I personally like them because they keep your index page free of "the long scroll down" just to get to the bottom of the page. But then again I never really thought about how much of a hassle it would be to have them.

My general layout is for example:

Name of Board: Description. Includes: Names of Subboards.

But then when it comes to role playing things I do the same thing.

The Forrest: A dark and spooky place. Includes: The Cottage, The stream, & The caves.


But I'm not sure if it's too confusing.
What do you guys think?

As stated it's the exact same thing I do.

The Docks; Shipyard, Warehouses, Offices
The Studio; On Set, About the Lot, Offices

Etc, Etc. In MHO that cuts up the geographic area with five or so main boards, then most common RP locations on the sub-boards.

They're helpful, but you can go overboard. Personally, I like to keep a board as sub-forum free as possible, and add them in as I see fit. For example, if you have a city RPG with a forum called "____ street," with a blurb about what's there, and half the threads there are all set inside some cafe, then I'd probably end up making a subforum for that cafe, just to keep things more organized .. I hate clutter. ><

One of my pet peeves, though, is when people make a million boards with a thousand subforums for each, and don't provide any descriptions at all. It makes finding the forum you need to post in kind of tiring .. And plus, descriptions are always important (in my opinion, anyway). :p

I personally like a nice little pic at the start of a setting forum, to give the writers a united visual to work from.

Yep, sub-forums are definitely a good thing. I generally take larger geographic areas (say a floor of Hogwarts or Central park) and include more specific areas in sub-forums, as long as they are big or important enough to warrant having their own. I always include the sub-forums in the description of the main forum, but on IPBFree and phpBB (at least) the links are included automatically.

I'm always kind of iffy about this topic. I'm a huge neat-freak so personally I'd much rather have a hundred subforums to keep everything organised as explicitly as possible, but I'm also very much aware that while that level of organization makes things easier to find, it can be annoying in practise when you're looking for somewhere to post, or you click on a link to Subforum X on the board index, only to have to back up a couple of steps to read the subforum's description.

I try to strike a balance but it can be really difficult to know when you're going overboard with the amount of subforums you have, and when you don't have enough. The size of your forum can be a factor too - the larger the game and the more members you have, obviously the more areas you'll need for roleplaying. At the other end of the scale, if you only have a couple of new posts per week then you really only need a couple of boards to RP in... except then you don't really get a sense of the scale of the world you're rping in.

Typically, I'd say if you're only getting a couple of posts every so often in a subforum, you most likely don't need it and merge it back in to the parent forum.

But I've been running my site for two years now, with the number of members and activity in constant flux, and I still haven't found a balance. xP

I love subforums. I think Tally makes that pretty obvious.

And yes, IPB (not IF) does list the boards for you, but I kept my own links in... cause I can format them my way! I could probably format the automatic version, but I like my links..

I have a thing where I need to have more than one subforum in the parent forum. It bothers me, not having them look the same. So there are some subforums that are rarely used, and there only for display purposes really...

I think subforums really depend on how many places you have to go.

For example, I only have Gotham City included on my current baord so I just have a category and a forum for everything. On my X-Men board, however, I had to deal with the X-Mansion, New York, Canada, Brotherhood estate, et cetera.

But, since your initial question was if it was confusing...
I'd say no. xD
Not confusing at all. A lot of forums have lots of sub-boards.

I like sub-forums. I find that they keep the main page clean and it's not too hard to find things, so long as the sub-forums actually relate back to each other (ie. forest -> clearing -> cottage). I also don't mind having only one sub-forum and then having a pinned description of all of the other areas, rather than sub-forums for them. Keeps things neater that way, I think. Either way though... Sub-forums are great.

I love them, especially Zetaboard's (they have infinitely nested subforums, i.e. forum->subforum->subsubforum->subsubsubforum->etc.). They keep a large RP site from looking cluttered and stop people from having to scroll a lot.

God, I love subforums. I have... 133 on my upcoming forum. Possibly with a few more to be added. That's just counting the roleplay subforums, not OOC areas. And, like Mousie, I can't stand having only one subforum, because it makes it feel "incomplete" or "uneven", so I keep adding them even if they may not be needed... Actually, I really like no less that three to a forum, but I can live with two.

If I have to.

I guess.

