Redecorating

[Mavric]

Just a couple things I've been mulling for a bit:

I'm not marketing guru but from what I've gathered here and there it seems to make sense to change things up a bit from time to time. Nothing major but I wondered about making a couple changes on the board that might change things up a bit and make certain forums a bit more prominent.

First, I thought about pulling the P&R forum out to be it's own forum on the main page instead of a sub forum inside BS. It's easily the second-busiest forum and might be the busiest outside football season. Moving it out would save people a couple clicks getting to see what's going on.

Also, I've always thought it's odd that there isn't really an A/V forum and the other forums are buried inside it. I thought about pulling the Computers/Games/Technology forum out to be the main forum with Wallpaper/Photos, Video/Audio and Look-Alike as sub forums to that one. Might be OK to rename the main one at least a bit as well.

Just thought I throw those ideas out.

Thoughts?

 

[Enhance]

The good thing about your suggestions is they're meant to improve the functionality of the page and they're not just change for the sake of change. It's important to always keep these things in mind.

I like the Computer / Games rename suggestion but I agree that it could be worthwhile to brainstorm some different name ideas.

And for P&R, I think you have a point. It's certainly the most popular of the all the extra forums inside the Big Red Lounge and is a pretty big draw for the board. I know it's one of the major things I fall back on during the off season. The downside to this is it's 'one more thing' on the main page, but we could shorten the overall length of the main page by perhaps shrinking Plan-it Husker. Some of those states don't have any threads in them and I've always kind of thought it looked cluttered. What if it was managed similar to how the Big Red Lounge currently houses its sub forms? We could delete every state from the main landing page and make them their own sub forums inside Plan-it, like so:

 

[zoogs]

Something like this?

Lounge {Outdoors, Recipes, Health and Fitness, Plan-It}

PR

Computers {...}

Contest Crib

Classifieds

Woodshed

Feedback

 

[BIGREDIOWAN]

I'm not picky, I'm good with the changes if it makes things easily accessible and keeps the board looking good.

 

[jsneb83]

Do you think the classified forum gets enough traffic to be on the main page? I know it usually picks up more during football season, but the first page spans two years. I would suggest maybe having that in the Lounge, along with Plan-It Husker that zoogs posted, but I don't want there to be too many sub-forums in there.

 

[zoogs]

That's a good point.

---------------------

Lounge

PR

Misc {Classifieds, Outdoors, Recipe, Health, Plan-It, Woodshed}

Computers {...whatever Mav is suggesting here}

Contest Crib

Feedback

Maybe push Husker Videos (and all its categories) into 'Other Husker Sports' as well?

---------------------

Husker Football {Rumorville}

Recruiting {...}

Volleyball

Basketball

Baseball

The Big Ten

Other Huskers > Husker Videos

Other Sports

 

[jsneb83]

Personally, I like having the Woodshed on the main forum, but I would be ok if others wanted it moved. Otherwise, everything else looks good to me.

 

[Enhance]

I'm OK with Woodshed staying on the main forum, too. It goes through spurts of heavy usage. I think the collapsing and reorganizing of Plan-it will free up quite a bit of real estate on the main landing page. It's worth two main categories in and of itself.

 

[Mavric]

The downside to this is it's 'one more thing' on the main page, but we could shorten the overall length of the main page by perhaps shrinking Plan-it Husker. Some of those states don't have any threads in them and I've always kind of thought it looked cluttered. What if it was managed similar to how the Big Red Lounge currently houses its sub forms? We could delete every state from the main landing page and make them their own sub forums inside Plan-it, like so:

I had thought of this as well but didn't bring it up. In fact, I had already started fiddling with it behind the scenes. My thought was to leave Gameday Info, Omaha and Lincoln and then put all the others in an Everywhere Else sub-forum so it wasn't so long on the main page.

But you're right that it barely gets any traffic so it could probably be folded in somewhere else instead.

 

[Mavric]

That's a good point.

---------------------

Lounge

PR

Misc {Classifieds, Outdoors, Recipe, Health, Plan-It, Woodshed}

Computers {...whatever Mav is suggesting here}

Contest Crib

Feedback

Maybe push Husker Videos (and all its categories) into 'Other Husker Sports' as well?

---------------------

Husker Football {Rumorville}

Recruiting {...}

Volleyball

Basketball

Baseball

The Big Ten

Other Huskers > Husker Videos

Other Sports

I would also keep the Shed where it is.

I don't know what to think about the Videos forum. It's mainly to do with football so having it in Other Husker Sports is a bit odd but it also really doesn't get enough traffic to keep it on the main page.

I think Classified can go in the Lounge (or whatever we call it) and I'd be fine putting Plan-It Husker there as well.

 

[Mavric]

I don't mind shortening up the list of forums on the main page but on my screen the Recent Topics box is already below the bottom of the Other Stuff forum. So I don't know if it would look odd for that to kind of be all the way at the bottom all by itself if the forum list is shortened up.

I don't know how many people use that but I look at it a lot. Would it be better moved somewhere else if we shorten the Forum list.

 

[Enhance]

That's a good point - I only recently started to utilize the Recent Topics function, but I don't use it regularly since it usually requires at least one scroll. I'm often only looking at the forum listings anytime I scroll

.

Aesthetically speaking, I think it would look more pleasing if Recent Topics was shorter than the main forum listings, or at least on par with it.

 

[jsneb83]

I don't mind shortening up the list of forums on the main page but on my screen the Recent Topics box is already below the bottom of the Other Stuff forum. So I don't know if it would look odd for that to kind of be all the way at the bottom all by itself if the forum list is shortened up.

I don't know how many people use that but I look at it a lot. Would it be better moved somewhere else if we shorten the Forum list.

Could we move everything on the side up a bit without it looking tacky/cluttered? Are we planning on getting a new video player? Right now there is just an empty space between the scoreboard and updates, so we could move the stuff up to fill the void there if we aren't.

 

[Mavric]

The empty space is supposed to have an advertisement in it. Sometimes it doesn't load right. Not sure what happens if you're using an ad blocker.