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Forum Tip: Make Inactivity Less Obvious
01-15-2007, 09:24 PM
| #1 |
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 Title: Apprentice
Join Date: Apr 2006 Posts: 161  | Forum Tip: Make Inactivity Less Obvious I have a forum that I am struggling with, and some sub-forums don't receive messages for weeks at a time. I could delete or merge the inactive forums, but I want to keep them because I like the organization. In vBulletin, I edited the forumhome_lastpostby template to comment out the code that displays the date of the last post. HTML Code: <!-- Commented by Will Spencer --> <!-- $lastpostinfo[lastpostdate] <if condition="!$show['detailedtime']"><span class="time">$lastpostinfo[lastposttime]</span></if> <a href="showthread.php?$session[sessionurl]p=$lastpostinfo[lastpostid]#post$lastpostinfo[lastpostid]"><img class="inlineimg" src="$stylevar[imgdir_button]/lastpost.gif" alt="$vbphrase[go_to_last_post]" border="0" /></a> --> <!-- /Commented by Will Spencer --> The last post still displays -- just without a date. See the change in production here. At least in theory, this will help avoid forum visitors quickly leaving when they see that some sub-forums are less than active. If I wanted to go further, I could remove the dates from the thread views in each subforum forum. Hmmm...
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01-16-2007, 12:23 AM
| #2 |
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Title:
Join Date: Feb 2006 Posts: 3,030 Location: Michigan, US   Recent Blog: New Screenshots Released 
| Nice modification. I don't think its something I personally would want to do though because its almost like you're fooling your users.
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01-16-2007, 02:27 AM
| #3 |
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| Title: Rookie
Join Date: Nov 2006 Posts: 22 | I don't look at it that way at all. Nice work Will.S
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01-16-2007, 08:59 AM
| #5 |
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| Title: Apprentice
Join Date: Apr 2006 Posts: 161 | Taking it to the next obvious step, I edited the threadbit template to remove the date and time display from it. HTML Code: <!-- Commented by Will Spencer --> <!-- $lastpostinfo[lastpostdate] <if condition="!$show['detailedtime']"><span class="time">$lastpostinfo[lastposttime]</span></if> <a href="showthread.php?$session[sessionurl]p=$lastpostinfo[lastpostid]#post$lastpostinfo[lastpostid]"><img class="inlineimg" src="$stylevar[imgdir_button]/lastpost.gif" alt="$vbphrase[go_to_last_post]" border="0" /></a> --> <!-- /Commented by Will Spencer -->
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01-16-2007, 11:01 PM
| #6 |
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| Title: Member
Join Date: Dec 2005 Posts: 70 Location: Bradford UK | Anyone know how you might do a similar thing in Invision Power Board?
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01-16-2007, 11:19 PM
| #7 |
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Title: Forum Enthusiast
Join Date: Oct 2005 Posts: 2,139 Location: Maryland, US 
| This works for 2.2.x and 2.1.x  Go to your ACP -> Look and Feel -> then select your skin -> Edit Template HTML -> Board Index -> ForumRow. Then look for HTML Code: {$data['last_unread']} <span>{$data['last_post']}<br />  and if you want to make it more vbulletin looking replace that line with this HTML Code: <td class="row1" nowrap="nowrap">{$data['last_unread']} {$data['last_topic']}<br />{ipb.lang['by']} {$data['last_poster']}</span></td>  | ||||
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01-18-2007, 02:50 PM
| #8 |
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| Title: Member
Join Date: Apr 2006 Posts: 127 | A better option would be to get rid of the sub forums and have less forums. People seem to set up forums with 10's of boards when in reality, they would be better off with 2 or 3. | ||||
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01-19-2007, 02:03 AM
| #9 |
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| Title: Apprentice
Join Date: Apr 2006 Posts: 161 | Quote:
1. Disorganization is seldom attractive in a forum. 2. Visitors often do not feel comfortable posting messages about "X" if there is not a forum for "X". Visitors want to feel that their posts are on topic.
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01-19-2007, 07:02 AM
| #10 |
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Title: Gas: $3.55
Join Date: Feb 2006 Posts: 3,980 Location: back in TX 
| There is a fine line with that, Will.S. I think we need to find a good balance of the two, at least for an upstart.
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