New Years Message from your friendly Admin Team

[Mr Anderson]

Are we going to be having another change to the forum set up as well?

I hope so, this one is sh!te

That's not really relevant to the question.

Is it expected that the front end is to become more dominant, and the forum less so? I was under the impression that wasn't the case, and that the forum IS the community. If so then the "community" aspect of the front end takes on a different relevance (however not in respect to the choice of software used), and a little more needs to be discussed than what has been covered so far.

In what way is the front end going to be "community" orientated?

[Mr Anderson]

I'm confused - where does the "community" aspect come in to it? Are we going to be having another change to the forum set up as well?

It's not been decided or maybe even thought about by the admins but 'roles' was mentioned back on page 1. If people want to submit articles via a cms then in my mind you don't really want free and open access to a submit form. If people are registered on the forum then it makes sense to bridge the details between all parts of the site. Would be a way of dealing with Copyright issues as well.
My thoughts anyways.

Both WP and Joomla can have user roles set (already discussed above), and SMF can be bridged with Joomla and Wordpress too.

[Jeep Stone]

I think I mentioned community. Whilst we're already a community, the feel of somewhere, where the content is shared between frontend blog and forum seems more geared towards Joomla. However, I would suggest that Wordpress is a better blog than those that are normally integrated with Joomla. Joomla seems better at managing content from multiple authors.

[Curry]

Are we going to be having another change to the forum set up as well?

I hope so, this one is sh!te

That's not really relevant to the question.

I'm sorry, I thought it was. 

You asked if we where going to change the Forum set up and I wanted to give my opinion on your question.

I won't comment on whether or not to use WP or Joomla because I've had little need for either of them so far.

Matt

[Mr Anderson]

I'm sorry, I thought it was. 

Not in the context of my question.

We all know you think SMF is shite already anyway

[slaughteredlamb]

Are we going to be having another change to the forum set up as well?

I hope so, this one is sh!te

Is it expected that the front end is to become more dominant, and the forum less so?
<SNIP>
In what way is the front end going to be "community" orientated?

Personally, and this is just a personal opinion, I see the front end becoming more dominant than it currently is or ever has been BUT I don't see the forum being less dominant.

In all versions of DDN the forum has been totally isolated from the rest of the site to the point that once in the forum you had absolutely no idea that there was any other part of the site. In my opinion, and perhaps this is a naive opinion, I think that the main reason that the front end never really got used was done to poor design. Everyone just came to the forum, set it in their favourites and would never think to explore anywhere else. I'm just thinking off the top of my head here but if we had modules down one or both side of the forum that had say a main menu linking to other sections of the site, modules showing the titles of latest articles in each section, latest comments on articles, Tag clouds etc etc then people just using the forum would be able to see when any new content was added and choose to read it/comment on it if they wish.

This is, again personally, how I see the front end being more 'community' orientated by allowing and most importantly promoting member involvment beyond that of 'just' a forum.

[Mr Anderson]

I don't think the front end used to be badly designed, not in a way that would stop people using it if they already had an inclination to do so (unless you mean the forum was badly designed by not featuring the front as much as it could have) - and it was always possible for the community to add to it, in the last few iterations at the very least. That's why there are so many old articles on there. The problem with getting the forum to feed activity through to the front end is apathy, plain and simple. We're a lazy shower that doesn't like to venture too far from where it's comfortable and easy to interact. Installing either Wordpress or Joomla is not going to change that, the only thing that will is some form of incentive (and I don't mean being paid or rustling up the odd competition) for the current members to change their habits, or to draw in some new blood who are more enthusiastic about contributing beyond the immediacy of a forum - which is the hard part as without fresh content it's going to be hard to attract fresh blood.