Web Re-organise the subforum layout

[KitsuneToru]

The current layout of all the subforums is awful. The first thing you should see on the forums is the most important thing on the forums. Currently, the first subforum you see is the creations subforum. I guarantee you that almost every single person who comes on the forums is not here to see random creations people have made, like youtube videos or builds.
At the top should be the news and the rules, just like the discord. These are the things that are most likely to be read and most needed to be read. Following them should be the moderation section - things like reporting guidelines, etc as this is information all members should be reading before they do things like report, which a lot of people on the forums will probably do. Following this should be the community section, things like like introductions and suggestions as these are more important and should be prioritised over the other sections. Wouldn't it make sense to read about who someone is before interacting with them on the forums? And I shouldn't even need to explain how the suggestion subforum is quite popular and it requires more people to read the content within to give feedback etc.

Basically, make it a lot more user friendly. Add the more important and more commonly read stuff at the top. This would make it a lot easier and nicer for people - especially new people to read and understand.

 

[Fermiin18]

Yes, in fact, I totally agree with you. Because if it is better organized it will be much more attractive to many users. And with regard to what you have said, they should put their own house in order. First the rules and so on. And so it would be much more orderly.

 

[KitsuneToru]

Bump

 

[KitsuneToru]

Bump again. @Zed was there any reason that this messy layout was done like this in the first place?

 

[Priley]

I was pretty involved with the forums revamp so I'll reply to this. With the new forums revamp we wanted to focus on the community. Forums are a place for members to come together and have positive interactions with one another and this is something we wanted to encourage, hence why the community corner is on top. The community is what makes Cube.

The community corner is home to the most active and important subforums, including "Feedback & Suggestions" and "Community Resources & Safety" which also contains a hyperlink to the rules. Both of these subforums are above the fold, so I think it's fine to leave it like it is.
The sidebar contains buttons to the reports website and the helpdesk.

 

[KitsuneToru]

With the new forums revamp we wanted to focus on the community. Forums are a place for members to come together and have positive interactions with one another and this is something we wanted to encourage, hence why the community corner is on top. The community is what makes Cube.

Making it more user friendly doesn't discourage positive interactions with the community? Having things like the news at the top doesn't mean that instantly loads less people will be interacting with each other. In fact, the news threads are more popular and more read than the normal threads - just look at the view counts. Almost all of the News threads have thousands of views each compared to The Lobby where most of the threads have under 1 thousand each.

Look at almost every single other forum. Almost all of them have the news and information first, not community creations and memes. There's a reason that they do it like that.

Spoiler: Examples

The community corner is home to the most active and important subforums, including "Feedback & Suggestions"

Feedback and Suggestions might have be more active and important, sure, but all the others definitely aren't more popular and important as I said earlier.

and "Community Resources & Safety" which also contains a hyperlink to the rules.

Honestly, this should be in the ban department as well as it is focused on safety, punishments and moderation - not a place for everyone to have positive interactions.

And the hyperlink the rules is tiny and hard to find. It took me around 20 minutes to find out where it is, I don't want to imagine how hard others find it. The rules should be the most important thing on the server - absolutely everyone who joins should be reading them. Putting the only hyperlink to them as a tiny little thing in the "community corner" just makes it much harder to find which is the exact opposite of being user friendly.

The sidebar contains buttons to the reports website and the helpdesk.

Only the java reports site is in the sidebar. The only hyperlink to the bedrock reports site is all the way at the bottom of the forums in the ban department. I did suggest adding the bedrock reports site link to the drop down, but it was completely ignored other than 2 likes from staff members, it was not escalated or anything. I was not even given any reason why it was denied and no one gave any negative advice.