Mark Uraine 9:32 pm on July 11, 2016
Tags: design ( 20 ), forums ( 18 )

Forum Design Research

As some may have noticed there are efforts to improve the support forums on WordPress.orgWordPress.org The community site where WordPress code is created and shared by the users. This is where you can download the source code for WordPress core, plugins and themes as well as the central location for community conversations and organization. https://wordpress.org/. In addition to the backend changes, this seems like a good time to make some design upgrades as well. To kick things off, I’ve done a bit of research into various forum designs in use online (similar to the web store explorations for the plugin directory).

If you’re interested in the forums, please take some time to review the research here and leave your feedback. What stands out from these examples as something you’d like to see implemented on WordPress.org? Which design feature is your favorite and why?

Feature comparison

Below are some screenshots from each of the forums reviewed.

Non-bbPressbbPress Free, open source software built on top of WordPress for easily creating forums on sites. https://bbpress.org. Support Forums

Apple: https://cloudup.com/c1g4kOG19vz
Blizzard: https://cloudup.com/cb6CQY8gcJ4
Microsoft: https://cloudup.com/cLW_W21tbxl
Playstation: https://cloudup.com/cOeN4SGlP-t
Wix: https://cloudup.com/cAWRVRStBID
Weebly: https://cloudup.com/cMRmBbqk7kp
Squarespace: https://answers.squarespace.com/
Zendesk: https://support.zendesk.com

bbPress Support Forums

WordPress.org: https://cloudup.com/cqwGcvwfm7h
ACF: https://cloudup.com/c77XOj42RiN
Cycling 74: https://cloudup.com/cwiyHn0UhTu
Makeup Geek: https://cloudup.com/cf3A7hZ4_bg
Mojo Themes: https://cloudup.com/cXBAJZ26hmh
One More Thing: https://cloudup.com/csZWalYf5R7
Wonderful Mama: https://cloudup.com/c8hoUqOBgQt
WPML: https://cloudup.com/cpYhubKse0O

Thank You

Thank you for your feedback! If there are other forums designs you’ve seen on the internet that should be reviewed, leave a comment here, along with any other feedback you have.

#design, #forums

David Lingren 9:58 pm on July 11, 2016

As a pluginPlugin A plugin is a piece of software containing a group of functions that can be added to a WordPress website. They can extend functionality or add new features to your WordPress websites. WordPress plugins are written in the PHP programming language and integrate seamlessly with WordPress. These can be free in the WordPress.org Plugin Directory https://wordpress.org/plugins/ or can be cost-based plugin from a third-party author/supporter the most frequent support forumSupport Forum WordPress Support Forums is a place to go for help and conversations around using WordPress. Also the place to go to report issues that are caused by errors with the WordPress code and implementations. question I get is “How can I limit my search to the support topics for this specific plugin?” People come to a plugin’s support forum to answer a specific question or investigate a specific problem. The lack of a focused search capability is the largest cause of frustration and repeated issues/questions.
- Samuel Sidler 3:04 pm on July 12, 2016
  
  While that certainly could be a feature of the new forums (there’s an open metaMeta Meta is a term that refers to the inside workings of a group. For us, this is the team that works on internal WordPress sites like WordCamp Central and Make WordPress. ticket about it), it’s unrelated to design direction. bbPressbbPress Free, open source software built on top of WordPress for easily creating forums on sites. https://bbpress.org. 2 will make this easier, but it might not be in the first iteration of the reworked forum.
  - Jon Brown 12:43 am on August 10, 2016
    
    This has long been (IMHO) the number one issue with the forums. While it’s not design related, it’s still the most pressing need.
    
