Author Topic: Changes to the forum - looking for proposals  (Read 12420 times)

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Offline bitsapphire

If you switch to Discourse is it possible to still use old style BB for up to 90 days( for example) while members get used to to new forum software.

So esentially have a choice to use either forum for up to 90 days, then switch everyone to Discourse when 90 days expire

That's the plan.

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Do not go to discourse... Simple Machines is known, familiar, and such a massive change would surely drive off people.

We can keep SMF on in parallel and just make it the old forum non-crawlable. This way we won;t get penalized by Google. Messages and users from both platforms can be in sync.

The current forum is terrible for SEO and user conversion. The Google analytics data is abysmal in terms of bounce rate and signup rate.

Essentially people who already use the forum are hardcore users and get online every day. New visitors form social media and organic search rarely convert. We have managed other forums before and this is among the strangest conversion dynamics we have ever seen.

It seems that there are two personas interested in Bitshares:
  • 90s techies with old school forum and IRC experience
  • 2000s techies and semi-techies with social media and real-time web experience

The latter don't sign up or don't come back to the forum due to the UI/UX rather than the content.

This also means that there would be little to no added value for us starting a social media or SEO campaign for the forum or Bitshares content because the conversion rate of the forum would be the bottleneck. This is the primary reason why we would switch to Discourse. However, depending on our test results we might use something else too.

Furthermore it turns out that it's super difficult to do the readable link conversion on SMF without losing "link juice", while Discourse has that by default.

All that said, we are still in the research phase.
« Last Edit: August 19, 2014, 11:36:55 am by bitsapphire »
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Offline gamey

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Can somebody please explain how or in what way Discourse is to be an improvement over Simple Machines?

I'm trying out different sites that are using it and it feels like it only trades organization and content for color and pop.

I think there is a tried and trued format for conversing.  It isn't like SMF doesn't have plug-ins to do a lot.  Not sure what they're looking for ?

I'm a fan of simple machines from a user's perspective just because it is simple and straight forward.  The same could be said for a lot of forums that are all quite similar and thats likely for a good reason.

We're not near big enough to need upvoting/downvoting.  I think that feature is most important on sites with a ton of traffic for a variety of reasons.  None of which fit since bitsharestalk isn't that large.

However, maybe if they switch to discourse I can steal away users with btsxtalk.  lol
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Offline liondani

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to be honest I am hooked to the present forum...
little changes every time is best, and only for proposal that have the majority of members accepted...

Offline xeroc

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the only improvement i can see is that you can upvote topics so that 'hot' topics are on the top .. not sure if that is what the community needs

Offline bobmaloney

Can somebody please explain how or in what way Discourse is to be an improvement over Simple Machines?

I'm trying out different sites that are using it and it feels like it only trades organization and content for color and pop.
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Offline cass

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Do not go to discourse... Simple Machines is known, familiar, and such a massive change would surely drive off people.
I tend to agree!
I prefer Discourse. Discourse is a better long term decision.

Maybe yes - but when looking back  .. every small adjustment was heavy to get accepted by community.
If the new forum doesn't have a real benefit and USP for users IMO it's could hurts more then healing.


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Offline tonyk

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3.something like LTB coins for the active forum members using maybe "burned" BTSXs for example?

Lack of arbitrage is the problem, isn't it. And this 'should' solves it.

Offline liondani

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1.count down ticker for announced snapshots and links to them (example to bitshars DNS page)
2.links to all centralized exhanges that have BTSX included
3.something like LTB coins for the active forum members using maybe "burned" BTSXs for example?
4.let us post video URLS with a player (not only images)
5.up/down votes for posts (and for members)
6.BTSX block explorer link
7.101 active delegate + standby page and vote option available (give coins when we vote)
8.count down ticker for the next mumble session !

I will come back for more suggestions  ;)

Offline luckybit

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Do not go to discourse... Simple Machines is known, familiar, and such a massive change would surely drive off people.
I tend to agree!
I prefer Discourse. Discourse is a better long term decision.
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Offline cass

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IMO we should just polish and clean up smf theme a bit
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Offline cass

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Do not go to discourse... Simple Machines is known, familiar, and such a massive change would surely drive off people.
I tend to agree!
+5%

+5%
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Offline santaclause102

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Do not go to discourse... Simple Machines is known, familiar, and such a massive change would surely drive off people.
I tend to agree!
+5%

Offline xeroc

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Do not go to discourse... Simple Machines is known, familiar, and such a massive change would surely drive off people.
I tend to agree!

Offline bytemaster

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Do not go to discourse... Simple Machines is known, familiar, and such a massive change would surely drive off people.
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Offline speedy

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How about having a ticker at the top with the current dividend APR ?