Maybe.

But I love them, because I'm the sort who likes to have a lot of options open, and I've got this obsessive thing with organizing, so the subforums feed that. XD If I didn't have subforums my forum would be a giant monster of DOOMFULLNESS. With the subforums, I can keep my three major cities down to having 8 (Gotham City) and 6 (Metropolis and Themyscira) main RP areas each, with all the little areas that make up those cities as subbies to those main areas. Keeps it nice and neat.

:pink:

I think sub-forums are a brilliant idea, but I also loathe constant drill-downs (city -> street -> specific business -> specifics rooms in building). I think that if your game's setting does not require minute details, then a general list of sub-forums is a good idea, and not much more.

HTM, for example, has the city of New Orleans as its primary setting. We break the RP boards up into "this is so-and-so's domain", "this is that group's territory" and then list specific locales/landmarks for each group's area. Our sub-forum descriptions aren't novel-length, but they provide enough detail to keep players aware. So when we have a sub-forum for the French Quarter in NOLA, we explain that you're liable to find bars, restaurants, galleries and the like.

But that's because having hundreds and hundreds of sub-forums for a game like HTM just isn't necessary. For larger games with more intricately detailed locations -- anything based off of Potter comes to mind -- lots of sub-forums make sense. They'd just drive me batty, personally.

I love the idea of sub boards too, just as long as they're not like as long as the index page or something.. what I usually do when making sub boards, I put the name and link of said sub board into the description of the forum it's in..

And like someone else said, it keeps the site from being enormously long, which only serves it's purpose to annoy.. I don't think people like scrolling for 20 seconds before getting where they wanna go to

I really don't like them. I miss a lot of forums because I can't see them, but I know a lot of sites use them to de-clutter.

I personally prefer having only viewable forums with a pinned topic within that includes seb-territories that would otherwise be sub-forums.

Having subforums usually means there will be one or two posts in each forum, and it looks inactive. If you have all those forums in one, but have a pinned topic to show the playable areas, you cut down on the number of total forums and it looks a lot more active.

For example, if you had a category of a city, you might want it like:

Category: The City

Downtown
-- Store
-- Store
-- Plaza
-- Subway Station

and so on.

I find that if you have 'Downtown' as a forum and the four playable areas in a pinned topic with their names and descriptions, it cuts down on the clutter of having SO MANY subforums. It also means you have four times the posts in one forum, so it looks more active ;D

I love sub-forums, and I love unlimited sub-forums even more since I started using ZB XD. It allows a lot more freedom when creating your RPG forums, and can also warrant for a more compact layout of the roleplaying forums. It also allows a lot more freedom when you like to add more in-rp forums as the board grows. I won't ever go lower then 2 subforums deep (so a sub-forum within a sub-forum). For instance on Ancient Greece, you have the Underworld > Tartarus > Hades' Castle, if I would've build the RPG on IF for instance, I wouldn't have a clue where to put Hades' Castle. Or I had to use a whole catagory for the underworld, instead now I used one forum with subforums for the underworld.

<3 subforums

Yes, I love sub-forums. Overly long main pages with tons and tons of forums is one of my big pet peeves.....especially if the vast majority of them are unused.

I'm in the process of creating a new board with ZB and looking forward to the additions of new sub-subforums there. But I agree with others, too many sub-forums can be as much of a pain as too many forums on the index page.

I have a love/hate relationship with subforums. For each Realm (currently I only have one), I have a forum. Within that forum, are that various zones within that forum. I took my inspiration from World of Warcraft. Each continent (lets use Kalimdor as an example) has a multitude of different areas, each with a different look and feel. Within the Kalimdor main forum, you would find subforums for Winterspring (the environment dusted with snow), Ashenvale (the environment basked in eternal twilight) etc etc. These forums do not have subforums, because I feel that all role playing can take place within that one forum.

Major cities have their own forum on the same level as the various zones. In WOW terms, Stormwind City would have its own forum. The Stormwind City forum would also have subforums. For example, their would be a subform for Stormwind Keep and another for The Trade District.

I've fallen victim to subforum overkill far too many times. I like the ability to create unlimited subforums but it's important to not go overboard. I try to organize my forums in a natural progression, as if the players were actually traveling in their associated areas.