    FWIW, the long term solution has been using google to search based on a specific URLURL A specific web address of a website or web page on the Internet, such as a website’s URL www.wordpress.org (I always forget the syntax for that or I’d post it here).
- Mark Uraine 3:45 pm on July 12, 2016
  
  Targeted search sounds awesome. We’re moving toward Elasticsearch, so maybe there’s something we can work towards like typing shiny-updates: button to search for button within the shiny-updates pluginPlugin A plugin is a piece of software containing a group of functions that can be added to a WordPress website. They can extend functionality or add new features to your WordPress websites. WordPress plugins are written in the PHP programming language and integrate seamlessly with WordPress. These can be free in the WordPress.org Plugin Directory https://wordpress.org/plugins/ or can be cost-based plugin from a third-party. I’m just spitting out implementation ideas.
  - Pascal Casier 9:09 am on July 14, 2016
    
    Or take the slackSlack Slack is a Collaborative Group Chat Platform https://slack.com/. The WordPress community has its own Slack Channel at https://make.wordpress.org/chat/. idea where you can use in:#channel
webaware 10:53 pm on July 11, 2016

It would be great to have the ability to target a section of the pluginPlugin A plugin is a piece of software containing a group of functions that can be added to a WordPress website. They can extend functionality or add new features to your WordPress websites. WordPress plugins are written in the PHP programming language and integrate seamlessly with WordPress. These can be free in the WordPress.org Plugin Directory https://wordpress.org/plugins/ or can be cost-based plugin from a third-party’s readme.txt to be displayed above the form for submitting a new ticket/topic. That would allow us to provide some instructions, e.g. what info we need in a support ticket or even how to avoid opening a ticket. Not actually my idea, I read this in someone else’s submission to another post about the WP forums 🙂

Also, +1 to plugin-targetted search.
- Mark Uraine 3:49 pm on July 12, 2016
  
  I wonder if a lot of that needed information would be similar to most pluginPlugin A plugin is a piece of software containing a group of functions that can be added to a WordPress website. They can extend functionality or add new features to your WordPress websites. WordPress plugins are written in the PHP programming language and integrate seamlessly with WordPress. These can be free in the WordPress.org Plugin Directory https://wordpress.org/plugins/ or can be cost-based plugin from a third-party developers. We already add some prompts to the form for the user, but maybe those aren’t being followed?
Tom Hemsley 10:05 am on July 12, 2016

Upvotes, likes or ‘thanked’ posts is something I’d really like to see.

At the moment I don’t feel there’s much of a community or forum ‘feel’ on the WordPress.orgWordPress.org The community site where WordPress code is created and shared by the users. This is where you can download the source code for WordPress core, plugins and themes as well as the central location for community conversations and organization. https://wordpress.org/ forums. Users generally seem to sign up, post question, author answers, user signs out.

As a pluginPlugin A plugin is a piece of software containing a group of functions that can be added to a WordPress website. They can extend functionality or add new features to your WordPress websites. WordPress plugins are written in the PHP programming language and integrate seamlessly with WordPress. These can be free in the WordPress.org Plugin Directory https://wordpress.org/plugins/ or can be cost-based plugin from a third-party author it feels like it’s Me Vs The World (at least within my plugin support forumSupport Forum WordPress Support Forums is a place to go for help and conversations around using WordPress. Also the place to go to report issues that are caused by errors with the WordPress code and implementations.). It’s incredibly unusual to see one user helping another – I see it maybe once in every thousand topics.

My suspicion is users don’t tend to help each other because there is no reward, however small, for doing so.

Generally on forums you will at least get a post count under your username, and in more recent years the ability to like/upvote/thank posts has become quite common.

A message saying “Thanked X times in X posts” under a username would go a long way, I think, to encouraging users to help each other. And maybe it would improve the community feel on the wp.org forums overall.
- Joy 3:40 pm on July 12, 2016
  
  That sounds good in theory, but the truth is that most users don’t hang out on support forums unless they have a problem. Most of them don’t have the information to help other users.
  If every topic is counted as a problem (as in the count on the pluginPlugin A plugin is a piece of software containing a group of functions that can be added to a WordPress website. They can extend functionality or add new features to your WordPress websites. WordPress plugins are written in the PHP programming language and integrate seamlessly with WordPress. These can be free in the WordPress.org Plugin Directory https://wordpress.org/plugins/ or can be cost-based plugin from a third-party’s page of topics resolved), there is no room for anything other than users needing help posting about their problems and once the author responds, they leave.
  However, if there were areas that did not count as problems, there might be more interaction, such as suggestions, feedback, design ideas, tutorials, documentation, videos. There could be more support than just a place to ask about a bug in the plugin.
  - Tom Hemsley 4:23 pm on July 12, 2016
    
    Most of them don’t have the information to help other users.
    
