DS Ultimate Forums

Note: I do not want style reviews, just reviews on my management. Apparently, that's one thing I really need to improve on according to some, and I need some ideas about what to improve for things like features, forums to add/remove, staff to hire, etc rather than 'change the style'.

But with that out of the way, the forum link is:

DS Ultimate Forums- Nintendo DS forums- Nintendo DS Game discussions, cheats and help

Been going since January 2007, and is a tight knit, albeit somewhat smaller forum community.

 

I think you'd really have to ask someone with prior knowledge of how you run the forum, i.e. the members, for an informed opinion.

 

Well, anyone got ideas for forums to remove or add then? That's something I don't think would require knowledge of any particular community, and something I myself review forums based on (or did in the past when I reviewed forums).

 

Not sure what you want us to review without knowing exactly how you're running the zoo/what your getting complaints about but here goes.

1. A nicer style may calm your members (Joke, I couldn't resist giving a style review first )

Honestly though your forum looks fine and that all the forums have a lot of content in them so unless you see members asking for new forums, or a lot of content being posted that doesn't fit in, I wouldn't create or take away forums.

 

While this has absolutely nothing to do with the overall structure of the board, it does indeed involve the structure of the community's URL. Rather than /forum or /forums, you are currently using /Board/upload. This, in itself, is a bit confusing... would you consider changing the directory to something easier to access (or remember)? I think that this could possibly make a difference in a variety of ways (accessibility-wise in particular).

In regards to the actual forum structure, I don't really see a problem. You have a fair amount of both categories and forums, and nothing is overdone to the point of annoyance. Now... I do have a couple of suggestions:

• The "Technical Support" and "Forum Suggestions" forums are placed under a category located at the bottom of the index page. If you were to eliminate this category and place these two forums under the "Announcements" category, you'd eliminate that excess space currently being used and each one of these boards would be more conveniently placed (for the members - location is key).
• The "Wii" forum looks a bit out of place, particularly seeing as it's located under a category that is non-gaming related. The same can be said about the other two gaming-related forums under the "General" category... so creating an additional category for these three forums would work out nicely from an organizational standpoint.

Keep it up. Your community is quite impressive, and the "tight-knit" feel is obvious upon browsing.

 

There's a great story behind this... I messed up the FTP the first time round. Basically, you know how vBulletin and MyBB give you two folders? Yeah, they're called 'upload' and 'do_not_upload'. You're supposed to upload the CONTENTS of one into the wanted folder... Problem. I uploaded the entire upload folder. It was meant to be [board]/[content], but it ended up being [board]/[upload]/[content].

I keep it as is to maintain links, stop member confusion (bookmarks), and because I kinda grew fond of it in the meantime. Amusingly, once someone who was inspired by the site did the exact same thing directory structure wise.

That sounds like a good idea. I'll try that.

That's interesting. I'll consider that as well.

Thank you.