"Modern" Forum Layouts vs The "Classic" Forum Layouts

[TwitchisMental]

I am sure that we all are use to the classic forum layout. Which is used by a-lot of forum softwares like Xenforo,SMF, and PhpBB. You know the layout, Categories... threads.. posts.. You got the main page with the categories listed top to bottom, then the message/topic list page that displays the current topics about the category, and then ofcourse the posts page that shows the replies to said topics.

In recent times a newer type of layout has started to become more popular. Forum Software like Flarum, Vanilla, and Discourse have all made attempts to change the way we see forums by default. There is also Reddit.

This layout is something like the latest posts displayed on the main page and has a tag/label to indicate the category. The categories are usually found in the side panel and are simply tags/labels. You click tech and it displays all posts tagged as tech. You click sports and you see all posts tagged as sports. All of this is done right on the front page.


What are y'alls thoughts on the newer more "modern" layouts? Do you like them? Do you think they could become standard?

I am not the biggest fan of the newer "Modern" layouts myself, but they do have some good things about them.
I think classic forum software can take a bit from the modern layouts for sure. Some of which has already shown up in the classic forum software options. Things like tags do come as a default feature or mod in some of the options like Xenforo and SMF.

 

[Cedric]

Call me old fashioned, but I don’t like the new type of browsing forums. I like the traditional way and will always prefer it. However I think there’s something to it though, just can’t figure out what. A mix between the two types would be perfect.

 

[Strawberry]

I much prefer the classic layout! I don't like the tags at all, I'm sure I went on a Discourse forum last week and instantly closed the tab. I was a member of a Discourse forum a few years ago and they had the categories enabled as a default so it looked like a 'classic' layout and it was tolerable but it just didn't seem like a user friendly forum anyway.

 

[Arantor]

Hit the 'categories' button on a Discourse or a NodeBB and you'll get something reminiscent of the classic structure because, surprise surprise, categories really are the same as forum boards. The only real exceptions here are Flarum and Vanilla where they really don't have boards in the classical sense, it's just a mash of topics in a single bucket, discoverable by tag (as a topic can exist in multiple tags)

Everything else is presentation, not structure, and presenting any of the classic sites in the Discourse way wouldn't be hard. I've certainly mashed up SMF to act like Vanilla in the past - but I dislike it intensely. I find the categorisation and structure being abundantly clear makes more sense but then again I am oldschool.

I think what it really says is that taxonomy is a complicated subject and too few people really think about it - and too few people take the trouble to properly curate content since topics are not all valuable, especially if they're not findable in the right place and the right way.

 

[Cory]

I'm all for classic layouts, but that's what I've been using all my life on message boards. It just seems more organized and easier to find the topics that cater to your needs. Categorization is a great way to organize forums in my opinion, you don't have all the different topics mashed together. Even if there are tags to better organize them, I just prefer the traditional look and feel of a classic layout.

 

[synpastel]

I prefer classic, minimalism layouts.
1. It's easier on the eyes overall
2. Don't have to worry about (GENERALLY SPEAKING) "mobile vs pc/laptop" users. A lot of 'fancy' skins are not properly coded to look nice on mobile devices and since most people seem to browse the internet from their smartphone nowadays (at least for casual forum viewing) as opposed to PC/laptop, yeah, go with the regular classic design.
3. I'm not taking an extra 10 seconds to go "Where the hell is XYZ" when I'm looking for something specific on a board (like a rules pinned document or something like this).

 

[Ravenfreak]

I'm not really a fan of modern forum layouts. It's harder to find certain content especially on a site like Reddit, since you have to continue scrolling to see all the replies and even then it gets to the point where you have to click "show more replies" to see everything. I like the classic layout much better, it's more organized and much easier to navigate.

 

[Mamberroi Jr]

It is impossible to go against technology and advancement. Certainly no Modern Forums in this case xen Forum is the best CMS to develop your community because it has a wide panel developed for webmasters; Easy to work and design just have a little knowledge or ask for help from Google to develop it. The rest of the installers have become very obsolete in terms of their development

 

[Kyng]

I love the concept of 'modern' forum layouts (like Flarum and Discourse). I like how they put the content itself front and centre (whereas the classic forum layout puts the board index layout front and centre... and that isn't content: it's just the means of organising the content).