    That’s true in a lot of cases, but I don’t think it applies to everyone. I think if a user posts a support topic, then spends the next 5 minutes looking through say the next 10 unresolved topics, I bet they could help out on at least one of them. If everyone (or a decent percentage of people) did that then we’d have a very different feel in the support forums, but at the moment there’s zero benefit or reason for users to take the time to do that.
    
    With some sort of reward system (even if it’s just a post count) we might well see that a portion of users want to help. It could almost be “CV Worthy” if you’re applying for a WordPress related job and are well known/upvoted/thanked/accepted in the official forums.
    
    In my head I’m comparing the WP.org forums to BrowserStack. It’s not identical, but it has similarities to the wordpress.orgWordPress.org The community site where WordPress code is created and shared by the users. This is where you can download the source code for WordPress core, plugins and themes as well as the central location for community conversations and organization. https://wordpress.org/ forums (very little discussion, lots of ‘how do I?’ questions). On BrowserStack users are encouraged to help each other with rewards, points, badges etc. A nod to that sort of approach could take the wp.org forums in a new, positive direction (imho :))
    - Tom Hemsley 4:28 pm on July 12, 2016
      
      *StackOverflow.
      - Joy 5:07 pm on July 12, 2016
        
        StackOverflow is one I would not want to emulate. I have often gone there and had something to contribute, but could not because I didn’t have the points.
        
        That site is very messy-looking and it’s so hard to determine what the numbers mean and which links I’ve already visited. I joined once just to complain about the styling, but nothing changed.
        
        And they don’t even show all the comments on the answers. You have to click on the links to show the other comments (which are not always at the end), so that the conversation makes sense.
      - Tom Hemsley 5:30 pm on July 12, 2016
        
        StackOverflow is one I would not want to emulate.
        
        When I say “a nod” to the StackOverflow approach, I just mean it would be nice for one wp.org user to quickly and easily be able to give another wp.org user some feedback to say their efforts are appreciated.
        
        I’m just expanding my reasoning behind my “+1ing” the idea of upvotes (as mentioned in the original topic) and suggesting it could also be done with likes, or thanks, or whatever. That’s all 🙂
- Mark Uraine 3:53 pm on July 12, 2016
  
  I really like the idea of ‘up votes’ or ‘me too’ as a way for users to indicate that they also have the same issue without having to type a reply. That’s the use case that seems the most beneficial to me right now.
- Marius (Clorith) 3:57 pm on July 12, 2016
  I think the problem with your idea here, is that it leads to gamification of the forums, which would hurt them more than help.
  
  I have 200 points more than you, noob
  
  Obviously an extreme example, but that is essentially part of where it would end up.
  
  New users would not want to get involved because they don’t have any points and as such their word carries no weight and will be ignored.
  
  The aspect gets brought up now and then with the support team (more recently in our meeting of February 18th, you can see the Slack trancripts as well of the very thorough discussion around it)
  
  —
  
  As for what I do like from the list, to keep things on topic here;
  - `position: fixed` for the question, this would help keep the topic at hand relevant and help going off the rails so easily.
  - Related topics would be magical, we’ve talked about this desire a fair bit, kind of like Stack Overflow and .com handles it with trying to avoid duplicate questions, and I see there’s talk of elastic search so this would be a possiblity (wooooo!)
  - A community landing page would essentially just be what HelpHub is currently working towards, just to avoid overlapping efforts there
  @mapk just made a reply right before I submitted this (hah, timing!) saying he likes the idea of upvotes/me too indicators, although a novel idea this probably won’t work because everyone thinks they have the same problem because the symptom may be similar, but the root cause is (in the majority of cases) never the same and would just lead to confusion and never ending threads I fear.
  
