Themes - do they impact a forum’s success?

[Kami]

Oct 15, 2016 13:50:02 GMT -8 ♥ ℒʊ√ ♥ said:

Correct. And sometimes that first negative impression can have nothing to do with the theme, but with the person viewing the screen who may not be able to read on light backgrounds or dark; or need larger point sizes, a different type style or color, etc. 

And yes, I absolutely agree, much depends on what your definition of success is.

More many it's post numbers; for others its about the quality of the post . . . and the poster.

Many want lots of members, even if they are inactive; others prefer a few very active, dedicated members.

So these are all the things admins need to keep in mind when deciding to run a forum. 

Right exactly, which is why accessibility is such a huge thing. I used to make themes that would have the itty bitty text, until a friend of mine approached me saying "Kami, it's very pretty but I can't read this!" Turns out for YEARS they had been copy/pasting all text addressed to them into notepad so they could discern what it was. Since that day, accessibility has become a priority (especially since my own vision / neuro issues started popping up too).

I think though that themes in and of themselves are like wrapping paper. Sometimes, plain butcher or kraft paper will do. Other times, you wrap them up in some newsprint, like the funnies. Or, sometimes you go all out and get that fancy shmancy printed paper with metallic ribbons and the like. It all depends on who the present is for. It gets the recipient excited, oh look, something that fits my definition of aesthetically pleasing! But overall, the wrapping paper's success doesn't mean the person will like what's inside the gift.

[Chrissiest Chris]

Just gonna throw this out here, no need to make a new thread: Should you make a black and white theme for your forum? I know some people prefer black forums. 

[Violette]

Oct 17, 2016 0:51:37 GMT -8 Chrissiest Chris said:

Just gonna throw this out here, no need to make a new thread: Should you make a black and white theme for your forum? I know some people prefer black forums. 

I think giving members a wide variety of themes to choose from is good, including a theme done in black.

[Kami]

Oct 17, 2016 0:51:37 GMT -8 Chrissiest Chris said:

Just gonna throw this out here, no need to make a new thread: Should you make a black and white theme for your forum? I know some people prefer black forums. 

I think it depends on your target audience honestly. Personally I try to make it so my singular theme has enough contrast that it's not needed, but others like to cater to a broader range of people and don't have the amount of customisation I do.

Honestly from a design standpoint it's just not practical to have a lot of different themes (a vast majority of non-forum websites do not have theme options, because the designs take accessibility into account & it would be incredibly time consuming to have multiple designs), but if you're not fully customising / building the layout from essentially scratch then it's not as big of a deal.

So the question is: do you, as the theme creator, think it is worth your time and effort having both in order to appeal to whatever your target audience is? If yes then go for it. If not, then don't.

[Former Member]

you don't need multiple themes, just a solid one.

If the forum is based around a theme then yes a themed theme is what people would expect, not so much if the forum is a general chit chat forum.

I really wanted to add more to this but I find it hard to type right now(physically)

[♥ ℒʊ√ ♥]

I disagree wholeheartedly.

If that's how you choose to go, there's nothing wrong with that. And if it pleases your members and the board is active, then that's the way to go.


I realize our many themes don't make the community active.

We're 7 years old with 700,000 posts. However, members do have their preferences (large point size, text color/background) and they do like to celebrate holidays and seasons.

So each community has its own needs, desires and preferences. One size does not fit all.

Although it's content that makes our board active, it's themes that make our members happy.

They prefer variety. So I say, know your community and their wants and needs. 

[Kami]

I have to agree with ♥ ℒʊ√ ♥ on this one, @synthtec. While my personal preference -- and I think a more professional / corporate preference -- is for a single solid design, I think it really depends on the goals and purposes not just of the communities, but of the administrators.

I mean, I'm sure some of my members would love to have multiple theme choices again; when I stopped doing multiple themes, they understood why but were disappointed. But, as the designer, I put my needs / opinion before the community in this case. Other admins don't want to do that, and imo are well within their rights. Do I think it's the "right" way to do it? Honestly, not really. But it's not my call to make, and those sites aren't made with me or people like me as the intended audience (no offense meant, Luv ;x).

