Can you have too many forum sections?

[Shortie]

When it comes to running forums, depending on the kind of forum that you run will depend on what sections you will need for discussion. In some cases, it can be really easy to go over the top with a lot of forum sections and that can leave the forum looking quite cluttered which can sometimes be an off put to others. What are your thoughts on the amount of sections on a forum? Are you someone who doesn't mind seeing a lot of sections or do you prefer to see limited sections on a forum?

I myself prefer to see limited sections on a forum and sub-forums used more so than just having the forum homepage cluttered. I feel it makes the area look cleaner and saves confusion.

 

[Cedric]

Definitely. You need to have a healthy mix between categories, forums and subforums. Too much forums in a category looks awkward and could drive away potential members. I will release an article soon about having a decent layout on your forum.

 

[Cory]

Yes, I believe having too many forums just makes the board confusing and overwhelming. Cluttering your board with too many forums could make your members get lost in the overwhelmingly amount of forums there are. Of course, some boards may require a decent amount of forums, but overdoing it is definitely not recommended for an ideal layout.

 

[Heatman]

Yes of course, you can have too much sections as much as you want in your forum but the question is whether it's going to be beneficial to your forum's growth or will it mar it?

I'm of the opinion in this one that it's too much of a hassle to have too many sections in your forum. It's going to make it too much chore for members to navigate all sections.

 

[joelr]

Way too many hobbyist forums make the design mistake of overbuilding.

It's a mistake for so many reasons:
- It's confusing and overwhelming
- it spreads out the activity
- It's places demands on the webmaster to keep all of those sections updated with fresh content even though no one is responding

Build to the size of your current community, not the community you want in 10 years.

 

[Tracy]

As I've commented elsewhere.. if you are running certain script(s), there ARE options to having tons of forum nodes listed... they are referred to by many as Prefixes
You can have ONE node and the ability for your users to post and find only those associated prefix posts by clicking on one of the prefixes. And you can have different prefixes in different areas.
On my site, this is simply a subset of prefixes available on ONE node for users.



Then your users see such as this

Simply click on any prefix listed and that is ALL you will see in that node.
One MAJOR issue with XF that I have is that they don't allow you to filter based upon said prefixes... which seems to be something that should be available since they have that ability.