards easy to see and navigate through.