But unfortunately, I think they've failed to find an audience. I get that the idea is to make forums more appealing to the social media crowd. But... the people who are on social media are simply staying there; whereas the people who are on forums don't want to have to re-learn how to use basic features.

I also don't think it helps that the best-known forum software of that format is Discourse... which happens to have a very similar-sounding name to Discord (and therefore often gets confused with it, despite being a completely different service).

A shame, really - since I believe the concept itself is sound!

 

[Arantor]

Has it really failed to find an audience? I suspect the answer is 'not necessarily, depends where you look'.

You see, Discourse (and Flarum and NodeBB) have higher hosting requirements than the classical forum setups. Even though Flarum is written in PHP, it's not going to run on your average bargain basement hosting. Discourse and NodeBB aren't even written in PHP (Discourse is Ruby, NodeBB is... well... Node) and you're not running those on anything less than a VPS - Discourse's minimum requirements are a 1GB RAM VPS (so, $5 from Digital Ocean) and you're running it via Docker so the usual hobbyist crowd is out.

The other thing to understand is that these platforms are not designed to appeal to the hobbyist userbase. Elsewhere you'll see observations about how the hobbyist crowd likes their sites to look nice. (And why wouldn't we?) But these platforms push the envelope of minimalist design such that 'pretty' is surprisingly difficult because they're so busy doing Nothing But Content.

I'd also note that Discourse raised $20 million in investor funding in 2021... you don't get that unless you have some actual revenue coming in, and their hosting packages start at $25/month for the 'basic' tier (100 members!) and it very quickly goes to $100/month for the next tier up, or you run it yourself for free with limited support.

If you look through the case studies, you see things like carwow, where they're using it for an internal knowledge base as a companion to Slack with a 'if it matters, put it on Discourse' view. Let's Encrypt's community support is powered by Discourse (https://community.letsencrypt.org/), as well as UIPath (https://forum.uipath.com/), and Katalon (https://forum.katalon.com/).

Others that come to mind, Twitter's Dev Community (https://twittercommunity.com/) More inexplicably, the Interactive Fiction folks adopted it (https://intfiction.org/)

Or I could just give you this list: https://trends.builtwith.com/websitelist/Discourse

This is the audience it has: broadly corporates. It's got some tech following too, but largely its customer base are folks who disengaged with the old ways, refocused on content and often but not always have a corporate feel even if they're not actually corporate. People who don't care about it looking too fluffy but focus on the content, where they already have an audience and often it's not about building a community venue from scratch but a bolt on to their existing situation.

 

[joelr]

But unfortunately, I think they've failed to find an audience.

You're kidding, right?

For the short length of time it's been around (in comparison) to legacy platforms like Xenforo, it's skyrocketed in technology and corporate circles.

 

[prophet]

I prefer the legacy style. The modern ones seem to clunky and I can't ever seem to find what I need. Reminds me of more of a blog than anything else. To each their own though.

 

[Reverie]

I have seen forms of the new "forum" style. Definitely not digging the more modern style. From what I've seen it isn't very organized or user friendly. I want to participate in conversations on topic and be able to have different categories to go to xD

 

[Arantor]

be able to have different categories to go to

Discourse has different categories. It even has a board index. It just doesn't make these front and centre.

Consider https://meta.discourse.org/ for example. There is a list of categories on the left. It even has the big chunky board list - https://meta.discourse.org/categories

 

[Reverie]

Discourse has different categories. It even has a board index. It just doesn't make these front and centre.

Consider https://meta.discourse.org/ for example. There is a list of categories on the left. It even has the big chunky board list - https://meta.discourse.org/categories

It's different, but I do like it alright enough that I would consider it. I just don't like how it appears to run all together on the main index page - however since I know there are categories I would consider it then.

 

[Arantor]

The front page is just latest content, just as you can configure on legacy forums like XF...