Hello Mark,

It's actually already possible to navigate around discussions by providing categories but we don't actually list them down in a forum style because the idea of EasyDiscuss was never to be a forum. It gives EasyDiscuss a unique layout that nobody actually has. I believe in the future, we could create a forum-ish style layout but we'll see what we can do about this

I used to hold the same view when I first bought EasyDiscuss after using a phpbb forum for many years, but after comparing it with the standard forum layouts (phpbb, vBulletin, Kunena) and exploring the different ways to set up ED, the integration with social media as well as how easy it is to navigate, I have changed my mind.

I regard the best theme as Simplistic and it only requires a few language code override changes to make it similar to a standard forum 'feel' while maintaining the ease of flexibility required to access content on all devices.

The only main item missing from EasyDiscuss is an additional view apart from Popular or Latest and it could be called Category/List/Forum/Summary/Overview, it doesn't really matter, but the view would be similar to the standard Forum overview layout. The content is all there, it is only a matter of providing a view with different content but with the same layout used by Popular and Latest views..

If you look at the initial Kunena view in RocketTheme forum that Mark H is talking about in his post (or any Kunena layout) it shows a List View of Categories and Sub Categories with the Title, Category/Sub Category Description, Total Number of Topics, Replies and Last Post (title, who by and when). There is also a 'link' list of further sub categories with total topics/posts in brackets beside each one.

It is something that is missing from EasyDiscuss and is not really covered properly by the Category view available in the toolbar or from a module, but it does NOT require a new design of EasyDiscuss to move it from a Q and A concept to a Forum, only an additional view beside Popular and Latest.

The reason it only requires an additional view is because when you go behind the initial (for example) Kunena category list view into the main detail posts forum area, the additional features, flexibility and layout options of EasyDiscuss are far superior and easily cover everything available in Kunena (or any other forum) in detail view while offering more as well.

What does EasyDiscuss need in the new View Option?

It comes back to improving the user experience, making access to content as easy as possible within the existing framework and reducing (the current) multiple clicks in the existing Category Toolbar view to a one click access in a new Forum view beside Popular and Latest options.

Therefore beside Popular and Latest views, add a new view called List

It shows a list of categories and sub categories, with descriptions and further sub-category links if applicable, using the same format as Latest or Popular View, with total discussions added. The left hand box where the details of the member who has started a thread normally stays could be used to display part of the content or something else or hidden, expanding the main content box.

A hover pop up on the title of each item, showing further information (for example content of a category, sub category, topic or post), would be a useful addition to avoid having to hop in and out of items to see if they are relevant to the visitor/member.

If you add the above view, I believe the 'forum comparison' comments/requests would disappear and it would also make EasyDiscuss an even better product (as Q&A or forum) than it is now.

For some reason I can add but not save an image when I edit the above post, so here is the one I forgot to add.........

Richard, you have hit the nail on the head. You are right, all of the functionality is there, we just need a new view!

Did you develop something?

Mark, this would be awesome! Please, please can we have this? Like Richard said, we just need another view. Say yes and I'll be straight on JED to do another review!

Hello Mark,

Our hands are pretty tied up to EasyBlog 4.0 and EasySocial 1.3 right now Perhaps later down the road when both these major releases are out, we'll be able to work on something really cool

I look forward to it Mark.

@Mark H

No, I didn't develop a summary category/sub-category view as discussed in the thread, but did add an accordion on every page in the right hand column containing key modules from EB/ED/ES/K components and the Forum Categories tab contains a list of Categories with Sub Categories and number of discussions (or Questions as they are called normally) in each section.

It allows access from anywhere on the site to the most important information in Blog, Forum, Social and Comments areas, with the Joomla ACL used to only display the items the visitor or member is allowed to see (including the correct number of posts).

The Categories tab is similar to the listing from the toolbar selection and the only items missing compared to the Kunena summary are total replies and last post details, apart from the convenience of one click access if everything is listed on one page (it is 2 click access).

Therefore you can get easy summary access from anywhere through the Forum Categories, Forum Tags, Latest Discussions and Latest Replies modules and once in the detail of the forum it is easy to link through to any category or sub-category. You can also use the Joomla breadcrumb path on any page to go back up to a parent or grandparent category.