[♥ ℒʊ√ ♥]

None taken, Kami . 

Your statement isn't unkind. It's the truth. I look at RP forums, and love the designs but am lost on functionality. But I can appreciate the hard work, creativity and talent.

However, as I posted earlier, my members would revolt if I deviated from the layout of what they've grown accustomed to.

Now, does that mean I take special requests and design a theme for a specific member? Only if it meets a physical need ~ such as point size and background color. 

But I do know that each of our members is as eclectic and diverse as most people are in this world. We come from all locations.

So if I can please them and keep them coming back because they may get tired at looking at the same old; same old while still enjoying content, I have no problem doing that.

A general forum is much different than an RP. Honestly, until I came to support, I never heard of RP forums.

Our forum was started in 2009 and I never felt the need to visit support until v5 began in 2013.

It was then I realized how diverse ProBoards actually was.

[Kami]

♥ ℒʊ√ ♥ - Exactly. I was the exact opposite honestly; my first experience with bb boards was specifically with roleplaying back in 2002-2003; even with forums that weren't RP-centric, they still had RP areas. It wasn't until I came to ProBoards in 2005 that I realised just how many kinds of forums people make. I personally tend to stick to RP & Design forums, and combined with my profession I have certain requirements for forums I join. It's all subjective honestly.

And to circle this back on topic before we get *too* tangental, I think that touches on something else that influences how much a theme impacts a forum: the genre. For example, if people are looking for a Design forum, it's rather unlikely that a design forum with a poorly constructed and executed theme will be successful, because skilled designers are unlikely to join, and budding designers wouldn't have the benefit of the mentorship of more skilled designers. It's not impossible, obviously, but since the genre of the forum is specifically design, it's more unusual / unlikely. But that wouldn't necessarily be true for a general forum, or a forum created for a private gathering of friends, etc.

[♥ ℒʊ√ ♥]

Indeed, it's all about your target audience and knowing what appeals to them.

I've seen some beautifully crafted themes the past three years I've been here on Support with lots of hoopla regarding announcements for the forum's opening, and they've quickly faded into oblivion.

I've looked at the ProBoards' directory and even many of the featured forums have little activity or no activity.

And again, some of the most popular with astounding post numbers have stuck to the basic ProBoards' default. 

There's just no one size fits all methodology. 

[Former Member]

Oct 17, 2016 14:33:37 GMT -8 ♥ ℒʊ√ ♥ said:

I disagree wholeheartedly.

If that's how you choose to go, there's nothing wrong with that. And if it pleases your members and the board is active, then that's the way to go.


I realize our many themes don't make the community active.

We're 7 years old with 700,000 posts. However, members do have their preferences (large point size, text color/background) and they do like to celebrate holidays and seasons.

So each community has its own needs, desires and preferences. One size does not fit all.

Although it's content that makes our board active, it's themes that make our members happy.

They prefer variety. So I say, know your community and their wants and needs. 

I agree with you ♥ ℒʊ√ ♥ I excluded alot of forums types with that statement, you are right, my comment was pretty linear/biased to forums I like or would participate in.

I was wrong to claim such things.

[Former Member]

Oct 17, 2016 15:20:45 GMT -8 Kami said:

♥ ℒʊ√ ♥ - Exactly. I was the exact opposite honestly; my first experience with bb boards was specifically with roleplaying back in 2002-2003; even with forums that weren't RP-centric, they still had RP areas. It wasn't until I came to ProBoards in 2005 that I realised just how many kinds of forums people make. I personally tend to stick to RP & Design forums, and combined with my profession I have certain requirements for forums I join. It's all subjective honestly.

