I’d like to use Discourse and already set it up successfully. However, the decisionmakers don’t like it much citing that it’s too complicated (but the alternatives are technically quite bad, so this is still our best bet). I’ll remove elements visually that they consider clutter, but there were a few wishes that I don’t believe are possible (my modification skills cover CSS), but correct me if I’m wrong.
Reverse the order of posts in a topic to last on top → a quick search here told me it’s not possible.
Instead of the floating composer, embed it at the top right below the OP, but above the last post (if reversing was possible) and also disable the preview.
Make it more like Reddit in a way that replies to a particular post don’t appear on the top level, ONLY under the quoted post and have the “X Repies” open by default. → This is not just a reveal with custom CSS as that element is not in the DOM until opened. Automatically clicking these buttons via JS on page load sounds a bit hacky. Hiding them from top level can be done via CSS :has() but again feels like abusing the core. Interestingly the Post Voting plugin does something similar.
Make it more clear what each reply button does, to whom the reply goes to. They kept seeing a forest of reply buttons, and now that I think of it, I can understand there is really a lot.
I believe many concerns stem from not being used to Discourse or a misunderstanding or assumptions over how people will use the forum and why. I’m aware these go against the core philosophy of Discourse but they reason that the default UX deters non-technical people not used to Forums, but social media. What should I do, apart from convincing them it is fine as it is?
BTW, in my foruming activities I was never too hung up on who replied to what (there are quotations if it’s really important for context), and the flat view has always been logical. The reply features are more like a spice to me than a forced way to make subthreads.
Yes I think we see this effect ourselves in feedback from customers — there’s a definite pull to make the interface more similar to social media because those are interfaces people are generally most familiar with now.
As much as I appreciate that you’re trying to make Discourse work, it’s not always the best fit for everyone.
The request for nested replies like reddit is specifically complicated, we’ve had requests for this before and have estimated internally that it could take months of work to implement in a stable way… and this doesn’t include the ongoing work we’re doing right now to modernize our topic layout (removing our proprietary widget system in favor of ember components).
To simplify, I might consider:
Hiding embedded replies entirely… some people get confused and expect this to be threading when it’s not. It’s easy enough to hide the “N replies” buttons with CSS.
Consider hiding the reply button in the timeline on the right of the topic content… this is meant to make it easy to “reply to topic” from anywhere in the post, but without knowing the difference between “reply to topic” and “reply to post” it might be added noise.
Consider hiding some buttons at the bottom of every topic. There are some redundancies here, like bookmarks, flags, and shares (which are also present on every post).
Sorry this isn’t more helpful in regard to your specific questions — but there’s only so much that can be done at the moment without significant development time. Good luck!
as a user for a while, comparing to other forum platforms, I feel this one is designed pretty good. for the issues your mentioned, you may think differently after getting familiar with … just my 2c…
there are different themes, you may want to try, and with css/theme component, you could easily simplify more if needed …
What you describe is the track I continually find that I am carving out with many of my Discourse sites.
Discourse is really great for me in that way. As a theme developer I love that Discourse kind of already has an everything-but-the-kitchen-sink approach (“under the hood”).
I design and create solutions best and most efficiently using a subtractive process, and Discourse provides me a super long and super fast runway which is why it continues to be my go-to platform as a starting point for developing all sorts of sites.
Simplify simplify simplify is my daily mantra. And if my first iteration is lacking something and I need a “Plan B”, then, with Discourse as a development platform I always seem to find that my options are really unlimited.
As a designer simplifying a cluttered UI is a snap. Just remove and hide stuff until it just has only the features — and nothing more — for the specific use case.
And of course the robust community of developers here on meta is the most fun and the best asset of all to help keep me motivated and move quickly and painlessly through any challenges I run up against.
I am curious about what the decision makers use now. Apparently you have been tasked with selecting and implementing a forum system. Perhaps they should trust their initial decision to trust you in the first place.
Sometimes folks, especially decisionmakers, need to comment or challenge implementation of a given system. I think it helps them feel like their opinion matters.
I know, I did not provide technical help with your request. Sorry.
Whew, end of rant. Seems I flashed back to working days dealing with organizational nonsense. Yikes
It might be worth trying to convince the decision makers that a lot of thought went into Discourse’s design. It’s intended to promote the idea of conversations, as opposed to a one-off comment system where each comment is expected to stand on its own. That’s why things like reverse post order, or promoting the most popular comment to the top of the thread were not implemented.
I agree that the UI could be simplified. You might get some inspiration from Sam's Simple Theme. I think it only deals with the topic list page, but it gives some ideas about what can be accomplished with CSS.
Nothing, we are starting from scratch. Briefly I tried wpForo within WP but I didn’t like the idea of just 1 server doing all the work.
I’ve sense that and it’s what I’m aiming for. I’ve been unable to force reverse order and threaded view into the design, but will embrace the flatness.
They had the most problem with the seemingly-double occurrence of the same post when you open the “replies” using the button. Thats where their idea came from that it was confusing. I got rid of that.
Also the scroll to on the “this post is a reply to x” was deemed confusing, so I made it non-clickable. We’ll show the users that if they reply to an older post, use the quote feature, that actually embeds that single post within the reply and it’s unambigous that way.
The first post needed to stand out visually and the reply buttons had to convey to whom they would post a reply to (to the topic in general or to a particular person).
I started with the Graceful theme, and wrote like 500 lines of CSS to tailor it to our needs.
Agree. I even removed the bookmarking feature (as the watching and the browser bookmarks are good enough). And the flagging, as this is like a mastermind group, it’s likely that they will behave and I’ll read everything anyway as a mod, but when we feel like we need it, I’ll bring it back.
Yup, the “noise” was the primarly complaint. But I kinda like the reply button to the entire topic being on the OP and at the bottom only. Especially with autoscroll to first unread, it directs users to actually read the conversation.
We don’t even need the shares as it’s private forum anyway. For a brand new unestablished forum, the flagging is also intimidating. We’ll see how unruly this small community is.