What do you think about tags page

Blueh

Hi guys, I really dont know if will there are categories besides tags, but I want to know what do you think about the current presentation of tags page, which is super different from traditional forums (where categories order is vertical)

some examples of classic presentation:
- xenforo 2
- nodebb
- discourse (mixture)

also esotalk has a classic presentation but more simple , anyway, I'm not against new proposals

meetdilip

I won't say it's good or bad. But it would be possible to run a successful forum with current set-up.

Blueh

definitely works, but am I the only nostalgic with the traditional style? it would be possible change it with a theme o need more deep modification?

sledov

If you just don't like two column presentation of tags, try to put something like this into your custom css.

.TagTiles>li {
    width: 100%;
}

.TagTile-children a {
    clear: right;
    display: block;
}

I don't think mimicking traditional look is a good idea, though. Hierarchical structures is a matter of the past.

Blueh

matter of the past? all other forums use a vertical listing and this grid makes me think about windows 8.0 mosaic , which was a disaster ?

Davis

Blueh ? logical fallacy

I’d say the tags page does its job in a unique way, but doesn’t function too well when it’s set as the lander page.

BartVB

My main problem with tags is that they are used for several incompatible concepts.

On flarum.org they are both categories/forums and tags in the classical sense. For example 'Performance' is a tag and not a forum. For me that's not really intuitive, a random user will probably thing that's rather confusing.

Davis

BartVB For example 'Performance' is a tag and not a forum

I don’t really understand what you mean when you say it’s “not a forum”. Could you define a forum? Could you go into a bit more depth about what you mean because I don’t quite understand?

sledov

Davis I don’t really understand what you mean when you say it’s “not a forum”.

Many classical forums follow this structure: Site->Category->Forum-Thread->Post. Forum is a group of Threads. This is a first level of categorization above Thread.

Many forums implement Tags as well, but they are more transient. People normally can create tags on the fly, can assign multiple tags to the same post, etc. Tags are just labels and do not form hierarchical structures.

Flarum only has Tags. What BartVB saying is that there are primary tags, that act as "Forums" (or Categories) in the classical sense. And there are secondary tags such as "Performance." They just refine the classification of Threads that already belong to some Category.

Pollux

In my forum I use a tag with the only purpose to hide discussions from the All discussions view. I described my setting in Pollux . For cases like this, it would be nice to have an option to hide these tags from the normal users.

BartVB

Exactly what sledov says ?

Tags are used for a lot of different things. They can be categories, they can be forums, they are also used as tags and they can be 'abused' to modify the behaviour of the software like Pollux mentions.

From can be justified from an information architecture standpoint. All tags group content in a certain way, the different kinds of tags just have different restrictions. But from a UI point of view they current situation is rather confusing in my opinion.

jordanjay29

sledov Do note that Tags is just an extension for Flarum, it's not part of the core software. Even if it's an officially provided extension, it could easily be disabled, forked or replaced with an extension that provided a more classical hierarchy. The Tags extension is just one interpretation of such organization.

Blueh

jordanjay29 is there any final decision about extensions that will be included in the basic download? I mean the basic package you download to install

UaMV

Related: There is this discussion which proposes an extension that would allow user-defined hashtags. As mentioned in that thread, the Tags extension is intended to replace traditional categories.

jordanjay29

Blueh Not really. Though the list of includes extensions generally hasn't changed since Beta 3 or 4, there's always a chance a new first party extension will get created or something else will change. Why?

fvila

Hi folks,

I'm new to open source so please excuse any faux pas I may be making here... I'm basing myself on the page https://discuss.flarum.org/, so I may be missing other parts of the site.

As a first-time user, I find the tags on Flarum to be a bit confusing.

They behave more like a table of contents than tags, with main entries and sub-entries.
On the other hand, they don't offer the expand-collapse icons that tell you there are sub-entries below.
In my mind if you are using tags as an author you can throw any number of them at a piece of content, or combine them freely in your search if you are a user.
Another type suggested by the layout - that fits the actual behavior better than the table of contents - would be filters. In my experience these are usually represented with checkboxes so you can combine multiple entries.

Another thing I expect to find in the first page (maybe that's configurable?) would be a home page with:

a description of the purpose of the site
a list of the categories (or forums, or subjects, or whatever) available, with a description of each and a few statistics on the usage (total number of posts, latest update...)
When you click on each tag you get a description of that tag, at the top of the page. But you have to click for each, so you don't get an overall view.

One thing that might limit the usefulness of the color coding would be for color-blind people.
What adds to the question marks in my head is that the tags are highly colorful and visible, in fact maybe more so than the actual list of posts.
Once the forum is selected I don't think you need to see the list all the time. You should have access to opening the list easily if you decide you're not in the right place.

clarkwinkelmann

fvila hello and welcome !

fvila a description of the purpose of the site

You should have seen a banner that serves just that purpose. Once dismissed it doesn't come back though. If it doesn't fit your needs there's plenty of ways to extend the homepage through custom CSS or an extension.

fvila a list of the categories (or forums, or subjects, or whatever)

In Flarum, those are called tags. Tags behave like categories or (sub-)forums in most other softwares. This should explain why tags probably aren't your typical expectations of tags.

One big difference is that a discussion can have multiple tags at once (you can configure that in Flarum admin settings), hence the naming. There are also primary and secondary tags. The best is to play around with them on a test forum to understand how they can be used 😉

Traditional tags (we could call them hashtags maybe ? It sure is a bit confusing) could be added via another extension. I don't think anybody made such an extension yet.

fvila with a description of each and a few statistics on the usage

You can access the Tags page from the homepage. There you find descriptions for each tags and some other information. For a "classical" forum layout you can have a look at the Koseki extension by Reflar Koseki also adds additional stats like discussion count.

fvila One thing that might limit the usefulness of the color coding would be for color-blind people.

Feel free to set your own colors, use custom CSS or an extension to improve accessibility. You can even contribute back to the forum if you find something to improve in the core software !

fvila Once the forum is selected I don't think you need to see the list all the time

What list are you talking about ? The sidebar with the list of tags is only visible on the homepage as far as I know. Do you mean hiding the list of tags once a tag is selected ? Unless you have something else to put in the sidebar I think it's nice to keep it.

The best thing about Flarum is its extensibility. All the things you mentioned can be changed via an extension if needed. If you're not into coding it could be a bit challenging but you can find many great developers here if needed. And Flarum is already great even without any custom extension, don't hesitate to give it a try !