How have you made your forum UX simpler?

[Shawn Gossman]

Have you ever done things to make the UX (user experience) of your forum simpler?

I feel like the forum UX is what stops a lot of people from joining these days. Many people are too lazy to learn new things.

What have you done to make your forum simple through UX features?

 

[AWS]

I use the fluid forum home that is available in IPB. The threads and posts are what you see. No drilling down through forums.

 

[Shawn Gossman]

I use the fluid forum home that is available in IPB. The threads and posts are what you see. No drilling down through forums.

I can see where that would be helpful to some folks but for me, I like that traditional way. However, I'm used to that way and newer generations aren't.

 

[Tracy]

The threads and posts are what you see. No drilling down through forums.

I can see the benefit of that on a general chatter site.
But for niche specific ones it could easily be a detraction. If I go to a site in my niche, I really don't care about filtering through the EAA, reflector, binocular <insert all the other niche fields here> posts. To have to thread through an endless list of posts for a busy site would be more of a detraction.
I am usually looking for something specific. It is much easier (and generally faster) to go to an index listing of various categories then go to that category and check for new posts/read.