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Sharing Content From Your Forum On Social Media. Are Share Buttons Worth It?

Posted on January 23, 2015 by Mike W.

Earlier this week we discussed best practices for marketing your forum on social media. Many forum owners insist on placing conspicuous “Share This!” buttons on their forums in an attempt to get users to re-post forum content to their social … Read More >

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3 “Must Have” Rules For The Like Button On Your Forum

Posted on December 17, 2014 by Mike W.

Last week, we discussed how the “Like” button on your forum triggers an engagement loop. In the same way that forum communities must make the registration process for new users both obvious and easy, the “Like” experience must be intuitive. … Read More >

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Three Options For Mobile Forum Software

Posted on November 24, 2014 by Mike W.

We know that more and more users access their favorite forum communities on their phones and tablets. This trend will continue to accelerate. How should community managers react to keep their forum active? In this blog post we examine three … Read More >

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Forum Trends: Access By Device (Desktop, Mobile, Tablet) From 2012-2014

Posted on September 25, 2014 by Mike W.

Thousands of users visit our forums every day. Incredibly, about half our traffic is users on a mobile phone or tablet device. The increasing popularity of mobile devices and tablets cannot be denied. In just a few short years, traffic … Read More >

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3 Types Of Badges To Gamify Your Forum Community

Posted on July 25, 2014 by Mike W.

When it comes to forums and gamification we prefer to keep things simple. Allowing users to give out reps to other users for adding valuable content is the best example of forum gamification because we want to reward constructive contributions … Read More >

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2 Lessons Learned From Ugly Forum Software

Posted on May 7, 2014 by Mike W.

Earlier this week we compared ugly forum software to the way web directories looked in 1996. To recap, web directories (i.e., early search engines) used a top-down system of categories to organize websites. Some forum platforms still use this design. … Read More >

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Ugly Forum Software Resembles Yahoo In 1996 (LOL!)

Posted on May 5, 2014 by Mike W.

When a user lands on the main page of a forum he or she wants to know what’s hot right now. That’s why we are baffled by forum platforms that insist on showing a list of sub-forums instead. This hierarchical, … Read More >

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Forum Software That Supports Mobile Devices And Creates Habits

Posted on May 2, 2014 by Mike W.

In this day and age when 50% of forum traffic comes from users on mobile phones or tablets, every forum should have a fancy icon that users can add to the home screen on their phone. Kind of like a … Read More >

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Three Embarrassing Things About Legacy Forums

Posted on April 18, 2014 by Mike W.

Most won’t admit it, but many site owners are embarrassed by the image projected by their community platform. We can’t count how many times we’ve seen a beautifully designed site with an ugly forum. While working hard to correct this … Read More >

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Why Some Timestamps Are More Unsightly Than Tramp Stamps

Posted on April 13, 2014 by Mike W.

One puzzling aspect of certain legacy forum platforms is their use of “verbose” timestamps. Often times the landing page for the legacy platform shows the actual date and time of the last post for each category. Or when viewing a … Read More >

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