OK, i'm starting this thread so that we can discuss and develop the forum structure.

Firstly, let's establish that fact that the structure will not remain static. Obviously it will need to morph according to volume of usage, club struture and so on.

I have made a few changes this evening, mainly with regards to titles and the VIP section. Here, i have made the Welcome Supporter section read only and visible to all, with the intention of this being where the curious can click to find out more about VIP membership. Alarmingly, this section was already visible to all, but many had posted threads there intended to be viewed by Paid up members only. I have moved these into the 'members lounge'

I don;t think we need to subdivide the members lounge yet, which brings me to my next comment. As i have discussed with Keith, i think we should stick with the KISS principle when deciding on the structure of our forums: Keep It Simple, Stupid! Always consider how easy and logical the forums are to navigate for new members. It's difficult to do when we look at them every day, but for this reason it may seem logical to us where information is, but it may not be for new guests or less frequent visitors.

So, VIP lounge. I think a seperate section of threads containing good resources may be useful down the track if we get too many stickies in the Lounge section. But not many are using this section yet, so perhaps we leave it as it is.

OK, the other area is the Engines and Engines - Intakes and Exhausts. I can understand why theses are seperated, but i don't think the volume of new threads and discussions warrants it. What about ECU's? What if i'm talking about the throttle body, where does that thread go? I think an engine thread is better, and mods can make more use of the thread splitting and merging tools to keep info like this together. Until we get a damned working search feature!!!!

OK: Discuss!

I think the forum is user friendly..

And I agree with you on the engine section.. Its all under the bonnet and would make it easy for someone if they were looking for advice they would know which section to look in instead of wondering which to post/look..

The other thing that I think would make things a lot easier when trying to look or read things of interest would be the titles. In stead of saying ( look here) or (help) Post a title corresponding to the thread and make reference to it on the second line of the title.

i.e Vacuum leak
help needed

i.e tyre sizing
advice wanted

Thats just constructive input I personally think the forum has become much better than when I first joined and a lot more active. (users/posts)

I was thinking the other day the parts section has a steady flow and variety of parts.

Well thats my thoughts.. Keep up the good work mods I know you dont really get to much out of it but your doing a PRETTY good job.. (had to throw that pretty in for the stir factor)

Definitely agree about the engines / engines comment, this could easily be combined with the subtitle below the Engines thread being clearer (which they already have) giving a more generalised criteria of what people should be including in there, anything from engines to ecu type of things!

I've been a member of a few forums for quite awhile, I find this one just as easy as any other, the only thing it lacks is the search area, from what I've seen on the forum (and I know Im the same being a new member and a new owner of an IS) searching for stuff your wondering about or got questions on is really helpful but I think the search function isnt doing the forum any favours - perhaps why we get so many repeat queries..

other than that I think the forum is great!

To be honest I haven't had a close look at all the sections on the forum, but upon invitation by Matt, here are my thoughts. I'm tired, so bear with me as I lay it out as bluntly as possible :)

Problem areas at the moment:
* Ad-supported
* Too many paid-up member forums
* Club Subscriptions area => useless
* IS250 forum = what happens when there are a larger number of owners of these cars joining up, they will need their own individual sections
* Just generally cluttered, too many unused / bare forums without much use.
* The large category dividers between each category are unnecessary. If the forum categories are done properly, you're looking at about 8-12 forums, all of which can be listed under one category without being too confusing. No categories means no wasted screen space and less scrolling.
* View all new posts not working properly (important for people who want to spend as little wasted time as possible), could also mean people visit the forum more often.
* Search (via google) is haphazard at best, yielding poor results and a bucketload of ads.
* Inbox is wayyy too small for this day and age.

Ideally:
* As Matt has stated, keep it simple, this means that alot of forums can be combined together, and some entire forums can also be made into stickies (such as Welcome Supporter forum with a whole 1 thread).
* Non ad-supported. This club's financial's are none of my business, but based on my past experience (where I ran one of Melbourne's biggest non-profit japanese car clubs for a period of about 2.5 years) and this was done without any subscription fees at all. It was accomplished partly through yearly payments from supporting workshops/businesses and selling merchanidse (purely optional for participants, and the majority of the income). It was important to make sure that people felt the money was going towards something useful, and to be as transparent as possible, as well as keeping costs down. Forum was phpbb (sql) and ran flawlessly, and most importantly, ad free and 99.99% reliable and fast. Anyway, I could go on and on about the business model, let me know if you want more details. Important as the IS gets cheaper these days, so that the younger (and net savvy / mod friendly) members join up.
* Less forums, 8-10 is ideal, and possibly less. Especially with the low amount of daily posts, more is unnecessary.

