How often do you view your forum as a guest?

[Cedric]

As webmasters, it's important to put ourselves in the shoes of our visitors and see our forum from their perspective. So, how often do you view your forum as a guest?

Do you regularly log out of your account and browse your forum as a guest to see how it looks and feels? Or do you rely on feedback from others to get a sense of how your forum appears to outsiders?

Some argue that viewing your forum as a guest on a regular basis can be very beneficial. It allows you to see your forum with fresh eyes, notice any issues with the layout or user experience, and make improvements based on your own observations.

Others argue that relying on feedback from others, such as moderators or regular members, is sufficient. They believe that if your forum is functioning well for those who use it regularly, then it's likely to work well for guests as well.

Do you think you could improve your forum this way?

So, where do you stand on this? How often do you view your forum as a guest, and do you think it's an important practice? Let's discuss our different approaches and share our experiences to help each other improve our forums!

 

[Arantor]

That's honestly one of the greatest benefits of browsers adopting incognito mode: it's never been easier to faciltiate this.

I try to keep an eye on the guest view, but I don't do it super-regularly - usually only once I've made some kind of change that would be guest visible. I reason that the guest view isn't going to radically change day to day - but it is going to change sometimes, so I definitely keep an eye before and after the change.

 

[Cory]

I generally log straight into my board and don't lurk around as a guest. I use CCleaner to clear all browsing data and more every time I'm finished with my computer for the day, so I'm required to re-login to any sites I wish to be logged into. If I know everything is functioning well for guests and guest-view look decent, then I probably wouldn't check out guest-view that often. But of course, if you make changes through scripting/CSS and whatnot that affects guests or both, guests and members you probably want to log out to check that everything is working as intended for guests.

 

[Heatman]

Having the incognito mode in browser makes checking out my forum as a guest a lot more easier. It can never get any better than that. It would have been a lot of work logging out from the same browser or even trying to use another browser for this purpose. Although, it's not something that I do frequently when there's no cause for alarm. I usually do it when I have a major upgrade that affects the forum's general layout.

 

[Reverie]

When I change something with the looks of the forum I liked to preview it as either as my member account and as a guest to compare what it looks like for all people's experience.

 

[joelr]

After major upgrades

Im always surprised at the little things that I catch every time I log in with various membergroups. A cadence of regular audits is healthy.

 

[Ravenfreak]

I need to start viewing my forum as a guest more often just to make sure things look right. I still need to get around to hiding the trash forum, it's empty but I don't think guests need to see it. I usually try to check things out from a guest's point of view after installing a new theme.

 

[ClicketyKat]

I don't log into anything but my email and Facebook while using my phone, so when I go to my sites, I always view them as a guest. I think it's important to see what they see and sometimes you can catch things that were supposed to be hidden but forgot to do the permissions for it.

 

[cpvr]

I view my forum as a guest after I make major changes to my forum. I use two browsers to help me do this. I like viewing my forum as a guest and seeing how it looks from the outside.

 

[Shortie]

I tend to log in as a guest on my forums after I have made changes to something such as user groups or even the site layout and also after any big important upgrades as well.

At first I always used to forget to check as a guest but pushed myself to do it more after doing certain things and now it happens naturally to make sure everything is running as it should be.