Ability to move existing forums into clubs

[The Old Man]

It appears there is still no ability to move existing forums into clubs, only topics into club forums. 

Please can you add this functionality as it's very time consuming?

[Joel R]

Hey @The Old Man

I discovered this issue pretty early on in the beginning, and I also posted feedback about clubs.  If you don't want to grow any older (and the baldness of your head is roughly on par with the shiny baldness of @Lindy, so I'm assuming you have enough stress in your life), here are some alternatives while you wait for IPS: 

1. You can actually bulk move topics.  You need to create the club forums in advance and you need posting permission in both the forum and the club.  

2.  There are apps in the Marketplace that might give you the ability to assign forums and categories.  

 

[The Old Man]

Thanks Joel, right on all counts! 

[Adriano Faria]

There’s a plugin on marketplace that does this. It also converts back club features into forums/categories. 

On 5/6/2019 at 3:41 PM, Joel R said:

2.  There are apps in the Marketplace that might give you the ability to assign forums and categories.

Sorry. Repeated. 

[The Old Man]

Thanks Adriano, I did consider your powerful modification before posting, but in my case it was a bit overkill just for what I needed. Having the option to reverse the move is a really good idea, though.

[Joy Rex]

@The Old Man - fellow 'old man' here myself - as a newly upgraded 4.4.3 forum owner and considering Clubs, would you say Clubs are better than having subforums for specific content?

[The Old Man]

Hi @Joy Rex 

Honestly, I'm sure Clubs are potentially brilliant for a lot of sites, but sadly not mine. I haven't found them as successful, enticing or being developed as I'd hoped, to some extent they seem to have stalled like many other IPS apps in terms of features and functionality.

That said, and in fairness I'm only using Clubs I've created myself, the plan was to make creation of clubs a perk of member subscriptions when launched, but I'm not convinced the time is right to do that either now, given the confusion about the billing method arrangements. I'm actually thinking of closing my main community down as it's so expensive to run given the lack of activity or contributions, beyond 5-6 daily members posting mainly in the Chatbox.

Subforums give you all the freedom and flexibility of forums that you're members are used to, whereas if you use Clubs to host forums, galleries and calendars you lose some functionality and features. My members were complaining and PM'ing me that they couldn't find my off topic forums that I'd moved into Clubs. Clicking on the Clubs tab or reading announcements or using the widget was not an option! So I switched on the option to show club content throughout.

I liked the idea of adding dedicated calendars and galleries to my off topic club forums, but there turned out to be caveats and concessions. You lose the ability to auto import RSS content into your calendar for example. Galleries I moved or added into clubs don't get used, same as blogs. Only about 3 members joined any of my busiest off topic forum clubs so now they don't need to join them, and they still don't get used.

Plus if you opt to show club content throughout the site, the club forums look so abysmal on the forums index page, almost like an afterthought. They don't match the modern grid layout forum style, or even the nice style they have on the actual Club index. Fortunately Opentype's excellent Super range of templates could save the day again if that bothers you.

Clubs have a lot of plus points though, so I'd definitely consider more opinions than just mine. I think you need a pretty active forum community to start with though.

[Joy Rex]

1 hour ago, The Old Man said:

Hi @Joy Rex 

Honestly, I'm sure Clubs are potentially brilliant for a lot of sites, but sadly not mine. I haven't found them as successful, enticing or being developed as I'd hoped, to some extent they seem to have stalled like many other IPS apps in terms of features and functionality.

That said, and in fairness I'm only using Clubs I've created myself, the plan was to make creation of clubs a perk of member subscriptions when launched, but I'm not convinced the time is right to do that either now, given the confusion about the billing method arrangements. I'm actually thinking of closing my main community down as it's so expensive to run given the lack of activity or contributions, beyond 5-6 daily members posting mainly in the Chatbox.

Subforums give you all the freedom and flexibility of forums that you're members are used to, whereas if you use Clubs to host forums, galleries and calendars you lose some functionality and features. My members were complaining and PM'ing me that they couldn't find my off topic forums that I'd moved into Clubs. Clicking on the Clubs tab or reading announcements or using the widget was not an option! So I switched on the option to show club content throughout.

I liked the idea of adding dedicated calendars and galleries to my off topic club forums, but there turned out to be caveats and concessions. You lose the ability to auto import RSS content into your calendar for example. Galleries I moved or added into clubs don't get used, same as blogs. Only about 3 members joined any of my busiest off topic forum clubs so now they don't need to join them, and they still don't get used.

Plus if you opt to show club content throughout the site, the club forums look so abysmal on the forums index page, almost like an afterthought. They don't match the modern grid layout forum style, or even the nice style they have on the actual Club index. Fortunately Opentype's excellent Super range of templates could save the day again if that bothers you.

Clubs have a lot of plus points though, so I'd definitely consider more opinions than just mine. I think you need a pretty active forum community to start with though.

Interesting! I appreciate the feedback and experience in using Clubs - a bit disappointed to hear they're not in line visually with the rest of the IPS suite (yet) - I wonder why that is, considering I would think it far easier to reuse existing forum code.