Its always good to try something new but I have to say I liked our old layout. We might have needed to par down a few sections but everything had a place and it was easy to find stuff that was posted even from a while back. Now and then I would go to the the page that shows where people who are on the forum are browsing and I would see guests looking at old and new posts in all the different sections. I think our old format with all its subsections made the place look like it was a well established presence on the web. We had a history. It was easy to follow a thread back to its starting point and all the related issues were in that section. Visitors could see we have had members who have been around for some time and by reading back they were able to get a feel for our movement and its people. I think we lost some of that in this new format. For people who did not what to bother with that we had the general section that features current issues and this is the first thing most new people go to anyway. I guess in a few weeks the new format will overshadow the prior one and we may end up liking it better. Only time will tell.
I can honestly understand. Any change is going to have difficulty. We get used to something and it's natural for people to have difficulty with change sometimes. This format has been more effective in the Hebrew forum so we try to do the things we can to increase membership.
For people who have been here for a long time and post often, it really wasn't that much of an issue. But for new people, it was very confusing and new members weren't sure where to post or wound up just posting everything into the general section defeating the purpose. We want the site to look professional so we can attract many new members. Plus, maintaining it was very difficult in numerous ways.
I feel a tremendous amount of relief the board was cleaned up and simplified some... and there are still a ton of easily searchable topics.
Topic: How is the new forum different? (Read 1999 times)