Website Category Formatting

[soundtrek]

I realize that Tom's Hardware is not a hardware specific forum, but your website management should hire an intern or someone to add subtopic channeling to categories like Home Audio. Take a look at those site where I frequently post to.
http://www.diyaudio.com/forums/ http://www.audiocircle.com/index.php?PHPSESSID=hjqr4oa5o7bjq5bopv71pauol1&action=circles http://www.stereo.net.au/forums/ http://www.audioasylum.com/

These specific groupings make it much easier and faster for members to find and share essential and very specific details on hardware design, upgrading, customizing-indeed anything to do with audio. Audio sub topic categories also makes it easier for members looking to chat again with past members, who's contact info they may have lost. And here's something that your marketing director should have thought of long ago: Web forum category sub topics also makes it easier to use banner ads to target specific end user groups. Everyone wins, yes?

 

[ssddx]

technically there are subcategories, but the site currently does not enable them on the frontend. it has been discussed before on re-implementing them as well as adding/culling but that is still something on the chopping block.

at the same time as being a great idea for organization and lowering traffic so that posts are easier to find at the same time it is a bad idea to have too many as well as less traffic means more unanswered questions and more chance for certain subsections to die off.

given how i post primarily in all of the home audio and peripheral subsections and note the traffic we receive i think i can comment rather well on the topic.

the biggest trouble we have here is crossover on what topics a post relates to. for instance, headphones can be in any of the sections as they can be a peripheral, a home audio solution or for music and standalone purposes. if we had a strict headphone / home theater / peripheral main category system which would they go in? honestly it will branch across all of them depending on the exact question asked. likewise, speakers can be in at least two categories. while this does not relate as much to subcategories it should be noted as subcategories would make a bigger mess of this.

the next biggest trouble and something that directly relates to too many subcategories to browse would be traffic. while our home audio related topics seem to be growing in popularity it still is not at the level where the traffic is too high and can support breaking it down into multiple subsections easily.

keep in mind that tomshardware branches out over many topic categories and is not specific on just one like the forums you mentioned. home audio specific forums receive quite a bit more audio traffic than we do so can easily support subsections with less risk of them dying off.

just my 2 cents.