What is a user-friendly theme?

[bloc]

After working on the Simplicity theme - which was an idea to make a more "non-complex" theme - I want to re-visit that idea, but not using the same look of course.

So...what do you think is user-friendly features in a theme?

Things that "non-forum" or "first-time" users would think was intuitive and straightforward? I am not thinking of look-alike themes for popular forum scripts, or "fancy" effects, I am really after what will make it easier to navigate, understand how a forum functions etc.

Any thoughts is most welcome.

[!Hachi!]

i think SMF Is user friendly.
well i like addional options in theme like....mod`s team./top posters.
     and use light color like in simplicity.... after that i think its perfect.....

[aIZe]

It's hard to say, cause the time when I was unfamiliar with forum scripts is long ago.

But I recall, that I had some trouble to find the "proceed to the next page of Posts" Buttons in thread view. These Buttons should be really eye-catching and just in the place where suspected.

And since internet-connections are getting faster and faster (but not everyones) it should be decidable by the user how much posts there are shown on one page. This might get a bit too complicated for a theme, maybe worth a mod. Anybody volunteering?

I really like one feature of phpBB not included in SMF so far. The BBCode is briefly explained in an dynaimically changing textarea in the posting-view. That's very helpfull for everyone who is not that familiar with BBC (and HTML). Maybe a questionmark near the BBC buttons refering to the BBC help page. The more familiar peaple may be thankfull for an option to turn this off.

The function of the blue "new" button in Thred overview (MessageIndex) seems to be a very good kept secret. Maybe because of it's position, cause behind the title it is not noticed immediately. I would suggest making the symbols for "normal" "hot" and "very hot" topics clickable (referring to ...#new) and showing some alternative symbols or a "new" overlay if there are new posts. I think this may be more intuitive. And for perfection, I think it would look better not to make a seperate column for the thred symbols, but to place them into the column of the title (text floating around or backgroung no-repeat)

And one last thought:
Nearly everyone (except the arabian and traditional chinese world) is reading from left to right.
That's to say things placed left are the more importat ones, cause they are recognized at first sight.
And now, what is more important? The post or its auther? Wouldn't it be more consequential if the column containing all the infos of the author is placed on the right side?

Greetz, aIZe

[Miraenda]

Ok, I wanted to provide a link to a phpBB skin that has a left-side menu rather than one at the top:

http://www.anythingeverything.org/phpbb/

This is esbardu skin off one of my test sites.  Now, I agree with aIZe that most users read from left to right and this is why left-based navigation is very popular (and why I provided the above link).  I'm not calling for a look alike to this skin to be created, but I think that design-wise having a left sided navigation for the components would make it most user-friendly rather than at the top or right.

Another design I liked has icons rather than forums for each of the various forums.  It had a left-based navigation for the primary options, then forum categories as icons to the left.  You would then select the forum in this manner.  Since people are very visual, having quick loading, easy to see icons with text beneath them for each of the forums might be easier for new users (like the hosting control panels also do).  I'd try to find a picture if I could. The issue with this idea is that you'd have to have a bunch of available icons, but they could be provided like in an icon gallery that people choose to use for the category they create.

Sorry if any of that above doesn't make sense.

[bloc]

No, I think i understand, Miraenda. The c-panel example is very enlightning.

aIZe, very interesting ideas, especially the messageindex changes is something I really could  build on. Also changing author/display is a big question..is the author or the post the most important?

[theantidote]

Buttons with text are always important, not just icons.

[PopLife]

Don't know if this is possible, but maybe Java pop-ups that give a sort of tutorial for first time users. 

[bloc]

You mean javascript? Helpful popups could be something, although power-users would probably want to turn it off.

Texts on button is important yes - or buttons with texts next to them. Just icons are probably puzzling for the first-timer.

[aIZe]

Popups?! Not for me, thank you. I really hate sites popping into foreground and/or containing popups. And BTW a fair amount of users wont even recognize, that there should be an Popup, cause their Popup-Blocker is on and well-working. Even so called newbies may have such a tool installed (or they are using opera or firefox which have the Popup-Blocker integrated)

Concerning the alignment of author and post:
In my pre SMF time I walked across the Jasidogdotcom template for phpBB, which is AFAIK the only template aligning the autor at the right side. You may get an impression of how this can look like.
Another IMHO nice looking detail is the line petween post and author which reminds me of a fold (in a book or magazine) cause this doesn't seperate the two columns that extremely.

is the author or the post the most important?

You may want to initiate a poll.
It's basically the question if you use your arguments to fight the opinion of the other person, then knowing who the author was is most important, or if you want to contribute your arguments to a developing thread, then the post itself is more important. I think there is no question of what discussion style is preferable.

[bloc]

Yeah, popups are probably not so good..the "help text" aspect, is that important I wonder?

I don't know why author is on the left in most themes, but I agreed that the post actually is the most important. People look at the text first, next they might look at author.

Is the author section overcrowded? I have had some newbies saying they really just notice on/off and personal text. The rest is *perhaps* noticed. Maybe some way to hide or obscure it , but make it rapidly accessible as an option.

Same perhaps on the front page..there is a lot of info there as well. Probelem is to find out what is the most relevant and easily understandable.

[Miraenda]

I did want to note that it might be great if you could also allow users to change what detail is available on the homepage screen of the forum.  This way you could cut back on details for new users and still allow typical forum regulars to customize the look to what they would like to see.  Might be more than you wanted to do though.  Typically, the admin decides primarily what people see for layout and details overall, but it would be nice to have a board where actually the user gets a bit more choices than they currently have on what they can/can't see...

This is along the lines of how desktop applications work, where users can configure their options more fully.  Online sites that have user friendly interfaces that let you customize also do this.  Forums do to some degree, but really not all out full customization as many site owners like some kind of authoritarian control I guess (but if I had a theme where I could let users have more control on what they customize to see so long as they stay within the same theme, I would welcome this)

Actually, you could even have a forum walkthrough wizard where as people signup they decide what they want the default layout to look like, this way you don't need to decide what details are important to the newcomer, they decide during the wizard...

[bloc]

Having lots of things as options for each user is possible. Its a good idea, catering for both newbies as well as seasoned users. How to work that into the registration is perhaps more difficult, since the setting of the options will have to be on the profilepage..but maybe a redirection to profilepage 2 or indeed the normal profile page, right after registration could be it.

Assuming registration is immediate, otherwise some other scheme has to be performed.

[loudog]

Well in my hobby, nearly all the other sites but my own, use EZboards. A few use PHPBB. Not sure why, but they do. I have a hard time trying to compete with them, not sure if its because my forum is more advanced or what. Once they get used to my site they are hooked, but getting past the begining is the tough part.

I think you could do a theme with two buttons at the top. The default would be easy, then there could be a more advanced version. The two buttons would be a simple Beginer/Advanced . When starting out with the default Beginer mode, the button at the top would then say "Switch to advanced mode" or vise versa. The easy version would have less buttons/options/tables/clutter/ etc.... the advaced would be a full feature bomb.

This is one of the more popular EZboards in my hobby. Not maybe for design, but ease of use

http://p083.ezboard.com/bjoesdiecastshack

[Burpee]

Bloc, perhaps my Clarity concept will give you some ideas as well.

[bloc]

Thanks for the the updater, Burpee.

I have read through that again, and it has quite a few good ideas. I will probably make this into a less-is-more theme, with a simple click to be a power-user-theme. But overall it should be very user-friendly.