The discussion revolves around a portfolio site using Discourse, shared by nolo. The site has been heavily customized to remove forum and community elements, and only allows logged-in users (via GitHub authentication) to post on a Guestbook topic. nolo seeks feedback on the site’s UX and functionality.
nolo has received positive feedback from tmn and Alexander on the site’s design and customization. However, Tris20 pointed out that the like button is restricted to users, which may deter engagement. nolo considered hiding the like button or adding dummy likes to make the site look more engaged.
JimPas provided insight into why many sites restrict liking to registered users, citing the prevention of fake likes and the desire to build a user base.
It’s not supposed to be a forum or community, so I threw out quite a lot of elements and functionality. Would be great to hear some feedback if the ux is intuitive, if there’s glitches, or it all makes sense overall.
As a particular feature logging in only enables you to post on a Guestbook topic. I only linked authentication for that to GitHub. Not sure yet how to set this up best. I want it simple and don’t offer many choices.. do you feel that works?
Nice design. One interesting thing about this though is that the like button is restricted to users, so unless I register to the blog I can’t like any of the topics
Yeah, it’s the default Discourse like button. It also seems the default anywhere? Or do you know a site where you can like without being signed in? Would be curious to see an example.
Maybe I should just hide it as well.. or put some dummy likes myself, so it doesn’t look so unloved
The same exists on some other forums (different platforms) as well as trying to like comments on websites (some news sites where comments are allowed). Many times they have a Facebook sign-in to comment.
One reason for this is so a comment cannot garner an exorbitant number of likes from anonymous users liking a comment, leaving, returning and liking it again, or the poster liking their own comment. Another reason is because the site wants to build up their user base.