  We are currently very persistent on the “make your own thread” part of our forum guidelines for this exact reason (with the last release we saw quite a few me too threads that all had different root causes, they were all showing the same symptom; JS things broken so post editor stopped working for example, but they all had different plugins and themes running, in some cases it was the theme causing it, other times it was plugins, and then there’s browser extensions, it’s just somewhat unfair to the end user that has a problem if they are left in a thread saying “I have this problem”, just to be given a “this is the solution” that worked for one person there and it’s not relevant to them.
  - Joy 4:01 pm on July 12, 2016
    
    I often would like to have a smile or +1 indicator I could click on, as a way to say I agree. I would click it on your comment if it was there.
  - Mark Uraine 4:04 pm on July 12, 2016
    
    Good points, @Clorith. I didn’t realize that was a thing.
  - Tom Hemsley 4:36 pm on July 12, 2016
    
    The aspect gets brought up now and then with the support team (more recently in our meeting of February 18th, you can see the SlackSlack Slack is a Collaborative Group Chat Platform https://slack.com/. The WordPress community has its own Slack Channel at https://make.wordpress.org/chat/. trancripts as well of the very thorough discussion around it)
    
    Interesting reading, thanks. I don’t think I can add anything useful to what’s already been discussed so I’ll leave it there! 🙂
- Jon Brown 12:51 am on August 10, 2016
  
  Upvoting/thanks/points would be nice. Especially for those dear souls that actually answer questions outside of the specific pluginPlugin A plugin is a piece of software containing a group of functions that can be added to a WordPress website. They can extend functionality or add new features to your WordPress websites. WordPress plugins are written in the PHP programming language and integrate seamlessly with WordPress. These can be free in the WordPress.org Plugin Directory https://wordpress.org/plugins/ or can be cost-based plugin from a third-party support topics. (ie. those answering posts in Installation, General, Troubleshooting, etc..) .
  
  This gets more to the limitations of BBPressbbPress Free, open source software built on top of WordPress for easily creating forums on sites. https://bbpress.org., and FWIW I too would love to see a stack overflow type support system over BBPress forums. I wouldn’t say “forums as public support” is dead, but it’s increasingly out of fashion. As above though, that isn’t a visual design issue, it’s a functional one, and way outside the scope of that Mark Uraine is working on.
  
  Mark – would it make sense in the more detailed mockups to include some kind of indicator for Props/Thanks/etc?
Joy 4:56 pm on July 12, 2016

Community landing page: It’s support, not community, so if a landing page exists, it should just be a list of topic categories.
Sectioned topics: Definitely yes, but there should be a place to put a question that doesn’t fit anywhere else. I tried to ask a question about the workings of the interaction of wordpress.orgWordPress.org The community site where WordPress code is created and shared by the users. This is where you can download the source code for WordPress core, plugins and themes as well as the central location for community conversations and organization. https://wordpress.org/ and wordpress.comWordPress.com An online implementation of WordPress code that lets you immediately access a new WordPress environment to publish your content. WordPress.com is a private company owned by Automattic that hosts the largest multisite in the world. This is arguably the best place to start blogging if you have never touched WordPress before. https://wordpress.com/ (subscriptions) and there was nowhere to put it. A moderator who didn’t understand the question moved it to an unrelated place, so I never got an answer.

Search: Very necessary, and if it can search in categories, that’s even better. Using a fuzzy search as the user types is very helpful also.
SidebarSidebar A sidebar in WordPress is referred to a widget-ready area used by WordPress themes to display information that is not a part of the main content. It is not always a vertical column on the side. It can be a horizontal rectangle below or above the content area, footer, header, or any where in the theme.: Useful depending what’s on it
Related Topics: If the search is good, this isn’t needed.
Featured Topics: If it is per categoryCategory The 'category' taxonomy lets you group posts / content together that share a common bond. Categories are pre-defined and broad ranging., it could be more useful than having a FAQ category.
Latest Topics: If the topics are always sorted by date, a separate list is overkill.
Popular Topics: Same as Featured, or are you measuring views?
Up Votes: If it’s used correctly (to mark the correct answer), it can be helpful to future skimmers, however, most implementations use the votes as permissions to post(I hate that!) or to rearrange the conversation(which makes it very hard to follow along). If you want users to help each other, don’t limit them or make them earn points before they can. And a clean way to say “I agree” cuts down on verbose responses with only that in them.
Top Authors: Is it a community or support? I see no value in this.
Users Online: I see no value unless you are rebooting the server.
Breadcrumbs:There should not be a deep structure to navigate, so breadcrumbs should be overkill. The page should indicate what category you are in, though.
Filters: Hard to use. Having a better search is better.
Position:fixed Question: It’s only good if the question is short, and fixed position has issues on mobile devices.
Highlighted ‘Resolved’: This can be very helpful. It’s usually inconsistent though.

