What do you want in a forum?

[bod-jack]

I would like to know your opinions on these-

Looks
Does the forum you visit need to be pretty to look at?

Speed
Is it important to have a fast loading forum?

Community
Ofcourse the forum needs a good friendly community but do people prefer a large community or a close and tight community?

Content
Does the content have to be focused on the a main small subject matter or a wider more open subject.

Features
Finally do you want extra features on a forum? Things like points systems, virtual money systems etc

[Mark Craig]

Looks
Yeah it needs to have a good look, its ok to have a basic look as long as its just not done unprofessionally

Speed
Yes

Community
Doesn't matter if its big or small as long as it makes you want to come back.

Content
More then one subject

Features
No

[Sean]

Looks and Speed
These two sort of tie into each other, yes you want a fast loading forum, so the graphic content is going to be minimal. But obviously you want it looking clean.

Community
The bigger the community the wider range of opinions you have, and the more posts you will get as people post there opinions and knowledge.

Content
If it is for a community, then you need a range of forums but still have a focus on one subject. (I.e. Hosting)

Features
I think this is a yes for me, cause its alot of fun, just as like a extra thing, and depnding on what it is gives you a little more incentive to post.

[Jordon]

On professional backgrounds looks and speed do matter very much.

[Eagle]

Looks
The forum doesn't need to be pretty, but as a business it would be better to have something that looks as if a bit of thought and effort has been put into the place, rather than just use a default forum skin.

Speed
You're selling web hosting, if you have a slow support forum it's going to make your service look bad to potential customers.

Community
Well, most of the posters will be BOD customers so you can't do much to change things here.

Content
Content's going to be dictated by the need for this to be a support forum, so whatever will be important to someone with a hosting account at BOD.
Plus an off-topic thread. ;)

Features
Avatars, ranks and sigs are usually enough. They're usually the only things that posters gripe about if not present.
Karma and such things aren't much use unless the forum is fairly large. In which case you'd probably have to turn it off to save db queries anyway...

[Master]

The looks should be decent and pleasant. But more important is the user friendly aspect. In addition to the button "Go To Top" it would be appreciated if there are buttons for the previous / next post also.

[Lason]

Originally Posted by BOD-peter

I would like to know your opinions on these-

Looks
Does the forum you visit need to be pretty to look at?

A choice of skins is important to me so that I can choose one that I like.

Speed
Is it important to have a fast loading forum?

VERY important although mine is very slow if I'm using IE and not Firefox.

Community
Ofcourse the forum needs a good friendly community but do people prefer a large community or a close and tight community?

Tight like mine, I remove 'lurkers' who don't post and just read. We're always very welcoming and some of us meet up once a month. Quality of members is definately more important than quantity.

Content
Does the content have to be focused on the a main small subject matter or a wider more open subject.

Wider, we have allsorts.

Features
Finally do you want extra features on a forum? Things like points systems, virtual money systems etc

Points system, Arcade, Flash Chat and more, greedy me ;)