If it were up to me, I'd have the forum organised like so, engineered for the most efficient and effective layout:
FORUM ONE: GENERAL DISCUSSION (for everything that doesn't belong in other forums). The welcome and membership benefits speech can be placed as a sticky here, or even as a webpage link at the top of the whole forum, since it's static. General car discussions can be in here, even if it isn't about IS200's.
FORUM TWO: OFF TOPIC (non car related, jokes, etc)
FORUM THREE: TRADING POST (for both parts and whole cars). Once traffic has increased substantially, then this can be separated into two different forums. The trading area is CRUCIAL (I cannot stress this enough) to the life of the forum, it shouldn't be at the bottom. It's also important as people who haven't signed up, can see the parts available, and think, wow maybe it's worth signing up so i can message so-and-so to buy this, etc. At the moment it's at the bottom, definitely not going to catch the eye. Sponsor promotions can be stickied here. A separate section for group buys is not required, sticky or highlight them instead in here to increase views.
FORUM FOUR/FIVE : EVENTS - AUS / EVENTS - NZ
FORUM SIX - IS Series 1 - Cosmetic/ICE?Other
FORUM SEVEN - IS Series 1 - Engine/Drivetrain
FORUM EIGHT - IS Series 1 - Braking/Handling
FORUM NINE - IS Series 2 - As above but for new IS Cosmetic/Entertainment
FORUM TEN - IS Series 2 - ETC Engine/Drivetrain
FORUM ELEVEN - IS Series 2 - ETC
FORUM TWELVE (hidden) - FEEDBACK (related to feedback on management / site / admin / improvements / suggestions etc). Only registered users.
FORUM THIRTEEN (hidden) - MEMBER AREA (Signed up / subscribed people). Down the bottom, these people have paid and don't mind scrolling down. Discounts for members stickied here in one thread. Hidden for non paid members.
FORUM FOURTEEN (hidden) - STAFF

Notes:
* Guests can read the non-hidden forums but can't post / PM.
* 3 forums for each IS generation is about right in my opinion. The three categories should cover all areas but still not have too many categories to confuse people. All of the current categories can easily be fit into these three and based on posts, Cosmetic/ICE forum will be the leader in posts, with about 400, Engine/Drivetrain and Braking/Handling forums with about 300 each. Neat.
* Cross promotion with other communities / forums is also crucial AFTER the forum has been redone to get those members flooding in.

Anyway, that's my opinion (the start anyway), don't take anything too personally, you're doing a good job, but I'm being critical, for the benefit of the club. Feedback welcome.

On the other side of the search function. I will say when comparing this forum to a few others especially the supra forum. When someone comes on and asked a repeated question they are are either given a link or another discussion starts again with a few different questions..

On the other forums with the search function a newbie comes on and politely asks a question and all the regulars start jumping down their throat about using the search function and thats what its for.

Comes back to them being new and maybe not knowing how to use it..

Besides I have used the search function on other forums and most of the time it brings up a load of crap that you have to sort through only to find theres nothing about what your looking for..

I suppose what I am trying to say is people here seem to be a lot more polite and helpful to the new members than other forums. And to be honest I didnt know this forum had no search function-- :D

Well, apart from UKLOC I've never used any other online forum, so I didn't have any other models to base this on...

So I set it up to suit Frylai & myself! :lol:

I split intakes & exhausts off because they are the most common mods people do to engines, the best bang for buck for most our members. It was just to focus on those two areas compared to turbos, 2.2L kits, aftermarket ECU's and other stuff.

In a few hours I'm flying to the South Island for 10days shooting, without net access I assume!

& I'll catch up with all of this when I get back.

Then we can start re-organising....

cheers

keith

yip to much crap at the top and botton for ads

look at other online forums to get ideas

sendog had some good comments

I love my browser (Opera) and tweaked HOSTS file - I don't see any of the ads you're complaining about. :)

Admin will no doubt put together a proposal showing how much it will cost us (i.e. how many members and how many $$$ each) to set up and maintain a forum that's not supported by ads, then we can see how we feel about the idea.

OK, have just done some more tidying up:

Club Subscriptions info for both AU and NZ chapters have been relocated into the VIP/Welcome Supporters section, which is publically viewable.

I have re labelled all the threads and stickied where appropriate.


Right,

Have also been reading through the comments above, particularly yours, Shaun. Very valuable, and i am all for some of the proposals you have made, particularly re: the order of the forums. I want to flesh out the 'discounters' area, and maybe merge all this into two 'Discounts/supporters' threads in the VIP area, welcome supporters perhaps. I also want to attack the welcome in up the top, most people aren't using it anyway. Perhaps it should be merged in elsewhere also.

A complete re-order of the forum should only be done once we get a concenses on this thread from other admins, as i don't want to appear like i'm on some personal crusade to restructure the forums as i see fit.

With regards to your comments re the financials of the club, Shaun, i think the main point you have made is that when you where running the VIC club, you had a very large membership base. This equals lots of business for sponsors willing to support the club, therefore any monies they contributed where well worth it. With our much smaller membership base located over a much larger area, this becomes less viable, unless we get some good quality online businesses to support us, who can offer discounts and worthwhile parts/services to members.

So far, with the amount of business we have generated for IS Motor Racing here in Sydney, and the quality of parts and service we have recieved from them, they remain, along with Currans Automotive (also in Sydney) our most important allies, and i believe financial support will be forthcoming from them in the future. However the services they provide can't beneift all AU members, so there is a disparity here which can't be ignored.

Discuss!

Good to see :)

I'm happy with what you've done Matt.

We can split the IS250 up as needed over the next 12months.

The VIP Lounge is not used a lot as everyone posts in the open forums. It really just disseminates information about the discounts and membership details. Those subjects that have past their 'finish' date can be deleted and the rest cleaned up. The garage will be the one that will really grow.


The ad removal costs US15c per 1000 page views. The counter at the bottom of the page shows how many page views since early last year... That's $US150, not too much I suppose, about 10 new NZ members by the time we cover the cost of the kits. We had 12 members pay up last year, then in a big rush we have had 20 join so far this year, so we can cover that and the server space between the two branches if need be.

Are we going to get more & more members for the next two years?? Certainly more Altezzas are coming into NZ, although the only new Lexii will be IS250s, even more expensive than before.

The Comments section needs to say Website/Forum Comments - I've had to move a few posts by newer members from there recently.