I've been wanting to add a few more "default" forums to vizzed but when we add a new forum to 1 category, we have to add a forum to the category to the side of it as well to help balance out the layout of the board index page



Here are some forums I've been wanting to add for a while now:



Information (Town Square)
This forum would be a ton of threads dedicated to providing information to users of vizzed. The threads of this forum would never close so that users could respond to the topics at any time. The topics would be based on the 'Terminology and Features' section in the 'Help Center' as seen here:
https://www.vizzed.com/boards/controlpanel.php?category=help&help=terminology

Basically I'd turn each of those topics into their own thread and then that page would simply just return all of the threads in that forum.

Another benefit to doing this is that staff members could edit my threads to edit or add information and that'd be reflected on that terminology page.



Game Characters (Vizzed.com)
This would involve the Game Characters feature. This would work similar to how the 'Game Articles', 'Game Reviews', 'Game Guides' and 'Game Discussion' forums work. You'd be able to make a thread that gets connected to a Game Character if you wanted to discuss a game character specifically. Now that's not the reason why I want to do this though. Here's the main reason.

I want good written bios for characters. This would allow a user to write up a character bio in the form of a thread and the contents of that thread would be applied to the character's bio on that characters page. Any thread that'd get created in the 'Bio' sub forum of that forum would be eligible for being the default bio for that character. Basically my script would take the highest rated bio for each character and apply it as the default (if there is only 1, that bio would have to not have a bad rating to qualify).

There are 6 huge benefits to going about character bios this way:
1. Users who write bios would be able to increase their post and word count for doing so.
2. Users would be able to get feedback on their bios and be able to make revisions based on that.
3. Users would get credit for the bios that they write (currently you can't see who wrote a bio).
4. Moderators could help keep track and monitor the bios written more easily to help prevent plagiarized content.
5. Bad written bios would automatically be removed
6. A user would be able to modify their bio later even after no longer being a staff member

You can see an example of a character page that has a bio here:
https://www.vizzed.com/videogames/character.php?id=2187



Minecraft (Gamers Circle)
We currently have a Minecraft forum but it's a rented forum. This would basically involve making that forum a primary forum. I think the forum gets enough activity to justify being a primary forum and I think it'd help promote the current vizzed minecraft server some more as well. A lot of time has gone into the vizzed minecraft server and it's become a big part of vizzed so I think it'd make sense that the forum for it gets more attention. Of course users would be able to talk about non-vizzed Minecraft stuff in that forum as well.



As I said earlier, adding these forums would make the forum index page unbalanced since the 3 new forums that I've proposed above would all be placed into the left forum categories. This means that if we were to add the 3 forums that I mentioned above, we'd also have to add 3 new forums to the following categories:
-Vizzed Ville North
-Entertainment Avenue
-Vizzed Ville South

What do you guys think of the idea of adding new forums? What do you guys think of the forum ideas that I came up with? And what ideas to 3 more forums can you guys come up with?

I would definitely think the Minecraft forum would be a great addition.

I also like the Information forum, you could also put ALL your announcements and threads like this one in there.

Light Knight : I actually already have a forum dedicated to News and Updates.

Great ideas! I'm really happy with them.

I especially like the first idea and the second one. The first one is also a great way to let Newbies know about the Vizzed Boards. Plus the idea of an information forum and that the Staff is able to change the information is really awesome. The second one is great way to let users know about different characters and franchises. The Minecraft forum doesn't sound all that great to me but I think it will work out well. Many users love Minecraft and our own server.

Also, do you plan to hire another Local Moderator for the new forums?

If I have an idea, I'll be sure to post it here.

TornadoMudkip : If we added these new forums then we'd probably need to hire 1 or 2 more locals.

Information really needs to be a thing. It would make it easier to update the "Terminology and Features", and that's something neat.

The Game Characters sounds like a good addition. The same staff doing the Video Game Character Manager role could write this bios, to guarantee high quality. I'm not saying they should be the only ones writing in that forum, but they should be the ones to write the official bios.

About Minecraft, I think it was about time it got included in the main forum, seeing how many competitions you hold there and how important is becoming lately to Vizzed. It would make it easier for everyone if it was a main forum instead of a rented one.

