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I have a SP forum that I set up a month ago on my website. It's working well and I think looking good. You can see it here.
My site is popular, getting about 6,000 - 7,000 page views a day. But I don't see that translating into forum users, even with an agressive initial promotion and the recent forum posts widget in the sidebar of all pages. As a result, even though I have only a half dozen or so forums, I'm do have a couple empty forums still. (I have owned a forum before and understand the problems of getting one going initially.)
SO...I am thinking about changing up the forum structure to make it more visually/psychologically accessible. I'm thinking about doing this by turning it all into a Single Forum, already expanded on the page. With single forum, a user is presented with a display of topics, rather than a higher level view of the forums, some empty, the others will needing to click through to get into them.
So some questions?
1. Can I see any examples of a Single Forum site? I have not found any yet.
2. What is the setup to do this? Do I create a new General forum and then use one of the moderation features to move the existing topics into it, then remove the other topics and all groups (do I still need a group for a single forum)? What is the proper setting/s for having that one forum showing on the page, with all the topics running down the page? I don't want people to have to "click in" to the forum, but have it sitting on the page, expanded.
3. I'm thinking in the future once there are many more topics, that I can always go back to creating the more specific forums again, and then move the topics into those forums. Is there anything wrong with that plan?
Overall, does this sound like a smart thing to do?
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If I was going to move to a single forum, I would probably create a new one... and then move the topics you wanted to keep into it...
Afraid I dont know of any single forum sites off hand that I can give you to look at... I know we have some folks doing that, but just cannot remember the urls... Will see if I can find any in my notes... most folks tend to not do single forum sites though I dont know of any downside to doing so vs many forums...
One thing you can do if you do move to a single forum is skip the group view - doesnt buy you anything in this situation... you can do that on forum - options - general display settings...
if you have a slow forum it could be used as a way to make it appear busier like you are thinking...
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Re: "Skip group view on single forum sites"
I found the option and this is the Tooltip description:
For sites that only have a single forum, checking this option will skip the initial forum 'front' page 'Group' view and will directly load the single forums topic listing. In a multi-forum site, this option can also be used to ensure that users with access to only one forum are also directed straight to the topic listing.
So, to be clear, the forum "knows" if there is only one forum created in the entire forum system (not just that group) -- once I've moved all the topic into a new forum, and then delete the old newly empty forums, the system will on its own realize that there is only one forum and the new display kick in?
Since I can't seem to find a single forum example yet, can I assume that the look of the page will be exactly the same as it is when I am inside one of the forums now?
I guess the only other concern is creating bad links in Google. I see the permalink has the group name slug in it. So when I move a topic, the permalink changes. It's not too big a deal now with so few topics, but someday when I have hundreds of topics and want to create new forums and distribute the topics to them, all my old permalinks will become 404's. Is that correct?
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Yes - if the system discovers that there is only one forum or the current user only has access to one forum - and if that option is checked - it will skip directly to the forum view (topic list). Same forum view you get now.
The permalink has the forum in it - not the group. But that amounts to the same problem in your scenario. We have been discussing recently actually whether a redirect facility would be worth developing for moved forums/topics so maybe by the time you need it there may be one available - although no promises at the moment...
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YELLOW
SWORDFISH
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Yellow Swordfish said
We have been discussing recently actually whether a redirect facility would be worth developing for moved forums/topics so maybe by the time you need it there may be one available - although no promises at the moment...
Thumbs up to that.
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