Overall it works very well and I don't miss a phpbb forum at all, in fact I am glad to be away from it because the additional features on EasyDiscuss make the loss of the category overview page only a minor inconvenience that Mark will remove at some point in the future (as per his last post).

Other Changes

You do need to make name changes in the language override section in administration, to give the appearance of a forum instead of a Q and A area. The changes in admin will appear in the /language/overrides/en-GB.override.ini file and affect the default entries in \language\en-GB\en-GB.com_easydiscuss.ini with this approach the best way as it avoids changes being removed by updates to the EasyDiscuss component.

You can make your own language override changes as you wish, but these are the changes I made:

COM_EASYDISCUSS_FILTER_UNANSWERED="No Reply"
COM_EASYDISCUSS_FILTER_RESOLVED="Closed"
COM_EASYDISCUSS_PROFILE_TAB_UNRESOLVED="Active"
COM_EASYDISCUSS_SOLVED="Closed"
COM_EASYDISCUSS_UNRESOLVED_POSTS="Active Posts"
COM_EASYDISCUSS_UNRESOLVED="Active"
COM_EASYDISCUSS_RESOLVED_DISCUSSION_NOTIFICATION_TITLE="{authors} marked your discussion, <b>%1s</b> as <b>closed</b>."
COM_EASYDISCUSS_TOTAL_UNRESOLVED_POSTS="Total Active Posts"
COM_EASYDISCUSS_TOTAL_RESOLVED_POSTS="Total Closed Posts"
COM_EASYDISCUSS_RESOLVED_DESC="This post is marked as closed."
COM_EASYDISCUSS_FILTER_UNRESOLVED="Active"
COM_EASYDISCUSS_DISCUSSION_UNRESOLVED="Active"
COM_EASYDISCUSS_EMAILTEMPLATE_MARKED_RESOLVED="The discussion is now marked as <b>closed</b>."
COM_EASYDISCUSS_EMAILTEMPLATE_MARKED_UNRESOLVED="The accepted answer for the discussion %1s is marked as active"
COM_EASYDISCUSS_BADGES_HISTORY_RESOLVED_OWN_DISCUSSION="Closed their own discussion, %1s"
COM_EASYDISCUSS_DISCUSSION_RESOLVED="The discussion has been closed"
COM_EASYDISCUSS_REPLY_DELETED_AND_UNRESOLVED="Reply is deleted successfully and discussion is now marked as active"
COM_EASYDISCUSS_REPLY_NOW_UNACCEPTED_AND_UNRESOLVED="Reply now un-marked as accepted answer and discussion is now marked as active"
COM_EASYDISCUSS_REPLY_NOW_ACCEPTED_AND_RESOLVED="Marked as accepted answer and thread will also be marked as closed"
COM_EASYDISCUSS_ENTRY_UNRESOLVED="Discussion is now marked as active"
COM_EASYDISCUSS_ENTRY_RESOLVED="Discussion is now marked as closed"
COM_EASYDISCUSS_ENTRY_MARK_UNRESOLVED="Mark Active"
COM_EASYDISCUSS_ENTRY_MARK_RESOLVED="Mark Closed"
COM_EASYDISCUSS_RESOLVED_BY="Closed by"
COM_EASYDISCUSS_RESOLVED="Closed"
MOD_ASK_POST_QUESTION="New Discussion"
COM_EASYDISCUSS_OR_ASK_A_QUESTION="New Discussion"
COM_EASYDISCUSS_TITLE_ASK="New Discussion"
COM_EASYDISCUSS_BREADCRUMBS_ASK="New Discussion"
COM_EASYDISCUSS_POST_TITLE_EXAMPLE="Enter Title"
COM_EASYDISCUSS_TOOLBAR_NEW_DISCUSSION="Select a Category"

If you take the bottom 6 entries as an example, they affected the following default entries in \language\en-GB\en-GB.com_easydiscuss.ini (do NOT changes the code in this file, but view the file to see what the original code title is and how the override changes the output on your page):

1. Ask a Question Title above category selection box for new posts changed to:
Line 88 now = COM_EASYDISCUSS_TOOLBAR_NEW_DISCUSSION="Select a Category"
2. What's on your mind example title changed to:
Line 110 now = COM_EASYDISCUSS_POST_TITLE_EXAMPLE="Enter Title"
3. Ask a Question Breadcrumbs path changed to:
Line 766 now = COM_EASYDISCUSS_BREADCRUMBS_ASK="New Discussion"
4. Ask a Question Page Title in Tab changed to:
Line 830 now = COM_EASYDISCUSS_TITLE_ASK="New Discussion"
5. Initial Button Description changed to:
Line 1086 now = COM_EASYDISCUSS_OR_ASK_A_QUESTION="New Discussion"
The Ask a Question module Button text can be changed in a similar way (Language Manager Override Section), affecting the following lines in file \language\en-GB\en-GB.mod_ask.ini:
6. Ask a Question text in button changed to:
Line 9 now = MOD_ASK_POST_QUESTION="New Discussion"

There are a couple of other small changes.

1. If the word ‘Category’ does not fit into the Toolbar of your template, it can be fixed by adding the following code to the template custom.css file:

div#discuss-wrapper .discuss-searchbar--select:before{

width: 16px !important;   (change 16px to whatever width works for your template)

}

2. The colour of the ‘Type’ button in the detail post section of EasyDiscuss is not the same as in the Summary section and can be corrected by adding the following code to the template custom.css file:

div#discuss-wrapper .label-post_type, div#discuss-wrapper .label-post_status{

    background: #B94A48 !important;

}

Summary

The above lists all the changes I needed to make to change the Q and A version of EasyDiscuss into a forum. There is no development work, only a couple of css changes and the rest language overrides. It retains the default layout of EasyDiscuss, allowing anyone with developer skills to amend it as they wish. It also retains all the default links with EasyBlog, EasySocial, Komento and social media that make all Stackideas products so superb, while allowing JFBConnect to integrate easily with all 4 components for login/register access.

I hope the above is helpful and allows you to switch your EasyDiscuss component over to a forum and develop it further in any way you wish.

Thanks for sharing Richard

Richard,

Thank you ever so much.

I've been spending the whole day customising ED and you have just answered all of the remaining things I had on my list in one post!

1. I can now fix the "Choose a category" drop down width issue I had after remaining it.

2. Although I had chaned around 20 language strings (in Language Manager overrides), you've just pointed me to many more.

Your menu, did you say that it is an accordion, or is it just a simple vertical menu? That's a very good idea.

Not a problem, glad it was helpful.

It is the Joomlart JA Accordion Module that I use with their JA Purity 3 website template, although any module that allows vertical tabs will do as long as it works with whatever template you use and just add the module content you wish to display.

If your template runs on Bootstrap 3 you may need to make other adjustments for ED but if it runs on an earlier version or something else you will be fine (ED will upgrade to BS3 at some point in the future).

For my project, EasyDiscuss is great as is. The default approach on EasyDiscuss is to bring content first and categories seconds where on standard forum you get to see the same lame forum categories frontpage being sooo 90's style (my opinion, of course it's a matter of "personal taste").

My vision is that forums should evolve and iterate from the basic standard forum "view" and we must think out of the box. Forums should be engaging and really fun to use. Should put content first, shoud fit into your interest by using "algorithms" that will push into your "feed" discussion that you engaged in ... and so on.

Why do you think Facebook Groups trending nowadays is to replace majority forum platform. From my analysis i noticed many users choose Facebook Groups to share ideas and opinions, to create discussions instead of any other regular forum. I pretty know a lot of users who are more active on Facebook Groups than on a forum platform.

The experience is diferent, it's more engaging. It's more content and user oriented.
I don't say classic forums will fade away and die in the end but ..... the future requires a transformation, a different approach on how forums should look, feel and work.
In the end it's a matter of how we comunicate with each other and in this matter i always embrace evolution.

Heck, nowadays SMS is pretty much dead. Everybody uses Facebook Messenger )).

My 2 cents ... I am just a fan of great UX that is breaking the "rules" and by doing so it's creating a gorgeous new experience.

Thanks for sharing this Mist and this is the same exact dilemma that we are facing. We deal with lots and lots of different customers and different requirements. Some customers wants a traditional forum look / layout while some others would want a more modern looking question and answer solution. Here's the tricky part, while all these could actually be done via templating, some of it would still require some changes to the core codes.

For instance, if we were to add a traditional forum layout, it will definitely affect the layout for what we have for EasyDiscuss today

Richard wrote:

For some reason I can add but not save an image when I edit the above post, so here is the one I forgot to add.........

Richard,

In your screenshot I see the Forum Guidelines link. I would like to put a similar link in EasyDiscuss on my site. Do you have the code to add and where in an override?

Appreciate this.

Randall

Richard,

I've been modifying the language text in EasyDiscuss this past few hours. Getting my shoulder fixed tomorrow after wiping out roller blading on Sunday. Been changing things on my site with an iPad and language files are easy to modify. I've been making my Q&A section to be similar to AMEX OPEN FORUM.

Been looking at Deal the Nutz. Looking good. I'm still checking into using the JGive extension.

Randall

My opinion, Mark, is that you guys should keep the current path, developing and iterate a product that standout from the "average" crowd. There are so many forum platforms out there but all of them are almost identical in term of the "forum philosophy" approach.

We have IPB, vBulletin, phpBB, MyBB, xenforo, vanilla ... and so on. All of them are using pretty much the same old school forum approach.
For joomla we have Kuena wich is the same as the above mentions but is fully developed and "native" inside Joomla platform.
All of them are looking almost the same, are feeling the same, all of them are giving the user the same fade-out experience. None of them had the "balls" (yet) to start thinking about what a modern forum should look and feel, how it should perform and so on.
To me they are all the same thing, adopting an old-school format and holding to it preventing creative thinking and evolution.
Take Kuena for example, no offence (hope i don't upset anybody it's just an honest opinion). The Kuena UX and UI is from the stone age, phpBB or myBB are not different.

If i would want a "Kuena" forum feel and functionality i would choose Kuena. If i want something different, something that breaks (in a good way) the old-school forum style, i would choose EasyDiscuss.

"Forum" it's a pretty broad word. In the end it's all about opening "topics" (questions,ideas,debates ... or whatever you wanna call it) and having other users discuss on it. The difference is how you develop the UI & UX, how you connect the users and keep them engaged into posting and so forth.

I think the EasyDiscuss should be developed and treated as an discussion platform that stands out from the crowd and NOT as an old-school forum platform.
If you guys will work to integrate all of your products into a seamless platform solution (wich so far you did it great but still lacks some features). YOU HAVE A GEM !

Mist,

Thank you so much for your valuable insight. You have given me SERIOUS food for though!

I am actually now asking my self, am I stuck in the past? I've used forums for years, since the 90's, so I guess my viewpoint follows such lines. Not being a FB user too means that I am not often exposed to the newer ways people are using groups etc to form discussions.

So much to ponder!

Thanks for sharing Mist, very value-able insights from a customer indeed!

@Randall

Ref Forum Guidelines, it is purely a sub category of a category called General, you can see it if you click on the category icon in the toolbar or in the Forum Categories tab in the accordion in the right hand side. The ACL is set up so that visitors can only see the General category and 2 sub categories, Forum Guidelines and Announcements. Once registered, the ACL allows a member to pick the areas they are interested in and that is the only content they will see. It was important to set it up that way as there are Forex and other markets that are for 18+ and I do not want the general community bombarded with content for those areas unless they are interested and allowed.

Ref JGive it works well but not fully compatible with Bootstrap 3 that Purity 3 uses so requires NoNumbers Rereplacer to change the Bootstrap 2.3.2 classes to v 3 (as does EasyDiscuss), but that should not be necessary in the near future for both components.

I have finished testing everything on the live site for all devices and am uploading the new content to replace sample content this week so everything should be good to go very soon, anything you need just ask.

One thing I would suggest, as a mandatory requirement for anyone wanting to start an online community, is the book 'Buzzing Communities' by Richard Millington, founder of the Feverbee website. The book is excellent, as is the website and although it may be geared towards people employed as Community Managers in a business, the content and concepts are the foundations for success.

@Everyone

We all use Stackideas products because of the overall quality and excellent support but one of the key reasons for using EasyDiscuss is it is more than a forum, it is a multi functional component integrated with social media that can be easily used as a traditional forum, Q and A or any variation for effective member engagement. The flexibility of the product allows us to set it up any way we wish (without major coding knowledge) to fit in with our website.

If I wanted a forum and nothing else, I would have gone for Kunena, but I was looking for something more that also allowed the members of my old phpbb forum to adjust easily into a new format and engage within a community environment revolving around EasySocial and ED/EB/K allow that to happen.

I agree with Mist that the core of EasyDiscuss is fine going down the path it is on for the reasons I mention above, but Mark H is also right about the initial 'window display' of categories/sub categories on the home page of standard forums, because the UX to initially access the section or content they are looking for is a 1 click process but on EasyDiscuss it is at least 2 for categories and 3 for sub categories.

If, for example I wish to access the sub category Forum Guidelines on my site, it is a 3 step process via the toolbar or a 2 step process via the accordion tab for Forum categories.

It is fine for for Q and A but in a wider context where some type of forum style is required an overall List view is a necessity. The community I am developing will make extensive use of EasySocial, Groups, Pages, Events, sign in/register with their social profile and opengraph to autopost actions to Facebook, blog if they wish, comment using Komento and chat online on the site via IM or video, BUT they need more than a Q and A format in the EasyDiscuss area as information is provided and exchanged in a controlled environment.

EasyDiscuss does not need to change the core or do anything major to provide that need, only improve the UX to 1 click to access content in any category or sub-category by adding a new view beside Popular/Latest using the same layout format but with a different order of content. We would have a choice of making the default 'first view' layout Popular, Latest or List and if we choose List, we get a 'Forum Style' Category/Sub'category layout using the existing ED format.

Mark said

Thanks for sharing this Mist and this is the same exact dilemma that we are facing. We deal with lots and lots of different customers and different requirements. Some customers wants a traditional forum look / layout while some others would want a more modern looking question and answer solution. Here's the tricky part, while all these could actually be done via templating, some of it would still require some changes to the core codes.

For instance, if we were to add a traditional forum layout, it will definitely affect the layout for what we have for EasyDiscuss today

I (politely) disagree with the above for the reasons I mentioned in this post and earlier in the thread, because I do not believe you need to adjust anything within the core of EasyDiscuss to convert it to a forum, keep it as it is, it is fine, modern, flexible and perfect, the only thing missing is a better UX to view categories and sub-categories and the window display 'List' view will solve the 'forum style requests' as well without any major surgery on the core product or change in the path you are following with EasyDiscuss.

Hello Richard,

Thanks for rejecting my statement politely I love the way you do this but here's the thing, what you see is not necessarily exactly what is written on the codes. For instance, to achieve what you have mentioned, adding in the additional new "tab" to render categories / subcategories view is not a problem at all. There's no issue with this and it's simply too easy to achieve this but what happens when you click on any of the category link? Does it render the discussions from this particular category like how it is right now? If so, how does one navigate back to the parent category ? (This is where all the complications comes in).

I wasn't sure how difficult the 'List' (or whatever name it is actually called) tab would be to code but in terms of keeping it to a simple/flexible UX in reply to your questions:

Upward Navigation Choices

I can click on the 'List' tab at any time to go back to the full list of Categories and Sub-Categories (One Click)

I can backspace to a parent category (one click)

I can click on the breadcrumb path to get to any parent/grandparent/or higher category (one click)

You could (optional but very neat) include the parent category (if applicable) in a line above where the sub categories appear (one click - see image)

Category Display

"but what happens when you click on any of the category link? Does it render the discussions from this particular category like how it is right now?" - YES

When I click on any category or sub category from the overview list I go direct to the list of discussions, in exactly the format that is shown now, because the current 'discussion layout' of EasyDiscuss is far superior to any forum layout, containing everything you would see in a standard forum post and a lot more.

I see the Category (or sub category) I am in at the top with a sub category path and (possibly/optional) a parent path and a list of discussions in popular or latest order, whatever my default choice is.

'List' Tab

Normal forums are drill down/backspace up creatures, showing a summary list of posts with title, total replies, total views and last post details until you select a post. The newer versions add the main initial overview page, with links to all sub-categories in each of the main categories listed.

EasyDiscuss is superior and allows you to easily move around but just needs the overview list saying "this is what we have, come on in and take a look" and it gets people to the content they are looking for more quickly.

It is more user friendly to do it as an extra list tab within the main forum to allow people to flick back and forth as required, but it is the only place a summary list appears, every time a user clicks on a link to actually go into the forum, they see the current ED discussion layout.

If you have, for example, Category 1 with sub-categories A, B and C, a normal forum would display the 3 sub-categories in a list with total views etc when you click on Category 1. EasyDiscuss however, just goes straight to the list of discussions in Category 1** (as it does now) and if I click on sub-category A (either from the overview list or from any link in Category 1), I go straight to the discussions in sub-category A (as it does now).

**The discussions in Category 1 would include all discussions from sub-categories A, B and C as well as any directly in Category 1 itself, in latest or popular order.

If I use the Simplistic layout as an example, the overview list is a list of Categories, sub-categories and sub-sub-cateogories with description (where the intro text normal is), total replies, views, votes and likes, the latest reply link in the bottom right as normal, parent category (possibly?) where the category normally goes on the left and maybe put the moderator details in the member box on the left or just hide it.

There are 2 options - Only the categories could be listed with subcategories placed inside the category box, as in Kunena forum (or perhaps put the sub categories in the empty member box on the left?), or let the list be every category and sub-category in that order, with (maybe) an admin option to show the detail (all) or summary (category) view.

The desired layout is not cast in stone, it is only to quickly show a visitor member "this is what we have, come on in" in a 'shop window' way to get them straight into the content area they want and the normal EasyDiscuss layout takes over from there after they make their selection.

Summary

I firmly believe you already have a Q&A/Forum combo that is way ahead of a standard forum but because the overview category list entry point is not easily visible within the main layout and EasyDiscuss was initially designed for a Q&A format, people still look for a forum 'design' without comparing the detail of ED to a forum.

If they did, they would realise it is all there, apart from the entry point list and a few title name changes that any user can do as shown in my language change list above.

I was a bit more detailed in the reply than intended, hope it helps to clarify what I believe is required.

I think it comes down to your vision of the UI/UX for your community. Belive me, EasyDiscuss can take serious transformation and you can shape it to match and feel whatever you have in mind from a UX/UI perspective.

The core look and feel will not suit everybody, it didn't suit me either. (that doesn't mean it's not good)
We worked on EasyDiscuss interface to obtain a grid style "widgets" layout (Boostrap 3) with forum images as main "post" image and also i kinda made some design change on how discussion detail looks like. Unfortunately i can't share public our actual EasyDiscuss design demo since it's not launched yet..

I will attach below some UI example to see what i mean, we adopted something similar, and yes of course it's a "forum" but from a different UX/UI approach, a more engaging one

Regarding Categories sorting. What we did we treated category selection as actually "filters" where category was one of the "filter" (together with other ones). We implemented the category selection just as a basic drop-down and you can switch categories really fast.
It's just a matter on your vision about the overall UX/UI experience. You can have post in a grid layout, a list layout, you can implement all kind of filters in the UI and so on.

I agree with you Mist, there are many different ways to filter and display content on EasyDiscuss that are just not possible on an (old fashioned) standard drill down forum and I like the concepts that you are following/adapting from the example images in your post.

The overview list is only one basic way and 'filter' is a perfect way to describe how it removes discussions as you move down through the sub-categories and I regard it as a basic requirement for people who are not 'code savvy' and unable to manipulate the 'out of the box' EasyDiscuss layout, showing them it is actually a Forum+++ product. I am sure Mark will find the best way to achieve the required goal and (hopefully) eliminate the repeat questions he receives for a forum template for EasyDiscuss.

You are quite right, once we take a step back and look at the possibilities for EasyDiscuss on its own or preferably combined with the other Stackideas products, it is only the constraints of our vision and access to coding skills that determines how effective we are in producing an engaging, responsive, mobile first website and i am sure you will achieve that, good luck with your site!

Thanks for the heads up on this guys!

Ok, decision made!

First of all, thank you all so much for helping me to consider the pros and cons of the various approaches. @Richard, your time to post and explain your approach is most welcome and @Mist , you've really made me consider another approach.

What I have decided

I have had a rethink and have now decided to fully embrace the questions and answers approach of EasyDiscuss. There are other sites that are already very popular in the community my site is targeting, so being different may help it to stand out from the crowd.

As a result, I've abandoned editing the language overrides etc, although I'm still going to look at some of the navigation tricks that Richard kindly posted.

@Mark - I think the following will be good for business

Mark, as you can see, I have changed my standpoint, thanks to the insights in this topic and I hope it will help others in a similar dilemma.

You have made a wonderful product in EasyDiscuss and going through some of the Q&A features yesterday with my partner after posting this thread, I've come to appreciate that side of the product, whereas I had previously dismissed it, as I wanted a 'forum'!

However, I think you may be missing a trick!

Imagine you are the owner of a successful and popular community based website, where the forum is the key ingredient.

People are used to the familiar layout of forums and we have all known of once popular websites that have lost many, many users thanks to a radical redesign that leaves users feeling lost in an environment not familiar to them. Yahoo! Mail anyone?

Let's face it, moving from a phpBB, Kunena or any other forum to EasyDiscuss is a radical move, that only the most brave of site owners of popular sites like these would undertake!

As an example, there is a now ED customer of yours who was a few months ago on another forum looking at switching his site from one of the legacy forums to something that is fully integrated with Joomla. I suggested that he should look at ED. He had already dismissed it on the grounds that it wouldn't be a suitable replacement, as it was not a 'proper' forum.

Now, we know this is not the case and as we can see from posts above, ED us actually more than just a forum. However, I can understand his initial viewpoint, as out of the box, it seems the very features someone like this is looking for when considering switching simply do not exist out of the box, but we know from what we've seen posted above, the underlying framework to create a familiar forum theme is pretty much there.

I could go through and find dozens of posts from people asking the same questions over and over again regarding such things as navigation modules and the like. IMHO, you should not need another module or hacks just so users can find what they are looking for.

In fact, I remember about three years ago looking at getting ED for a site with 20K visitors a month that I was redeveloping. Whilst I did get EasyBlog, I had dismissed ED as I felt it could alienate users.

Now, like me, the person I was referring to a few paragraphs back did in fact eventually choose ED. He too had considered Kunena, but I guess he must have came to the same conclusions as I did, that ED right now is the only viable alternative available for Joomla, especially if you want to integrate with other components.

But, I have noticed that he too has posted at least one of those recurring questions about navigation in ED.

So I'll cut to the chase

@Mark, I am sold, ED if for me and I am embracing this new thinking. But this has taken as you can see some convincing! For me, this is a new site with zero users, so there is in a sense no one to alienate if a familiar forum suddenly became ED overnight.

I think though that you could gain many, many new adopters, especially those like the person I was referring to earlier who run already established sites. Currently, it is too easy for them to dismiss ED. They'll have a play with the demo, read posts about people struggling with the navigation and will be put off, like I was and like he was. Initially.

Now, imagine if you developed a theme for such switchers that would allow them to for example migrate from Kunena and then use this new 'forum-like' theme to begin with. The issue of users feeling lost would be gone and navigation would remain familiar, although much more slick. Further more, users would immediately benefit from all of the goodness of ED and the other components!

After a while, a more native theme could be introduced, perhaps by giving users themselves the ability to use 'the old forum' or 'the exiting new layout'. Simply assigning different themes to Profile Types could achieve this.

With this approach, everybody wins. The users get a great new 'forum', the site owner gets a better platform to grow his or her community and Stackideas get to let Facebook and Google fight it out between them as to who is going to pay you $Billions of dollars for the company!

I guess if we release the "navigation" module for EasyDiscuss (On our old site template), this would really solve quite a bit of all the issues mentioned above.

That would indeed go a long way!

Thanks Mark I'll see what can be done because right now I am really very occupied with the development of EasyBlog 4 and EasySocial 1.3 I hardly have the time to visit the forums and helpdesk too lately

This is a really good thread everyone. I too struggle with EasyDiscuss and users who want a traditional forum. My issues are similar to some of the above and our listed below.

Some have confusion with the "comments" functionality on a post. Instead of commenting to reply to a post, they reply by creating a new post creating a flat discussion as opposed to the much more meaningful thread. I have no idea how to make that more clear in the UI though.. I think that's just a training element.

Another issue they run into is not understanding the voting system. I think if it were more like facebook where one can consider a post "Helpful" or "Not Helpful", that would clear it up. Maybe that's as easy as a language override.

Kunena has a great attachment/image management system, EasyDiscuss should follow suit.

Tapatalk would be wonderful. If I migrate Kunena now, I'd lose a lot of my mobile users.

Lastly something I would love to see is mention tagging. EasySocial allows you to @tag a person, I think this would be great for EasyDiscuss allowing the option to email a person upon @tag.

Hello Jaymz,

Thanks for the heads up on this. To be honest with you, we are planning to update EasyDiscuss as soon as EasyBlog 4 and EasySocial 1.4 is out. This is our plan