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5 Reasons Why Pagination Makes Sense For Forum Threads

Posted on May 23, 2013 by Mike W.

Since sites like Pinterest pioneered “infinite scrolling” in which content is automatically loaded to the page as the user scrolls down, some have applied this concept to forum software. In effect, this approach can turn a thread into a really, really long page. We disagree with this approach for several reasons. Here are five of them:

1. Big tasks are more difficult for users to accomplish

Compared to scrolling through a set of images or list of status updates on Facebook, reading a forum thread requires more brain power. It is well known that accomplishing a series of short tasks fuels motivation better than a big, amorphous goal. Reading a forum thread requires effort (at least compared to browsing photos), so it makes sense to break the task into discrete mini-tasks. A thread with hundreds of posts can be very daunting but dividing the thread into smaller pieces allows the reader to gather momentum as he or she gets caught up. We opine that a thread without pages is like a book without chapters.

2. Browser’s back button becomes unpredictable

An infinitely scrolled page can be problematic when the user leaves the page and then hits the back button on his or her browser. The browser is likely to become confused as to where the user left off. This problem especially affects mobile devices. Imagine the pain induced by re-loading and re-scrolling an entire set of results just to get back to a certain point.

3. Difficult to locate, link, and crawl content

When a user is trying to locate a particular post or send a URL linking to a certain page, the ability to jump to a specific point becomes indispensable. Same goes for search engines crawling the site. And, like #2 above, there are implications for mobile devices as well: reloading or scrolling through an entire set of results just to get to a certain point quickly proves frustrating.

4. Footer content becomes impossible to reach

It is often impossible or at least very difficult to reach the footer of a page that scrolls infinitely. This obviates a section of the page that could be used to display advertising or traditional footer content (contact links, terms of service, privacy policy, etc.).

5. Users don’t demand it

When it comes to forum content, users recognize that infinite scrolling might solve some problems caused by pagination (e.g., lag time to open the next page) but it produces new problems such as those outlined above.

Posted in Forum Architecture & Design | Tagged , , | 2 Comments

How Often Should A Forum Newsletter Be Sent To All Users?

Posted on April 29, 2013 by Mike W.

This question came up in response to the blog post from last week, “Keeping Forum Members Engaged With A Forum Newsletter”.

The answer depends on the level of traffic of your forum and how often salient events occur that bear mention in a “cannon blast” to all users. We prefer to send newsletters on a monthly or quarterly basis although it’s possible that an extremely busy forum could warrant a weekly or bi-weekly digest.

Some communities we have studied communicate with users several times per week. Due to the frequency of such emails, the content is not particularly valuable or interesting. Often times such emails are simply advertisements with no redeeming value at all. Because this practice persists, it must provide some benefit to the sender but we wonder how much benefit a constant barrage of emails provides to the user.

We can envision a scenario in which users opt-in to receive forum updates at a frequency of their choice. Allow power users can sign up for weekly updates, and more casual users to sign up for monthly or quarterly updates. This seems to be the optimal approach.

Posted in Marketing Your Forum | Leave a comment

Improving SEO For Forum Search Results

Posted on April 13, 2013 by Mike W.

In the screen cap below, you can see that Google sometimes displays additional information about links that link to a forum thread.


forum meta data in search results

Several years ago, Google announced that it would sometimes format forum search results to display the post count, number of authors, and the date of the most recent post. This feature was described on the Google blog:

Today, we introduced a new search feature that makes it easier for you to find forum posts or discussions related to what you’re searching for. This new addition to Google search results applies to sites that tend to have a large number of posts on a specific topic. When several different discussions on a site are relevant to your query, we indent them under the primary result and include the date of each post.

Unfortunately, sometimes the meta data that Google displays is out of date. (I.e., the number of authors and/or posts is not accurate because more users have chimed in.) Once Google crawls a page it might not update the page again to reflect the latest discussion. What makes this problem challenging to fix is that Google does not disclose how it crawls forums or tabulates the current number of posts and posters. However, we theorize that one way to improve Google’s accuracy for forum results is to add the thread’s page number to the HTML title tag which currently includes the title of the thread and the name of the forum. We will test this theory and report the results after several weeks.

