How to improve my Discourse community?

[Bas (Bas van Leeuwen)]

Hey @AquaL1te !

I took a quick look, few random remarks, quite a few are personal preference. By virtue of your question, most of my response will be negative, I was looking for things to be improved. A lot is going right (starting with the choice of platform of course). So don’t be alarmed. None of this is to be taken as gospel, it’s just my input

• I like the design, it’s clean. And the sparks of color are nice.
• On the flipside: there might be too much white. And using icons for everything makes for a cluttered environment.
  • Applying a bit of background to your tags might already help. E.g.
    
    vs. something quickly marked up
    
• Your welcome/about topic doesn’t explain the purpose of the forum.
  
  
• It also doesn’t tell me as (potential) member, what I can expect out of the forums.
• I see a lot of “automated” posts. These unfortunately have 0 replies, this gives a ghost-town feeling. Consider muting the automated categories for a while.
• In fact, it’s not articulated anywhere what benefits your members can get out of participating.
• I’m not sure what your target audience is. Will your members already know about you or is this a first impression?
  • If the latter, you need a clearer introduction on the movement and its purpose
• you probably need harsher moderation, having comments like public on will drive away a lot of people
  NATO/Ukraine: Playing Russian Roulette with Complex Life | Frankly #33 - #2 - Audio - TZM Forum
• I find the font (Raleway) fairly hard to read.
• You have useful links (e.g. the about page) in the footer, but the footer is almost never visible due to Discourse’s infinite-scroll. Those links should be moved to a top-menu or the sidebar.
• I think your welcome banner could use some work
  • I’d rename the “quick start guide” to something like “Welcome to TZM One”
  • Global chapters is great, shows your reach.
  • I wouldn’t put a link to categories there, your forum is small enough that people will find their way around without it. Especially now with the sidebar present.
  • You are presenting a “your preferences” link to anonymous users in your top-banner. It’s unusable for those without an account. Better to remove and decrease information load.
  • Add your about page here as a link.

Keep in mind that 5 regular users are enough to start something nice