Subforums vs pre-defined Tags

[WebCMS]

Tags make other topics appear in Similar Content widget that use the same tags and tags are also used in <meta name="keywords" content="tag">.

What would be the purpose of Subforums other than grouping topics compared to predefined Tags?

Predefined Tags could be made to function like Subforums if implemented properly. The Fluid View widget could use predefined Tags with multi-select checkboxes.

If using both, we end up selecting a subforum and assigning a tag (or two) to new topics. Most often, the tag name is the exact same as the subforum (duplication of data). This results in too many data points that may degrade performance due to table joins.

If the forum site has no predefined tags, subforums would be useful to categorize topics.

Can you not simplify the design and say, "use either subforums or tags" - no need for both. Either one should be used for Similar Content widget and meta keywords markup.

Using the tagging system, we get to assign one or more tags to a topic whereas using subforums would limit the selection to only one subforum.

For converting a Subforum system into a Tagging system, you could delete all the existing tags and convert the subforums into Tags.

Thoughts?

Edited August 15 by WebCMS

[Marc]

Example:

I have a car forum with the sub forums

• general
• Spares and repairs
• Classics
• Events

 

I may well have tags with

• Red
• Blue
• Green
• Black
• White
• Metalic
• Yellow
• Amber
• Pink
• broken
• forSale
• Wanted
• EngineParts
• Bodywork
• North
• South
• East
• West
• Midlands
• Free
• Paid

 

Thats just one very very small example. Tags would generally be a lot more granular than that of subforums. 

[WebCMS]

REVISED SUGGESTION

Currently, the user has to choose a subforum and assign tags to new topics and only the tags are found to be used for rendering Similar Content widget and marking up meta keywords (if no tags selected -> then no Similar Content widget and no meta keywords).

If configured in ACP to not use tags, then use Subforum name to filter/render Similar Content widget and also use the same Subforum name to mark up the meta keywords.

With the above option of not using tags, Articles could also use Subforums instead of categories on the Article posting form (so the article gets cross-posted into the chosen subforum) and article URL can optionally have the subforum name for better SEO (or not). This refers to the prior topic of articles getting cross-posted always into a single subforum which is not optimal as discussed in the below topic point #3 (summarized below) -

3) Currently, it can cross-post every article into only "one" specified forum configured globally in the ACP which is not optimal. The article posting form should have a "Subforum" dropdown and a "Cross-post" switch to specify if the article should be cross-posted into the chosen subforum (this approach makes the cross-posting subforum option dynamic on a per-article basis).

Blogs and Events could use Subforum dropdown too instead of tags similar to Articles as above with the optional "Cross-post" switch to post into chosen subforum for more exposure.

This would gracefully eliminate tags, simplify topic/article/blog/event posting, shorten the click-path for users with better UX and improve performance (from reduced clutter, storage and table-joins) for those sites who do not want to use redundant tags.

This will not impact those sites who are using tags.

What do folks you think?

Edited August 16 by WebCMS

[Jim M]

15 hours ago, WebCMS said:

REVISED SUGGESTION

Please be sure to post any suggestions in the Feedback forum 🙂 

[WebCMS]

2 hours ago, Jim M said:

Please be sure to post any suggestions in the Feedback forum 🙂 

Thank you