Okay I visit alot of forums and this is part stuff that I notice and part just general marketing/business theory that can be applied to any product.

I noticed that alot of forums change the way they arange their sections CONSTANTLY. Like I'll see the same category redivided into different sections like 5-6 times in 4 months.

Here's your problem. Customers subliminally seek consitency in the products that they use. You can think of your Forum as a product, but you can also think of each category and each section individually as seperate products when you analyze a forum, since your users have a choice of only using certain parts of your forum. So anyways, if you're constantly changing the way information is arranged in your forum, for example if your graphics section one day has the following sections: "Show Off, Requests, Battles" and the next day has "Show off signatures, Show off Avatars, Show off random stuff, Battles, Sig Requests, Avatar Requests" you are forcing your users to change the way they use your product. This can become annoying, especially with forums since some people have your different sections bookmarked and will get a 404 error the next time they try to access a certain section. This might cause confusion, perhaps a little anger and often leads to a reduced active user base.

There is a fine balance, however, between annoyance and innovation. If you truly believe that your way of doing it is better, you need to think before changing. You need to really go through everything inside your head and wonder 'will my users be encited to use this feature more, or will they be distracted by the changes'. Because usually, the only reason you should really be changing anything at all in an established forum is to encite more users to come more often, right?

So the next time you decide to make a change in the way you organize your information, especially when it changes the way people access and insert that information, make sure it will be in a way that will cause users to use your forum more often and will cause more users to join up.

Good luck in all your projects!
Sean

PS Feel free to discuss and make points, I don't know everything and I'd love to hear your opinions on the subject This is a community right? Lets help each other.

I have to agree. Consistency is a key. If your website isn't stable, often users won't bother going to it. After overhauling The Code You Need several times due to content management issues and hosting transfers I haven't really gotten any visitors at all. I'm pretty much the only one contributing to the site and viewing the contributions .

Another tip is to expand your forums over time. Make a forum with only 2 categories or so at first. As your community gets bigger, make more forums to categorize your posts. This makes your forum look more active, and encourages other people to register as a result.

Definatly. I think concentration is a strong point. If you have several un-active sections in your forum that are similar in topic, consider grouping them all into one, although remember that alot of changes are never good, so if you're going to make several changes, do them over time. The thing about sections is that having too many sections and not enough active users will make some sections appear unactive and when users think a forum is unactive the usual reaction is to ease up on participation and visit less often. The problem however is that if you don't have enough of the right sections, your users may not be inspired on what to write about, you know? Like, if your forum has a section for rants (*coughtrap17cough*) if users have something on the mind that they want to rant about they may be inspired to write it out. So once again there is a fine balance between too many and not enough sections in a forum but generally the more you grow the more sections you will need.

I think that the number one thing to do with any forum decisions, think up all possible outcomes for each option and logically decide using your own common sense which option would be most beneficial for your goals. This pretty much goes for anything but yeah, it's always about that fine balance you have to find.

I have to agree with you completely. I always hate it when a site of any kind makes a sudden change and I have to hunt all over the page to do the things I could before practicly with my eyes closed.

But you also have to grow as you evolve. As you get new members with a more diversified life style, new forums are important to add. Take me for example. I don't really know my butt from a hole in the ground about computers. It seems about the only contributing I can do is in Lawn and Garden or Pets and Animals. I also had a tough time in deciding what catagory to post an early post today about living green.

I think if changes are made they should be made slowly, and nothing major done to the site until people have a chance to adjust. Adding one forum as a sub forum under an established one would not be that difficult to get used to. For example, a Down on the Farm sub forum could be added under the lawn and garden one.

I've never been successful with forums... then again I was also young when I used forums and since I've realized that you need a larger amount of visitors before you can introduce forums to your site. I think this is the best way of doing it.As they say.. forums are a way for your USERS to communicate - however if you dont have many users then there is no perk in signing up for your forums when there are larger, more active, better forums else where.

I have the same problems mentioned here. I was terrible with my forum concistency- not when it came to sub forums or layout, but because I kept switching to new forums (IPB, PhpBB, VB, IPB again, PhpBB again, IPB last time I promise, Server Crash, New IPB forum). My members eventually got worn out- if I could go back a few years and stop that from happening I may still be running the site. I'm planning on starting a forum for my friends and this has given me a lot to think about. I will certainly be doing backups..

This is so true. Although the fastest "death of an active forum" I ever saw was when the owner of the forum had to approve certain things right? And he said he went on vacation for three weeks.... and after three weeks, he never came back. He never ever did. I was about 2nd in command at the forum, but I left too.

The only way to have an active forum is to have great contents.

But the contets are in part of the webmaster/administrator and, in the other hand, the people that visit your site.

If you have users that felt that the admin/webmaster hear their pleads and petitions, you can get hooked to your site.

But, if you don't have contact with the users, or the mods with the users, the users will be wiped by the insensibility of the admin people.