Posted in Forum Architecture & Design | Tagged , , | 3 Comments

Social CRM, Content Marketing, And Forum Software

Posted on April 8, 2013 by Mike W.

Social CRM and Content Marketing are buzzwords (buzz phrases?) that are used with increasing regularity by social media experts. In this post, we examine both concepts and consider how forum software fits into this puzzle.

Social CRM is defined as, “[A] philosophy and a business strategy…designed to engage the customer in a collaborative conversation in order to provide mutually beneficial value in a trusted and transparent business environment. It’s the company’s response to the customer’s ownership of the conversation.” With this definition we can see that Social CRM is a strategy that companies adopt to engage with customers.

Content Marketing (also known as “Conversational Marketing”) is defined as “a marketing technique of creating and distributing relevant and valuable content to attract, acquire, and engage a target audience”. One famous example of Content Marketing is that of Jell-O salesmen in the early 1900s who distributed Jell-O cookbooks for free. The cookbooks demonstrated that Jell-O could be prepared in many different ways which lead to an increase in sales. Today, companies like Twitter and Pinterest could be described as platforms that other companies can use for Content Marketing. It is clear from this definition and these examples that Content Marketing is an activity in which companies engage customers without necessarily selling them anything.

Placing these two concepts side by side, we can see that a company’s Social CRM strategy is likely to include the activity of Content Marketing. This trend underscores the desire for companies to engage their users in a collaborative conversation. We believe that forum software could be an integral tool for companies to achieve this end. However, we believe there are two primary reasons why forum software tends to be overlooked as a social media tool. First, forum software is often too ugly to be considered a viable option by most companies.  I have head the look of some platforms described as “unprofessional.” Second, many companies that invest money in a customized, “pretty” forum platform wind up with a “solution” so difficult to use, it fails to gain traction.

One of our goals with Ninja Post is overcome both of these hurdles with a design that is both functional and elegant. But there’s more to Social CRM and Content Marketing than simply giving users a place to talk. The key, we think, is to be able to measure user generated content in some way and capture the essence of what users are talking about. Thus, we believe there is a third reason why forums tend to be overlooked as a social media tool: forum platforms lack a built-in way to capture what is being said by users. Our latest goal and highest priority is to change this. We are in the process of building a trending content/sentiment analysis dashboard so that site owners can get more out of the user generated content on their forum.

Posted in Misc. Forum Discussion | Leave a comment

9 Best Practices To Defend Against Forum Spam

Posted on April 4, 2013 by Mike W.

It is difficult to defend against spammers because the most severe tactics make it more difficult for legitimate users to participate. That is why we strive to achieve a healthy balance between allowing users to converse freely and keeping spammers away. We welcome the opportunity to do the “dirty work” so that you don’t have to worry about spammers infiltrating your community.

Although spam bots pose a challenge to unguarded forums, the most insidious forum spam comes from human spammers who sometimes blend in at first by making legitimate posts before posting their spam.

Here are some best practices to defend against forum spam:

  1. Remove spam immediately, ban the offending account, and ban his or her IP address. If your forum is popular, you will attract the attention of spammers. On the bright side, a popular forum will have many active users that can flag and report spam which allows for the situation to be resolved quickly. In other words, eliminate the spam and grab the ban hammer.
  2. “Unique question” and/or CAPTCHA on registration. This step is less than ideal because it has a affects legitimate users. However, it only needs to be completed once and it is a well-proven method to keep spam bots at bay.
  3. Settings to prevent flooding. By putting a limit on the number of threads a user can post per hour, you can limit a rogue user’s ability to “flood” the board with his or her junk.
  4. Check the user’s IP against an IP blacklist. Web services like Project Honeypot and Stop Forum Spam perform a “background check” that can prevent users from IP addresses with questionable histories from joining your forum.
  5. Institute filter to judge content for spam. Web services like Akismet can examine the content of a prospective post or thread and assess whether or not it contains spam.
  6. Hidden field on registration form, only visible to bots. Spam bots that blindly submit web forms can be trapped by a form that contains hidden fields.
  7. Probationary period for new users. We avoid this step because it’s so detrimental to legitimate users but this option could be employed by a well established forum.  In this case, a moderator could be required to approve the user’s first threads) and/or post(s).  Alternatively, new accounts could be subject to a 24-hour waiting period before they’re allowed to create threads of their own.
  8. Application to join the community. Asking users to explain why they wish to join your community will help weed out spammers. This step will no doubt inconvenience new users but could be appropriate for a well established forum.
  9. Examine country-of-origin. In our experience, most forum spam comes from India, China, and Indonesia. It is possible to identify new user registrations from these countries based on their IP and ask these users to provide additional verification before activating their membership.

