Hi all, I have a question, for one of my projects a big part of the site is going to be the forum. I need opinions on what people think about putting everything on one page. I was thinking about banner on top, some info underneath, and forum below that. Is this a bad idea or not? should a forum always be on it's own page? Can you guys suggest any sites that have combined both so I can see what it looks like. Thanks
What other features do you need? And what are you wanting to code the site in? Off the top of my head I'm thinking of Dragonfly CMS. It's in PHP and uses MySQL. It integrates forums, user galleries, etc. http://www.cpgnuke.com/ The site itself uses the product. Of course I could be completely off in understanding what you need.
Sounds good to me. In fact that's the format I see most often in forums. You usually see some type of ad or banner in the top-right corner or center of the page and then below that you have a 1-2 sentence blurb about the forum such as... "If this is your first visit, be sure to check out the FAQ by clicking the link above. You may have to register before you can post: click the register link above to proceed. To start viewing messages, select the forum that you want to visit from the selection below." and then below that the actual forums themselves. What do you mean by everything? Do you mean a list of all your forum categories? Do you mean a list of all your forum messages? Do you mean all of the content on your site, etc?
I, myself, like the idea. Adding a banner always looks proffessional if the banner is well done. Personally i think blank forums just full of threads looks odd compared to with a banner.