I'm not sure if this is possible, but I know that in my group we would very much appreciate the ability to either nest forums or create sub-forums. Because we're running tabletop-style RPGs with multiple DMs and campaigns all within the same group, the sprawling list of forums in there is starting to get out of hand (and difficult for new folk to navigate).
I do realize this is not something that every group would need or make use of, but for those with a large number of forums to keep track of, the ability to organize it visually would be very helpful. I would even be very happy to pay for such an option (if it were perhaps part of epic status or such).
I do realize this is not something that every group would need or make use of, but for those with a large number of forums to keep track of, the ability to organize it visually would be very helpful. I would even be very happy to pay for such an option (if it were perhaps part of epic status or such).
I would second this feature. This is something I'm quite used to seeing in most any forums. I miss the ability to create these things myself. It would be very beneficial for large groups to be able to organize their forums in this way.
Yes! I'd be so much more comfortable hosting RP forums with this level of customisation and organisation available 
Could people still post on the top level forum, even if it had sub-forums?
From the way other forum sites work like Proboards for example, it was quite easy for people to use the main forum and also post within the subforums. It's as simple in idea as creating a subcategory within an already existing area of topics. Proboards is a great example of a forum EXTREMELY similar to RPR's build style for forums in groups, and it has subforums.
The way they are presented is usually like this:
and by clicking the main forum link in purple you get this view
and going into the subforum category gets you this
You can also click the subforum link and go directly in to the sub forum an bipas the main forum if you wish.
You can make multiple subforums to each forum. They line up in what order you establish them.
For large roleplay groups with giant worlds or even multiple worlds in them, these subforums would be tremendously useful in keeping things organized for players and moderation teams in these groups as well. It can even turn sub forums into "archives" for completed stories.
They're an extremely useful tool that I'm quite used to seeing on most forum platforms.
The way they are presented is usually like this:
and by clicking the main forum link in purple you get this view
and going into the subforum category gets you this
You can also click the subforum link and go directly in to the sub forum an bipas the main forum if you wish.
You can make multiple subforums to each forum. They line up in what order you establish them.
For large roleplay groups with giant worlds or even multiple worlds in them, these subforums would be tremendously useful in keeping things organized for players and moderation teams in these groups as well. It can even turn sub forums into "archives" for completed stories.
They're an extremely useful tool that I'm quite used to seeing on most forum platforms.
Sure, the question is less "how do other forums do it?" and more "how would you want US to do it?" 
I've seen forums out there that do it both ways.
I've seen forums out there that do it both ways.
Kim wrote:
Could people still post on the top level forum, even if it had sub-forums?
I feel like some groups may need forum organization that looks more like a 'create a folder and drag and drop a forum into it' structure than an exclusive 'forums are parents and children to other forums' structure. You may need a sorting system where you have labels for the types of forums that are nested in there, but not need the label to be its own forum because that's not how you're organizing them, if that makes sense.
In my knitting group I would like to have labels for grouping knitting and crochet forums, and then add sub-forums within those for what type of content goes into them, but the knitting and crochet forums don't have to be their own forums at all. They just need to be a folder that holds the deeper structure. To me it would look something like this:
Knitting (category)
-- General Discussion (forum)
-- Patterns (forum)
-- Projects (category)
---- WIPs (forum)
---- Finished Objects (forum)
Crocheting (category)
-- General Discussion (forum)
-- Patterns (forum)
-- Projects (category)
---- WIPs (forum)
---- Finished Objects (forum)
If the levels labeled as a category would be their own forums, it would make it much harder to manage the content being posted and direct it into the appropriate places.
Sanne wrote:
If the levels labeled as a category would be their own forums, it would make it much harder to manage the content being posted and direct it into the appropriate places.
On the other hand, if you had a forum with both categories and subforums set up... You could get an arrangement with, say, your top-level forum under a particular topic contains your active topics for that location, and subforums could contain closed/archived topics for storage under each location - which could be nice, in an organizational sense, avoiding the problems of 'where did that one thread go to'.
For example:
-Characters (category and main forum; active character profiles posted there)
---Temporarily Unavailable (subforum)
---General-Use NPCs (subforum)
---Retired/Inactive (subforum)
I don't personally have a preference for what this looks like visually aside from needing a way to visually separate groups of forums.
My group has ic and ooc forums, social vs. Campaign as well as character sheet forums for several different system games. Even just some way to visually divide the list in to blocks would be helpful.
I do like the category idea. Being able to mark categories either by system or by purpose would be helpful.
My group has ic and ooc forums, social vs. Campaign as well as character sheet forums for several different system games. Even just some way to visually divide the list in to blocks would be helpful.
I do like the category idea. Being able to mark categories either by system or by purpose would be helpful.
