Site Layout/Domain?

[Ian]

At the moment we've got a very global community, but it has crossed my mind that it may be better to split some of the more popular areas off in to their own sites. The primary example being UK tax questions going to a UK specific domain name.

How would you guys feel about that? I'm currently looking in to improving the forum software, and it may make sense to have a USA (+International) domain (i.e. this one) and then a UK specific domain (i.e, accountantforums.co.uk). In time, perhaps we would branch off with an Indian, Canadian, etc... domain if required.

How would you guys feel about that? If we upgrade the software, it would make sense to improve the layout at the same time - so please do let me know your honest thoughts! I don't want to change things if you feel that this is to the detriment of the site, or perhaps you have a better idea that would work - either way please do let me know .

 

[Samir]

Personally, as an admin of a forum myself, I don't think there's enough traffic here to warrant splitting off into different domains.

What I would do is split the forum at the forum level for each country/region, with common areas still the same. Then, I would set up subdomains that will quickly resolve to a particular sub-forum (if the url doesn't already do it like https://www.accountantforums.com/uk or https://www.accountantforums.com/usa).

This way, you'd benefit from all the traffic being in one place, and yet everyone could have their own place to discuss region-specific topics.

 

[Ian]

Thanks for the reply Samir!

I completely agree with you about the forum traffic part, that's one of my concerns if the forum did split a part off. I'm undecided between creating regional categories as you suggest, or trying to split one of the larger areas off to it's own domain (I wouldn't do this with them all as there's only enough UK content to justify that one).

I'll do some investigation and see how things look. It would only be the UK part that would split off if we did go for it, as that's the only one with enough content/users (USA excluded) that would make sense.

 

[Samir]

I know where you're coming from, but I still think there's not enough traffic for that. If I was in your shoes, I'd figure out a way to make my seo uk-specific that lands people here to a 'uk' section of the site. This way, all the traffic is still in one place.

I've always seen forum building like throwing a party--no people, no party.

 

[Ian]

If we were to re-organise the forum categories during the upgrade, what would your suggestions be. For example we've got sections for Accountancy, Tax, Software - with multiple sub-forums. I'd be really interested to know what would be a preferred layout, as it would be great to have this in place before the upgrade.

 

[Samir]

I don't think there's much overlap in the categories or forums, but I can see how it could be confusing at first if someone has a tax question for something in quickbooks. I don't know how to solve this issue though as that's just the nature of this industry where you have to be very specific--and numbers guys and girls should know that.

The one thing I would recommend is rolling up into sub-categories or merging forums that have very little post/thread activity--it's like having a party in a huge house where some rooms are almost empty whereas other rooms are full of people having fun--better to have every room full of people having fun.

Specifically, I'd roll up the Individual and Business/Corp forums under General Tax as sub-forums. This way, the post and thread count increases. There may be more moderation required to move threads to the appropriate sub-forums, but if you use expiring redirects, you'll get some additional seo from that as well. Same for the Accounting software section. That whole section would then look super-active even though Peachtree and MS Accounting are not as active.

Maybe rename Students to Accounting Careers and Education.

I think moving the Community section to the top of the forum lists so that the introductions forum (a very popular forum on any forum if implemented well) is more active and easier to see. I'd roll up the announcements as a sub-forum to intro and leave the rest as is.

The archive has a lot of great content, and seems to still have new activity in it. If this format of forums seems to get as much or more activity than the current setup, I'd change back to the archive format. Otherwise, I'd move all the threads in the archive into their appropriate forum in the current setup. I know it would be a huge task, but then the whole forum would be a lot more active.

 

[Samir]

I just realized the archive section seems to be coming from a newsgroup. If that's pretty active, I'd just mimic the setup of that here and try to get both communities more integrated.

 

[Ian]

Thanks for the feedback Samir, I'll do a test upgrade on my local system and see what I can do with the category suggestions .

 

[Samir]

You're welcome. Always happy to help a fellow forum owner out.

 

[Ian]

I've just done a test upgrade of the software on my local machine, here's a screenshot of the potential forum layout:

If you've got any feedback then please do let me know . I rolled up a lot of the sections as suggested, but perhaps a little more organisation is required. The archive section is still there, just under this list.

The new forum software is wway easier to use, so I think it will go down well once it's in place .

 

[Samir]

This looks much better. But I'm not liking the change to xenforo. It's a lot more 'busy' on each screen.

 

[Samir]

As an aside, how do you like Xenforo? I haven't decided on which platform to migrate to next--IPB, Xenforo, or something else.

 

[Ian]

This looks much better. But I'm not liking the change to xenforo. It's a lot more 'busy' on each screen.

I've replied here (https://www.accountantforums.com/threads/forum-upgrade.148785/#post-637319) about this, I'll see what I can do for you

As an aside, how do you like Xenforo? I haven't decided on which platform to migrate to next--IPB, Xenforo, or something else.

I really like XenForo and would highly recommend it. It has some really helpful features compared to vBulletin and it's much easier to manage from an admin perspective compared to IPB. I wasn't keen on vBulletin 5 at all, so would avoid that at all costs! If you want any more detail or have more questions, just drop me a PM and I'll do my best to help!