The groups have been revamped, isn’t it about time the forums received a similar treatment?

As we all know, the groups received a fabulous update in the past few months which has made them much easier to access and more interesting (in regards to features.) The new groups unfortunately don’t come with a front page yet (maybe Sulake are going to re-introduce this), instead they come with the original group forum layout. This may seem quite handy for avid forum users but isn’t it about time the forums received an update as well?
 
Errors – There are a few errors still lingering about on group forums but we will only be mentioning 2 of them;
 
Verification code – Yes, it is very understandable why this was introduced onto forums (to ensure a person is actually posting and not an electronic system & also to reduce spam), but it doesn’t seem to “work” quite often. If you type the 2 words in correctly once, then you can make several mistakes in the next set of verification words you have to type. In fact, you can type 2 completely different words and it will still place your post! That doesn’t seem like a fairly precise system. Also, there should be some message near the verification code which states whether it is case sensitive or case insensitive… it’s an absolute pain when I type out a code and then it continuously tells me it’s wrong without stating it requires capitals.
 
“Wider page” – Only a small minority of users know how to do this ‘trick’. A certain character/symbol can be typed into a thread title which makes the entire forum page wider and thus messes up the text on the page.A good example of this is from the (small) screenshot on the left, but if you would like to see a full size version go to www.habbo.com/groups/fch/discussions.
 
Design – let’s face it, the current forums look a bit bleak and bland. Maybe group owners should be given the opportunity to design their group in their group colours (chosen when creating a group) to help liven the page up. The current white and grey colour scheme is so dull! Also, group owners/administrators should surely have some way of introducing sub-forums. If a group gets quite a number of threads a day, then a lot of these threads will get pushed down quickly & may even end up on a different page. With sub-forums, it allows people to categorise their posts meaning that less posts will be pushed onto a different page & people will probably find the idea of categorising their posts very attractive.
 
Posting options – When you want to place a post there’s not much you can add into your posts. Fair enough, there are a few options such as links, editing font colour and size but this isn’t enough. When someone wishes to place a picture on a forum they have to paste the image URL and often this contains numbers which are filtered by Sulake. If there was a way of directly placing an image, then this would be much more appealing to people rather than pasting an image URL with apostrophes after every 5^th number. In regards to the issue of crude images, there should be a button (e.g. “click here to see the image”) which users have to click to see the image. Enough of that idea though, basically, there needs to be a wider range of options when placing a post, such as the ability to embed YouTube videos, quote more than 1 user etc.
 
Let’s face it. The group forums have remained stuck in the past for too long. Sulake have updated groups, introduced an improved homepage (profiles) and have even introduced new backgrounds for www.habbo.com/me pages… I think the forums should be next in line!
 

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