Phasing out the "Other Platforms" forums on CrackBerry
Hey All,
Just heads up on some changes I made to the forums layout tonight.
On the main forums homepage, we used to have a dedicated section lower down for other mobile forums (iPhone, Android, etc.). I took all of those forums and moved them as sub forums into the Other Platforms forum. And from there I moved that forum (deleted the dedicated section), so it's just standing as a single forum below the Older BlackBerrys forum in the main device forum section. This is actually how I had it setup going back to 2007 when the site launched. Old school! You can get to this section here.
I also removed the links to the iOS/Android/Etc. forums from the forums navigation in the header. I had them on the right side on the Other Popular Forums section. I always sort of meant to mix these up regularly, but haven't been doing that. I did get BlackBerry 10 in there just now though too.
Combined with the change I made in terms of moving the Today's BB Posts link to be above the New Posts (All) link in the header (on the main site), this greatly reduces the presence of other platforms within the forums. I don't want to delete the forums that are there or that content for now, but the reduced presence should help see these forums naturally decrease and we will eventually phase them out with the launch of our new Mobile Nations Passport system coming soon.
I'll do a full post on what Mobile Nations Passport is soon, but basically it's a way to easily move across all of our communities (Android Central, CrackBerry, iMore, Windows Phone Central, webOS Nation) if and when you want to. So if you want to be a member of just one site, that's all you have to be. You're not automatically a member of all sites. But if you decide you want to be a member of another community, you'll be able to use your login there and it'll setup your account on the fly. Plus we'll do some unified account pages that help show your status across all the sites you belong too. So for example if you have 5,000 posts on CrackBerry and decide you want to try out an Android phone for a while and join up on Android Central, you will start your account there with 0 posts, but we will build in a way to recognize that although you're new to that site, you're a long time poster on CrackBerry. Again, I'll get into more detail on this soon, but it's really going to be good and it's something we've been getting asked about a LOT. Super excited to get that built.
With Passport coming, it only makes sense that we scale back the other platforms from each individual site - if you want the best Android discussion, head to our Android community. If you want the best iOS discussion, head to iMore. There will always be room on each site for some of that cross site discussion, but for people who've moved on and switched platforms, it makes more sense to switch over to the appropriate sibling site for the best experience. Rewind back a couple of years and it was mainly CrackBerry in our network of sites that was rocking and rolling, but over the last year all of our communities have really picked up their game and are buzzing. I guess it just shows the growth in smartphones, period. When we live in a world where every phone is going to be a smartphone... every platform is going to have a strong community.
Wow. I type too much. Think that covers it for now. And I think it'll be a good positive change for the CrackBerry forums and the whole network.
Hope you like!
Kevin