Forum Structural Changes

Hey folks,

Matt here, your friendly neighbourhood (acting) Community Manager.

Over the past few months we’ve learned a lot about the way in which our community wants to interact on our forums, but perhaps more importantly, we’ve learned what kinds of conversations we’ve allowed for, and those that we want to see more of.

Today we’re announcing that over the course of the next few months, we’re going to be acting on a few of our learnings and rolling out some new changes to our forums. Primarily with a view towards bringing our customers and our authors closer together. How are we going to do that?

We’re going to be introducing a new “Project Making” Category.

Although we don’t always see them, customers frequently visit our forums. These project makers are an integral part of our community, and we felt it was high-time that we made room for them, their discussions and most importantly their projects. To this end, we wanted to build a space where our customers, authors and anyone interested in creative projects can come together to show, share and learn.

So, how’s that going to work?

Over the next few days, we’re going to be adding some additional structure to the forums by adding two top-level categories. These will be:

Authoring on Envato
Project Making

By top level we mean that these two categories will hold subcategories beneath them.

Authoring on Envato will become home to the forum categories as you know them today. The only difference is the “looking for” category, which will become “author collaboration”. Looking for, will be relocated into our Project Making space, as will Courses and tutorials.

Project Making’s subcategories will be defined around the creative fields of the project makers.

Web design & development
Graphic design
Audio
Videography & motion graphics
Courses and Tutorials
Looking for…
Project collaboration

The view behind this is that we can allow people to navigate to the areas that house the specific conversations they want to have.

Want to get involved?

We’ll be sending customers into the Project Making space. Jump in, lend a hand and encourage folks to show, share their projects and let others know how they built them. It’s a great way to build relationships with users, learn about their needs and show off what you know :slight_smile:

Got a customer who’s built something seriously cool? Encourage them to showcase their work for others to see and comment on. It will help them, and you!

Got a project you’re working on outside of the market? Jump in and share your work.

We’re going to be watching, learning and tweaking as we go along. We’re going to be working with authors to implement some structural changes on the Authoring side very shortly, as well as rolling out some visual changes and category specific tagging.

Why?

This is a big project. It’s about building a space that can serve as a joint asset for our authors and our customers, and so we’d love everyone to get involved. If all the groups that make up our community can come together and help each other succeed, we will have created something that’s both incredibly valuable and incredibly unique.

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Some people come to the forum for help on Tuts courses and currently they are directed here from the Tuts+ website. Will this change to “Project Making” too?

It would be awesome if we could “tag” a discourse thread with a market item/tuts link. Discourse has a post details feature. It could then be possible to filter forum posts based on item (or even receive alerts if you’re item is talked about on the forum). Just dreaming :slight_smile:

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Question 1: Sure will sir (amending above).

Question 2: It’s a good dream, we’ll take a look into it! In the short term, I think it would be awesome to tag folks if their item is specifically mentioned.

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Any update on an extra author sub category for elite members to discuss things privately? An area for items that are currently moderated out of the forum (piracy) or otherwise held back because they are not appropriate for a public discussion. Would even be good for staff to bounce ideas off the regulars/those who have seen the market evolve over the years.

This would also be a another great incentive/reward for reaching elite. Gaining access to the shared knowledge/ideas/tips/tricks of the elite. That’s a pretty good reward and practically free to implement.

Ping @BenLeong - this would be a wicked opening move :slight_smile:

Hey!

Whilst we don’t necessarily agree that threads asking for item feedback or congratulations threads are useless (we quite like them), we do agree that the forums need a little more structure to them. Hence the work that we’re doing now :smile:

I never said completely useless or something… These threads should have a different location… Anyway, you are working that’s great :slight_smile:

They do. Milestones and “woohoo” messages go to rooftop and feedback/rejection messages to to project-feedback. If you do not wish to see these messages then simply “mute” these particular categories, and they will stop showing in your forum feed.

Excellent.

But I suggest you to add one more category for Envato Feedback.

Now authors / buyers posting bugs / questions related to Envato Market asks inside “Tips & Tricks” :joy: How funny to add this inside that. @matthewcoxy

Questions about Envato Includes : 1. Site Feeback. Bugs, Payment issues, Issues related to authors etc…

So, Better add that category also. You’ll see a lot of posts will add to that. AFAIK, Discourse also supports to add “Resolved” option for a post. So, once the feedback is completed, you may add the “resolved” mark.

Hope you will add the feature NOW. (You have the Power, SIR)

Because if it ain’t added now, It will never add.

With hope.
~Surjith

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Like every changes it make a mess on the beginning … but probably will be more readable after time.

There’s quite a few collaboration posts about joint Envato projects ( e.g. convert approved PSD into WP and jointly sell the item ). This kind of makes more sense to appear in the “Authoring on Envato” section. If it becomes an issue then I recommend moving (or creating a new) the existing collaboration forum over to the new “Authoring” parent.

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Dear Envato team. I got the strong impression that I work in the building, which is constantly being renovated. You are constantly building something, then break and build again. The constant noise and dust. I am very much afraid that a permanent repair simply scare or confuse consumers.

Hi!
With this new forums I need to click 3 times just to open list of topics ( for example: hit “forums”, then hit “authoring on envato” and then hit “tips&tricks” ). It is to much for such a lazy person as I am.

Hey Surjith,

I think you’re right! Those posts do need a better home.

We fully intend to do some more work on the authoring side in a little while. We wanted to split that work out, from this piece of work to avoid too much change too quickly.

I agree that finding those posts a better place to live should be a priority :smile:

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Hey Greensocks!

From the category homepage, you can navigate to the subcategories (like tips and tricks) directly :smiley:

Lazyness must be accommodated :grin:

Right you are sir!

We’ve now got the “Author Collaboration” section on the author side, but I believe I was mid-build when you posted that :stuck_out_tongue_closed_eyes:

We’ll be doing a bit of work over the next little while to sort the threads into to their new homes

if it’s not too much to ask, please add an ‘everything’ tab, where we can click to see the list of topics like it used to be

Edit: nvm, when you click ‘latest’ it shows everything https://forums.envato.com/latest

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This topic is now a banner. It will appear at the top of every page until it is dismissed by the user.

This topic is no longer a banner. It will no longer appear at the top of every page.

Hi Firends,
As an experienced forums user , it’s (the new structure) even confusing for me, let alone the new comers.

For some unknown reasons, the Project Making category and all of its sub-categories are gone. What is happening?

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