And to circle this back on topic before we get *too* tangental, I think that touches on something else that influences how much a theme impacts a forum: the genre. For example, if people are looking for a Design forum, it's rather unlikely that a design forum with a poorly constructed and executed theme will be successful, because skilled designers are unlikely to join, and budding designers wouldn't have the benefit of the mentorship of more skilled designers. It's not impossible, obviously, but since the genre of the forum is specifically design, it's more unusual / unlikely. But that wouldn't necessarily be true for a general forum, or a forum created for a private gathering of friends, etc.

Well constructed points again Kami. I will however hint on this point genre. I think that is the starting pointing and the road map forum owners need to take. But as ♥ ℒʊ√ ♥ points out you also need to know your audience, but it's at least a blueprint to follow if your forum is new

[isavarg]

I wouldn't stay on a forum if it only had the default theme. To me, it says that the owner made the forum and then just abandoned it, which is not a good look, to be honest. (I also don't like corporate looks to websites, including forums, if I'm on the site for entertainment/recreational purposes, and most default themes scream that.)

However, there are some features that are commonly found on themes which I don't like - tiny fonts (fonts smaller than 12px, but it depends on the font family/style too), fonts other than arial, or similar in appearance. Fancy fonts are difficult to read and fonts like Times New Roman make a site of any kind, not just forums, look like they were made in the early days of the internet. This is just a personal choice for me, but I find sites which have a light coloured background, even sites like amazon, hard to look at for long periods, especially in the evening difficult to look at because of the glare factor. I have to have the brightness on my laptop turned way down just to be able to look at a screen. I've found some sites don't have a good contrast between the text and the background, so that you can hardly see the text (and some designers also have a habit of combing small fonts with low contrast against the background, plus the glare! which makes it difficult for me.)

I don't like this new tendency to put forum topics side by side - as some people have said, it makes the forum difficult to navigate. One other thing which is a put off for me is when a forum has too many items in the header, or just beneath it and it's embedded on every page - I find it quite distracting and would prefer a cleaner design, and only have extra stuff placed on the main home page of the forum so I can focus on the thread contents. Another thing I don't like is the tendency for sites to have scrolling marquees for affiliates, link exchanges, etc... Animation is distracting and I much prefer a static affiliates box. (I also have to wonder how frustrating it is to be on one of these things for the person running the site at the end - I bet most visitors and members don't have the patience to wait for all the buttons to go through it and there's more chance of sites being missed.)

Finally, I have noticed a tendency for some designs (usually the fancier ones which change how the categories are displayed, etc.) to have the shout box as a pop-up like you get on some social media sites. I don't like it because the way they position it usually means the important part of the site for the visitor often gets obscured, it usually gets in the way of reading a post or thread and it makes it harder to use the site. Embellishments like that may be attractive to the forum designer/owner because they can use it as an opportunity to show off their coding skills and knowledge, but a sites functionality and ease of use for members is more important. I don't know how this stuff impacts mobile phone and tablet users as I've not done a lot of web-searching on my phone and usually leave it for my laptop and I find phone browsing to be an annoyance anyway because of the size of the screen and the difficulties with the touch screen.

I will use a forum if the theme makes the forum difficult to use if I need to use the forum to help me with coding, plugins, etc, but I wouldn't use the forum for recreation and entertainment - I'd look for one with a theme that doesn't make the forum difficult to use.

Colour schemes are important, too, for various reasons. Leaving out the issue of it being eye-popping, have an impact on the eyes, it should complement the subject of the site and you should bear in mind the audience you want to attract to the site as the wrong colour scheme might turn off the type of person you want on the forum, so colour schemes that are 'gender neutral' are probably best as long as it makes sense in regards to the forum's subject.

A theme needs to make a forum look attractive, it needs to be readable and easy to use, with as few embellishments as possible.

[Willow]

I can tell you that the past few days I have been looking for a new RP forum to join and a few that I really liked (topic wise/plot wise) had such busy themes with tiny fonts  it turned me completely away from the site and I didn't join either. 

[Pebbles]

i think they do
if your forum theme looks ugly/dookiety
a lot of people tend not to even bother and register
#truth