TexasCHLforum.com

Thanks to all--I appreciate the thoughtful responses.

Best Regard,

John

Use that to follow the forum. Ignore the thread titles that don't interest you. They will eventually disappear. Forget about subforums or sections unless you want to start a new thread.

What's ironic about this is that it seems to me that it's the next best thing to proof that what I'm saying is right on target.

If there weren't so many subforums, you could just go to the subforum(s) you were interested in and look for new posts. The fact that several folks on this thread have indicated that they access the forum using a technique to completely bypass the forum architecture surely means something...

Thanks for the link.

I know this looks like an attack on the site and the site designer, but that's not how I intended it. I just continue to find it a bit cumbersome to poke through a ton of subforums, some of which appear to be duplicates.

If there is a section I don't want to read, I don't have too...

The problem I that I usually read the General TX CHL Discussion but then find that a good bit of what I consider to be General TX CHL Discussion ends up in other subforums instead.

It makes good sense to have subforums, but it seems to me that if there are too many, it gets cumbersome to poke through them all trying to find the one that is exactly the flavor that you want when there could be just a few that encompass a broader spectrum of topics.

Generally, I would say that a lightly used forum, such as this one should start with a very small number of subforums each encompassing a fairly wide range of topics. Then gradually add more as the amount of information posted in the subforums becomes so great that the daily input exceeds a page or two on a subforum. That makes it easy to come, check in once in awhile, find what you're interested in and then wrap things up. Otherwise it's just jerking the forum users around by making them look in multiple places when there's no real need to break up the posts in the first place.

I visit forums with literally millions of posts, thousands of active members and some of them have a third fewer subforums in spite of the fact that they are GENERAL forums.

This is a very specific forum--why it has so many subforums simply blows my mind. It seems that it would be confusing for a new user--especially since there seems to be considerable duplication/topic overlap amongst the subforums.

Ok, some specific questions.

How is "Reciprocity" different from "Other States"?

How is "Legislative Goals for 2007" different from "Legislative Wishlist"?

How is "Holsters and Accessories" different from "What works and What doesn't", and how is the information in those two forums not the same as what goes in General Gun, Shooting & Equipment Discussion"?

Is there a good reason to have a "Governments Resources and Links" and then also a separate "Links" when they have a total of 5 posts COMBINED?

Why isn't the "CHL Checklist" subforum instead a sticky at the top of the "Common Questions" subforum?

It looks to me like everything in the "Carry Issues" subforum is pretty much the same kind of stuff that gets posted in "General TX CHL Discussion". How is the "Carry Issues" supposed to differ from "General TX CHL Discussion"?

Sure, I understand that if you visit every day there are shortcuts to see what's changed, but if you don't and don't know the shortcuts, you have to poke around through a needlessly large number of subforums.

I promise I won't bring this up again, but I think we have actually gained another 5 subforums since the last time I counted. The other day I was trying to find an old post here and couldn't. It looks like it must have gotten moved somewhere or it was posted in a subforum other than the one I thought it was--I finally got tired of trying to figure out where it was and gave up.

WARNING! BEFORE reading farther, please read the disclaimer at the end of the post.

When I come to the site, I just click "view posts since last visit" and read them all.

In all fairness, that means you would be served just as well if there were only a single subforum since you don't browse by selecting the particular subforum you are interested in, you just look at all new posts regardless of the subforum they are posted in.

By viewing ALL the new posts since the last visit, you are skirting one of the main purposes of having subforums--that is, providing the user with the ability to look ONLY at the topics he finds of interest.

My rationale is that if you have a forum with a total of 15,000 topics posted and a total of 34 subforums and say a third of them have about 100 posts COMBINED, then it would seem that approximately a third of the subforums combined are getting less than 1% of the traffic of the site while the other 2/3 of the subforums are getting over 99% of the traffic.

Also, I guess that in my mind topics like "reciprocity" and "other state's laws" or "holsters & accessories" and "What works and what doesn't" are basically the same thing from a practical standpoint, and creating more subforums just means more places to look for posts...

Suggestions are just suggestions, I'm not saying things are being done incorrectly, it's just an observation from my small section of the peanut gallery. ;)

WARNING! BEFORE reading farther, please read the disclaimer at the end of the post.

Just a suggestion, but until the member numbers grow, it might not hurt to have fewer subforums.

A lot of the less active subforums could easily be combined without affecting the logical layout of the board in a significant manner.

I know, meddlesome, aren't I--but you DID ask for suggestions. ;)