I have no ideas for Entertainment Avenue nor Vizzed Ville South, I think we already cover everything. About Vizzed Ville North, maybe could we move there Geezer Corner and make it a somewhat advanced Café Corner? We could change Café Corner to teenagers between 13-18 and Geezer Corner for +18 (I'm saying 18 because it's when you come of age here in Europe, I don't mind changing it for 21 like happens in the US).

I personally think these are good ideas for new forums. I have an idea for a new forum that could be added to the Entertainment Avenue, and that's Books. Even though I'm not a big fan of book reading, I feel like there should be a forum dedicated to those who love reading books like Harry Potter for example.

Davideo7 : That was a quick response, thanks! ~

This might work for the Vizzed Ville North -  A club forum. A forum meant to create clubs and let people join them. A way to make friends easier, In a club you'll do various things together and it is an easy way to meet each other. Also sharing your passions like Pokémon. It might be a little spammy but maybe it works just fine.

If we take the literature part from stories/simulation/art and add it to entertainment avenue, that could make its own forum. Not sure how active it would be though.

An idea I have had for vizzed ville north is Religion. We have a Christian forum already but it would be nice to have one for other religions or just religion in general.


I definitely like the three you mentioned.

gamerforlifeforever2 :
Furret :

I really think we should have that Books forum. In my opinion, Stories/Simulation/Art is more for users to post their work instead of talking about other authors. We could have sub-forums for each genre, but as Furret said, there's no clue on how active would it be. Also, should we take out the Comics/Manga form Cartoons/Anime and add it to Books as a sub-forum instead? 

On another note, I'm agnostic, so I don't really care about the Religion forum, but I think that this community is mostly Christian and thus there's no need for such forum. By the way, there's already a sub-forum about it in Debate/Logic/News Discussion, and I don't think we should take it out of there.

Definitely think these are nice ideas. I'm up for all of them.

I had a really good recommendation of a forum but I just lost the idea. 

I would have to agree that Minecraft should have it's own forum. It's popularity is such that it would be good to have a dedicated place for people to talk about it. Also it would be a nice advertising point to get people to notice content in the Forums.

I guess I could also get on board with the video game characters section for cool bios and whatnot. Sounds like it could be cool.

EX Palen : I feel like manga and anime need to stay where they are, and comics and perhaps cartoons can go to the literature forum. If I'm not mistaken, an anime is made from a manga series, so they go hand in hand.

As for the religion forum, even if most of the site is Christian, I still feel like it would be worth a main forum slot. The Christian forum is the second most active rented forum judging by post count, so really all the change would do is make it more active by adding other religions and make place for another new rented forum.

I couldn't care any less about minecraft but info and more video game related forums is needed in a bad way.

I agree with EX and the others on a specific Book forum. But maybe an entire Publications forum. Books/ebooks/graphic novels/comic books/magazines

For Vizzed Ville South, why don't you turn Things old Youtube forum into an official Youtube Forum in addition to Web Splurge?

I'm pretty happy about this. Adding these new forums would give the Vizzed Board's activity a boost! I really like the ideas that you have suggested.

I think having a Religion forum would be a great idea, like Furret suggested. I'm struggling a lot to come up with good ideas for new forums so far but I will let you know if I come up with an idea and I don't forget about it.

I like the sound of these new forums- they'll certainly increase traffic and that info forum will be especially helpful.

However, I'm wondering about the Minecraft forum. If it was implemented would the rented MC forum be merged into it?

EX Palen : I didn't even think to mention all of the Minecraft competitions that I host.

gamerforlifeforever2 : Books is a possibility if there are enough users to read books and would post in there.

TornadoMudkip : That's a possibility if that generates enough interest.

Furret :
EX Palen :
If I were to make a poll, I bet the majority of users are not Christian actually. Now if we were to ask what percentage of religious users were Christian, then I'd say a majority of them probably would be Christian. In other words, I don't think there are enough people on the site that belong to a religion that isn't Christianity to justify a religion forum.

zanderlex : A YouTube forum sounds interesting.

Davideo7 : It wouldn't be just Youtube really, streaming also. Like a place to discuss those streams where users voted on the music competitions. Results could be posted there too as well as other thoughts.

I think having my Minecraft forum as a pernament forum is a good idea and having me and Mrfe modding that forum (or other mods).

Maybe once we get that done, I will ether auction my current Minecraft forum or keep it and make somekind of Mythology forum. Not sure on what to think at this moment