Dragonfire wrote:
On the other hand, if you had a forum with both categories and subforums set up... You could get an arrangement with, say, your top-level forum under a particular topic contains your active topics for that location, and subforums could contain closed/archived topics for storage under each location - which could be nice, in an organizational sense, avoiding the problems of 'where did that one thread go to'.
For example:
-Characters (category and main forum; active character profiles posted there)
---Temporarily Unavailable (subforum)
---General-Use NPCs (subforum)
---Retired/Inactive (subforum)
For example:
-Characters (category and main forum; active character profiles posted there)
---Temporarily Unavailable (subforum)
---General-Use NPCs (subforum)
---Retired/Inactive (subforum)
I don't think I understand how this is different. How would the following not achieve the same thing?
Main category (category)
- Characters (forum)
- Second category which is a subcategory to the main category and therefore grouped under the Characters forum (category)
-- Temp (forum)
-- General (forum)
-- Retired (forum)
The way I visualize these categories is just as labels, like the header of a table such as we already have on the forums (if you check out this group's forums, at the top it lists type, topic, replies and last post - a category system like this would just add a header with text, and then nest the forums accordingly into the table). That way there's no dependency on a parent forum but you can have your parent forum if you wanted it, it won't stop you from using the Characters forum and then sort everything else into the subforums.
If I'm not understanding it I'm really sorry and would like to understand better!
Sanne wrote:
I don't think I understand how this is different. How would the following not achieve the same thing?
Main category (category)
- Characters (forum)
- Second category which is a subcategory to the main category and therefore grouped under the Characters forum (category)
-- Temp (forum)
-- General (forum)
-- Retired (forum)
The way I visualize these categories is just as labels, like the header of a table such as we already have on the forums (if you check out this group's forums, at the top it lists type, topic, replies and last post - a category system like this would just add a header with text, and then nest the forums accordingly into the table). That way there's no dependency on a parent forum but you can have your parent forum if you wanted it, it won't stop you from using the Characters forum and then sort everything else into the subforums.
If I'm not understanding it I'm really sorry and would like to understand better!
Main category (category)
- Characters (forum)
- Second category which is a subcategory to the main category and therefore grouped under the Characters forum (category)
-- Temp (forum)
-- General (forum)
-- Retired (forum)
The way I visualize these categories is just as labels, like the header of a table such as we already have on the forums (if you check out this group's forums, at the top it lists type, topic, replies and last post - a category system like this would just add a header with text, and then nest the forums accordingly into the table). That way there's no dependency on a parent forum but you can have your parent forum if you wanted it, it won't stop you from using the Characters forum and then sort everything else into the subforums.
If I'm not understanding it I'm really sorry and would like to understand better!
I apologize that I was unclear! I think the distinction I'm trying to make here is that in some places, the category itself can be a forum, especially if you have a place for general topics.
Taking your yarn-wizardry group as an example, you'd be looking at the parent forums of 1) a "Knitting" forum and 2) a "Crochet" forum, where people could discuss general topics in either. Then, you'd have subforums underneath each parent for Patterns and Projects and the like. There'd be no need for a separate general discussion area if discussion could happen directly under the category header itself.
Categories are great, too, and I agree that they'd be a welcome addition overall for forum organization! I think we're aiming for the same thing, overall - it's just two slightly different ways of getting to the same result.
I would honestly prefer there being a parent forum and then sub-forums within that parent forum so that both could be used rather than separated categories. Having access to creating more forum boards with sub-forums would be ideal because groups like Tam'nyer--a' could benefit greatly by having archive sub-forums that only moderation teams could see or have access to.
It could also pave way so that there could be a main forum for one sepcific roleplay area within the world could be broken down to focus in minor areas of the larger map and keep things tidy so that continuity and monitoring could be more easily maintained.
parent forums for ooc categories would also be useful as we could keep general discussions in a parent forum and break down ooc general topics into sub-forums.
The way that proboards does this is generally my favourite way of it working out and it is the parent forum and sub-forum set-up.
It could also pave way so that there could be a main forum for one sepcific roleplay area within the world could be broken down to focus in minor areas of the larger map and keep things tidy so that continuity and monitoring could be more easily maintained.
parent forums for ooc categories would also be useful as we could keep general discussions in a parent forum and break down ooc general topics into sub-forums.
The way that proboards does this is generally my favourite way of it working out and it is the parent forum and sub-forum set-up.
See, the benefit to making a parent a forum instead of just a category, is a major one, at least when it comes to roleplaying forums rather than just informational ones. Let's use an example set in, say, the world of Harry Potter.
