[tip] Remember that your FORUMS are your content

[filburt1]

(This is all IMO)

That is, statistics and such are nice, but they should never precede your actual forum listings. Visitors to your forums do not care which attachment has been downloaded the most or what the weather is. They came to browse your posts, and hopefully post themselves!

If you want to add such hacks, do so at your own will but at the very least put them after the forum listings. Also avoid cool but pointless hacks like what the weather is. If you run a site about, say, ASP development, people don't care what the weather is.

[Tony G]

Agreed, I've seen forums which so much junk at the top you have to scroll halfway down just to get to the start of the forum listing.

[jrotunda85]

Agreed. Content should be reflective of your site. It's cool to have all these hacks but like Filburt said you don't need a weather meter for a site about ASP Development.

[Tony G]

Well you can add that stuff, but as long as it's BELOW your forums list.

[PennylessZ28]

Agreed, a forum should reflect only relative content.

Now me, I run a car site, so, and a lot of my users use the page as thier start page.

We list weather, and the mini calendar hack for to reasons, one, events, do we are a local based car forum. 2 duh, if its gonna rain later, then we aren't going to that car show.

:) :cool:

[MSX]

Definitely true filburt, definitely....

I see boards with Top 5 stats, weather, whos online, and who visited today hacks...its crazy...

[Brad]

Definitely true filburt, definitely....

I see boards with Top 5 stats, weather, whos online, and who visited today hacks...its crazy...
who's online is stock ;).

But I have to agree with everything said already, this is defently something you should keep in mind while designing a layout for your forum.

BTW, MSX your header style is nice, very nice work.

[CBGrafix]

i trained MSX to what he is today:D
anyways, pointless hacks should not be installed, it might be cool, but why install them?

[Tony G]

To increase your query numbers? ;)

(BAD for the server, remember)

[CBGrafix]

retorical question you know:p

[Tony G]

Can't ever be said too many times. :p

[MrNase]

i totally agree with that :)
unfortunately iam one of those guys :( I installed different hacks just to see how they work and now iam waiting for the vb3 release to completely re-work my forum :)