When I was moderating a forum(not on wp), I had just a few more powers than the users (delete topics, edit topics, move topics), but I didn’t use those as much as I used the search, the # views indicator, the new topic indicator, the easy way to insert images(screenshots say so much!), the favorite(or bookmark) to get back to my topic, the easy way to quote other entries.

There was a need for a way to indicate urgency (or people will bump their thread so it gets some attention).

There was also a need for clearer communication. Users don’t speak the same dialect as programmers. If there were a form to keep the description logical, it would help a lot, such as sequence of events, expected result, actual result.

What’s missing now in the WordPress support forums (in the pluginPlugin A plugin is a piece of software containing a group of functions that can be added to a WordPress website. They can extend functionality or add new features to your WordPress websites. WordPress plugins are written in the PHP programming language and integrate seamlessly with WordPress. These can be free in the WordPress.org Plugin Directory https://wordpress.org/plugins/ or can be cost-based plugin from a third-party section) is a place to indicate the version of the plugin where the problem was encountered. That would be so helpful for people searching before asking their question.

One thing I like about the online PHPPHP PHP (recursive acronym for PHP: Hypertext Preprocessor) is a widely-used open source general-purpose scripting language that is especially suited for web development and can be embedded into HTML. http://php.net/manual/en/intro-whatis.php. manuals is that users can ask questions on each page of the manual, and people have put a lot of useful information in the user comments to clarify or warn about specific situations. The WordPress CodexWordPress Codex Living online manual to WordPress.org https://codex.wordpress.org/ should be tied to the support forumSupport Forum WordPress Support Forums is a place to go for help and conversations around using WordPress. Also the place to go to report issues that are caused by errors with the WordPress code and implementations. in that same say.
samjco 11:14 pm on July 16, 2016

Here are my 3 cents on the forums:

Gamification
My Idea would be to add gamification to forums, giving users points, ranks, or badges sort of like experts-exchange.com or stackexchange does it.

Make comments important
To be able to 1 up/down comments. Or use this, e,g: “4 of 5 people found this useful…” Even “Accepted Solution” my be nice.

Easy search and reference pluginPlugin A plugin is a piece of software containing a group of functions that can be added to a WordPress website. They can extend functionality or add new features to your WordPress websites. WordPress plugins are written in the PHP programming language and integrate seamlessly with WordPress. These can be free in the WordPress.org Plugin Directory https://wordpress.org/plugins/ or can be cost-based plugin from a third-party or theme.
Just like if we type the @ key a list of users pop up, so we should be able to do the same with plugins and themes being that most WordPress forums talk about or always include some sort a plugin or theme in the discussion. So make it easy to reference the correct one in which it turns into a link.
joje47 4:54 am on August 7, 2016

Hi,
I’m not sure this is the right place, but I do want to suggest a preview function in the support forumSupport Forum WordPress Support Forums is a place to go for help and conversations around using WordPress. Also the place to go to report issues that are caused by errors with the WordPress code and implementations.. It would help to check out how the code will be displayed and that links are seen and more before you send.
I think it might improve (the already good) quality of the posts there.

Welcome to the MetaMeta Meta is a term that refers to the inside workings of a group. For us, this is the team that works on internal WordPress sites like WordCamp Central and Make WordPress. Team!

Contact

Forum Design Research

Non-bbPressbbPress Free, open source software built on top of WordPress for easily creating forums on sites. https://bbpress.org. Support Forums

bbPress Support Forums

Thank You

Welcome to the MetaMeta Meta is a term that refers to the inside workings of a group. For us, this is the team that works on internal WordPress sites like WordCamp Central and Make WordPress. Team!

Contact

Non-bbPressbbPress Free, open source software built on top of WordPress for easily creating forums on sites. https://bbpress.org. Support Forums

bbPress Support Forums

Thank You

Share this: