Fancy Extras

Symon · Posted: Wed Jul 05, 2006 9:15 pm

We all would love our forum to be the best, but sometimes you can go to far.

Adding Chat-boxes, moving images, scrolling texts and picture links on your front page, might look great, but it also can be very dangerous to the growth of your forum.

Let me explain,

Now not everyone is on broadband, so if you have too much on your front Page it might take someone on dial-up 5 minutes just to load it.

This would put anybody off almost straight away.

Also too much Java programs or flash programs is also another killer, again not all people have flash player installed, so to them it would slow them down and look horrible as they would not see what you have put on there.

Some admins like to put moving images in their forum description, thinking it looks cool, again too many of these will make the forum look untidy and if it takes forever to load. it would again stop many a new member from joining.

To me the key is getting the balance right, to have one or two extras is a good idea.
Some of the most popular forums on MyFreeForum do not use any extras at all on their home page. Fancy extras will not make a forum more popular only a well run forum with good quality post will do this.