Geekshow

Every since we launched the latest site design in Dec '08, we haven't had a set of official forums in place. Previously, we had been using phpBB software. While it was rather versatile, it was pretty much dead long before we took it off life support. And there are two problems I attribute to causing that.

The two problems stemmed from the fact that the software was very much detached from the main site. This meant that users needed to maintain two separate logins for the site. One for the main site for comments, and the other on the forums themselves. It's hard enough to get people to register once. But to get them to do it twice is nearly impossible. The second issue that comes from a detached forum is the fact that it is designed independent from the main wordpress install. Which means, most importantly, that the two have to have two different themes. But it also means that there is very little possible interactions between the pieces of software.

By requiring two different themes, it made it impossible for me to make the forums and the site look similar. This was reflected in the fact that phpBB had a blue theme, whereas the main site maintained a red theme. That really throws people off.

When it came down to where we wanted to focus our attention to, we long ago chose to make the front page more interactive via comments. The more comments a post has, the more likely a person is to say something themselves as they stop by the site. And if they say something, they are more likely to come back for more. However, there are some things that a comment system won't provide you with. Specifically, it's hard to have a discussion about something that hasn't been posted about. In addition, it's hard to have a conversation involving spoilers when they are posted on the sidebar for all to see. And perhaps most importantly, it's hard to have a sustained conversation. You may be discussing a topic that is very intriguing. But the moment that article rolls off the front page, chances are, it won't get much discussion in the future.

So, without further ado, I'm presenting you with the new version of the Geekshow forums. It covers a lot of the areas we wanted in a new forum system. Simple yet attractive. Integrated into the Wordpress system, yet still relatively powerful. And perhaps most importantly, it's got a friendly group of developers working hard to improve the system.

While I am pretty happy with what you see here, expect some of the things to change over time. I'll try to keep the announcements up to date of any changes. I'll let you know things like when a spoiler system is put into place (For now, I suggest highlighting your text, and setting the font color to white via the font color option on the edit bar. This makes it completely invisible, so you might want to add a “Spoiler: ” before the actual spoiler, so people know it is there). In addition, I'd be on the lookout for a sidebar widget to list the latest forum discussions.

Nothing here is ever really complete. But I think you will find the software more than capable of meeting your discussion needs. By all means, this isn't a replacement for comments. It's meant to be a way to enhance discussion. You shouldn't have to choose one or the other. But instead, they are both simple enough to use.