marcus
Joined: 23 Oct 2005
Posts: 17
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 Posted: Wed Nov 23, 2005 1:42 pm Post subject: ZoneX hidden features |
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Many users of the ZoneX forum doesn't realize its full potential. It has many advanced features which we couldn't cover in the documentation to the full extent. Mainly because of lack of time for documentation reorganization.
So in this topic I'll mention combination of two features which is very successfuly employed in some forums we've optimized by now. Statistcs research ,after one month of utilizing this, clearly illustate increase in the new topics count for more than 200%.
We've started few months ago while noticed that many forum visitors are actually using internal search engine to find useful information on the site. To be precise, more content you have, more visitors will use your internal search, which is pretty obvious. Once they're on the search page you have to options. To put mnogosearch in the OR or AND mode. OR mode will give a visitor more results but those results won't be precise, especially if visitors use keyphrases (and most of them do:). If the engine is in the AND mode visitor will get more precise results but frequently they will get nothing. We've tested both strategies and both have pros and cons. To choose between those strategies you have to answer on question what do you want to achieve. If you want to make trolls of your visitors put mnogosearch in the OR mode. That way you will blur your visitors' focus and they'll probably choose one of the most interesting topics in the search results forgeting why they originally came on the search page. For some forum types it's a good strategy.
If you want to keep your visitors' focus and in the same time get some original content you will better use AND mode. In this mode visitors will either get best possible result or will get nothing. The link "post your question/comment" will appear and most visitors will click on it (because they got no results; you can add this link in the mnogosearch template - search.htm). To create this link you should use "external guest posting link" (explained in the ZoneX docs). If you're using invese posting mode (prefered one) it's the best solution to create new forum for storing external topics purpose and to set forum visibility(forum permissions) to MODS only. So the visitor will be able to post its question/comment/whatever immediately and to register later. One way or another you will get this new topic in you hidden forum. Later you can log in, check new topics and move those in "visible for all" forums or delete inappropriate topics. Nobody will see those until your approval and the visitor will get email notification once you move his topic, but only if he/she has registered after posting. If not new topic will be assigned to Guest user.
Ok, I hope this topic will help someone to understand ZoneX better. It's loaded with features but need some time to understand fully and to utilize its potential to the maximal extent.
Good luck!
marcus |
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