-Hogwarts School of Witchcrafts and Wizardry
--Great Hall
--Dormitories
--Classrooms
---Defense Against the Dark Arts
---Potions
---Divination
---Herbology
--Dungeons
--Towers
-Hogsmeade
--Zonko's Joke Shop
--The Three Broomsticks
--The Shrieking Shack
-Ministry of Magic
--Department of Magical Law Enforcement
--Department of Mysteries
(Just for clarity's sake, assume that all the above are IC forums)
Ok, this is just a small sample of the potential locations in the Wizarding World, but it's enough for my purpose here. As fans of the movies and books are aware, Hogsmeade has more than the joke shop, the pub, and the 'haunted' shack there. Having Hogsmeade be a forum that you can post in, would be of great benefit because it allows them to make threads and roleplay in places that the RP creator might not have specifically thought to include.
Likewise, the Ministry of magic has many potential departments, not to mention the lobby, which could be RP'd in without having to specifically be included along with the locations the RP creator deemed important enough to include a specific subforum for.
The Hogwarts forum, too, could include things like the Quidditch pitch, the Forbidden Forest, The Room of Requirement, and Corridors, but not including a specific subforum for them wouldn't exclude them from being roleplayed in, in this case. A person might even want another layer of subforums for specific classrooms, but it would get clunky to include all the possibilities, so they might just list a few then leave 'Classrooms' as a useable forum, too.
Now to be fair, I used an RP forum sample because RP's are what I have seen it used for most. But this kind of categorization could easily be used for more informational forums like this one we are talking in now, grouping forums together by a major category, and anything that doesn't fit in one of the smaller subcategories could just go into the main forum for that category. Like, say, we had a forum for just discussing different forms of media.
-Visual Media
--Japanese Anime
--Western Animation
--Live Action films/shows
The subcategories might not cover every possibility, like say, vines, youtube videos, and other visual forms of social media, so topics about those other forms of visual media could go in the main Visual Media forum.
Now, that all being said,I could easily envision a situation w here one would want the parent to be a category and not a forum that can be posted in. Say this, for a roleplay forum.
-Characters
--Approved Characters
--NPC's
--Unsuitable or Retired Characters
In this case, as others have mentioned, there wouldn't really be any need for 'Characters' to be a forum on its own, just a category made to hold actual forums within so the group staff could have it all there but not have it take up more space than necessary on their main forum page.
The tl;dr version of this info dump? I approve of the ability to have subforums, and to have that parent be either a category for holding or a useable forum in its own right, as the creator needs.
-Hogwarts School of Witchcrafts and Wizardry
--Great Hall
--Dormitories
--Classrooms
---Defense Against the Dark Arts
---Potions
---Divination
---Herbology
--Dungeons
--Towers
-Hogsmeade
--Zonko's Joke Shop
--The Three Broomsticks
--The Shrieking Shack
-Ministry of Magic
--Department of Magical Law Enforcement
--Department of Mysteries
(Just for clarity's sake, assume that all the above are IC forums)
Ok, this is just a small sample of the potential locations in the Wizarding World, but it's enough for my purpose here. As fans of the movies and books are aware, Hogsmeade has more than the joke shop, the pub, and the 'haunted' shack there. Having Hogsmeade be a forum that you can post in, would be of great benefit because it allows them to make threads and roleplay in places that the RP creator might not have specifically thought to include.
Likewise, the Ministry of magic has many potential departments, not to mention the lobby, which could be RP'd in without having to specifically be included along with the locations the RP creator deemed important enough to include a specific subforum for.
The Hogwarts forum, too, could include things like the Quidditch pitch, the Forbidden Forest, The Room of Requirement, and Corridors, but not including a specific subforum for them wouldn't exclude them from being roleplayed in, in this case. A person might even want another layer of subforums for specific classrooms, but it would get clunky to include all the possibilities, so they might just list a few then leave 'Classrooms' as a useable forum, too.
Now to be fair, I used an RP forum sample because RP's are what I have seen it used for most. But this kind of categorization could easily be used for more informational forums like this one we are talking in now, grouping forums together by a major category, and anything that doesn't fit in one of the smaller subcategories could just go into the main forum for that category. Like, say, we had a forum for just discussing different forms of media.
-Visual Media
--Japanese Anime
--Western Animation
--Live Action films/shows
The subcategories might not cover every possibility, like say, vines, youtube videos, and other visual forms of social media, so topics about those other forms of visual media could go in the main Visual Media forum.
Now, that all being said,I could easily envision a situation w here one would want the parent to be a category and not a forum that can be posted in. Say this, for a roleplay forum.
-Characters
--Approved Characters
--NPC's
--Unsuitable or Retired Characters
In this case, as others have mentioned, there wouldn't really be any need for 'Characters' to be a forum on its own, just a category made to hold actual forums within so the group staff could have it all there but not have it take up more space than necessary on their main forum page.
The tl;dr version of this info dump? I approve of the ability to have subforums, and to have that parent be either a category for holding or a useable forum in its own right, as the creator needs.