In summary, we believe the ideal approach to stop spam is to gather feedback about the user before he or she joins your forum. This feedback can come from the user’s behavior (Does it behave like a bot?), the user’s reputation (is his or her IP blacklisted?), or the user’s country-of-origin (Has this country sent spammers to you before?). If the nature of this feedback raises any doubts, then the prospective user should be subject to a more rigorous registration process. If a spammer does manage to slip by your security mechanisms then prompt removal of the content will dampen the spammer’s effectiveness.

Posted in Forum Architecture & Design | Tagged , , | Leave a comment

Seven Reasons Why A Hosted Forum Solution Makes Sense For Your Company

Posted on April 3, 2013 by Mike W.

Ninja Post is a hosted forum solution. We host your forum in the cloud and integrate it with your site and URL. The end user can’t tell the difference because the experience is seamless.

This approach represents a departure from traditional forum software in which a software package is installed and hosted locally. Installing, configuring, and designing a forum platform can be time consuming and frustrating.  But that’s only the first hurdle because hosting a heavily trafficked forum presents a unique set of challenges that can quickly bog down or even cripple a normal server.

Because we provide a hosted solution, we can extend the following benefits to our clients:

  1. Automatic configuration and automatic updates. It is a pain to set the initial configuration options and install weekly (or sometimes daily) software patches. Ninja Post is hosted in the cloud so it works without endless tinkering.  Updates (such as new features) are rolled out automatically.
  2. Elegant design. Forum software has a reputation for being ugly. We offer a WYSIWYG color picker and will customize the CSS on your forum to match your main site.
  3. High availability and reliability. A single server that hosts your main site and your forum could suffer from a single point of failure (SPOF): if your main site goes down (heaven forbid!), then the forum will go down with it. A Ninja Post forum can remain operational even if your main site is in maintenance mode for some reason. Bonus: We also provide automatic daily and weekly backups.
  4. Image hosting. Threads with lots of images must pull those images from a content delivery network (CDN) rather than directly from the server to remain alive. Ninja Post has a CDN built into its core.
  5. Automated email delivery and tracking. Sending a vast amount of email alerts requires a special relationship with ISPs, otherwise the messages will be flagged as spam. Ninja Post has solved this problem for you and we can even provide data regarding deliverability and total emails sent.
  6. Real-time updates. Most forum software is static: new posts only show up when the page is refreshed manually. Ninja Post solves what we call the “overlapping post” problem by updating threads instantaneously.
  7. Automated monthly reports. We help you understand what is being said and measuring the content. This will help you extract valuable information from the content, as opposed to simply having an area for your users to talk.

Hosting your forum yourself is a daunting challenge. For a heavily trafficked forum, it often makes sense to partner with a company that can help you surmount these challenges. By working together we can reap the benefits of a hosted forum solution which will provide more time to focus on the more important task of making your community as vibrant as possible.

Posted in Forum Architecture & Design | Tagged , , | 1 Comment

One Simple Way To Help Users Contribute To Your Forum

Posted on March 23, 2013 by Mike W.

Here’s a simple way to help users to contribute to your forum:

Make the area to Log in or Sign up as obvious as possible

It is very difficult to get users to contribute unless they’re signed in. While it could make sense to solicit replies, then have users log in after they’ve written something we prefer the more conventional approach because when a user is logged in, it allows him or her to make other contributions to the forum (repping posts, filling out their profile info, posting pictures, etc.).

It is still surprising to study forum software that obscures the user registration area. Click on any of the screen caps below and time yourself to see how long it takes to find the Log in or Sign up buttons. See if you can figure out which screen cap is from a Ninja Post forum and which two are from legacy platforms.

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Posted in Forum Architecture & Design | 1 Comment