This suggestion is something of a long shot, but I think it's worth while and, even if it can't be done as is, it can also be taken as a laundry list of desired features for the forum. The site's redesign, and the discussion surrounding it, have got me thinking about the forums. I feel that the current roll20 forums have a lot of basic, if individually minor, problems. I also think the best solution is to switch to some robust, pre-built, forum software, rather than trying to do a piecemeal fix of an in-house alternative. In particular, I suggest XenoForo , which is used to run Space Battles and Sufficient Velocity , the two best designed forums I have ever used. XenoForo would improve the following functions: Notifications: XenoForo has notifications that only pop-up once per watched thread until you've gone back and read the thread, unless you are specifically quoted or mentioned in a reply. It can also be configured to post a special notification if the OP makes a reply or a reply fits certain conditions. It also has a page for watched threads and an activity feed, so you can see if you haven't read something even if you've cleared your notifications. Post Formatting: I assume the current style of wysiwyg post formatting was meant for ease of use. Unfortunately, it makes certain functions much harder to deal with. In particular, quotes are a bear if you want to do anything special to them, like split them up or reply to quote things from multiple pages. Saving replies: Right now, if you start a post and you change the page, for any reason, your post gets lost. XenoForo lets you save drafts of posts and automatically keeps what you've written if you change pages. This is particularly useful if you're replying to a thread and want to go back a few pages to double check something or want to refresh and see if there have been any new replies since you started. New reply notificaitons: If you're composing a post and someone else replies to the thread, you'll get a special notificaiton above the text box and can view the new replies without losing your work. Quotes: Currently, the forums only support calling for one quote at a time, which is then directly added to your reply box. This quote has to come from the same thread and doesn't link back to the original post. XenoForo supports multiquote, so you can select multiple quotes and then arrange and insert them en masse. The quotes also have a tiny link back to the original post and, if they're long, are automatically collapsed into smaller boxes. Even better, XenoForo supports quoting selections, which I haven't seen any other forum do. In short, you can highlight a block of text, in a post, and a tiny pop-up will appear that lets you reply to just that selection or add it to a multiquote. Themeing: XenoForo supports themeing, so you could have the forums in the slick white style that you're currently going for, but people who like darker backgrounds could easily switch to another theme. Some of the defaults are also rather nice. This would also let you do things like have community contests to design alternate themes. Unify the regular forums and game forums: Right now, the regular forums and the forums for individual games are completely separated, despite being functionally similar. This doesn't cause any direct problems, but it does mean that it's inconvenient to switch between different game forums and there's a very sharp divide between the game forums and the regular forums, such that most people probably don't deal with the regular forums. XenoForo allows for private subforums that are invisible if you don't have permission to see them. If you set the game forums up as these private forums, you could have all of the forums accessible from the same page, allowing for a sleeker and more unified experience. This could also help to increase participation in the roll20 community, rather than lots of fragmentary little communities for each game. A more robust forum: Using a dedicated forum solution would create more robust forums that would be easier to use and could, potentially, increase community participation. As it stands, I don't think much gets discussed in the forums beyond site functionality. This is disappointing because it means there's no real place for GMs to get together and talk about different techniques or for players to discus different systems they like to play in or any number of other things. I realize that transitioning over to a new forum isn't an easy task, but I think it would drastically improve the user experience. However, if that is impossible, I think this list can serve as a good set of goals for features to add to the forums.
