What features make an online forum easy to use?

Answer 1

• The user shouldn’t have to think at all to use the software. Actions like creating a topic, creating a post, like a post, finding posts of a user, following a topic, etc. should all be very intuitive.
• Content on the page should easily be scannable by the eyes so that the main thing the user is looking for stands out. ie: titles of topics in search results, for example.
• Pages should load super fast and should function smoothly.
• The design should be responsive so that it looks fantastic on any sized device, including mobile.
• Account preferences should have sensible defaults so that they don’t need to go through and change 3,000 options.
• Videos should appear and play within the posts. Images should open in a lightbox and not in a new window. Uploading files should be an effortless process. Media, in general, should be well-supported.
• Third-party content, like youtube and SoundCloud links, should embed within the posts automatically.
• It should automatically take the user back to where they stopped reading a topic.
• There should be ways to view the top topics for a time period, new topics, recently updated topics, top posters, new members, etc. ie: Users should be able to easily find what they’re looking for.
• Search should provide highly relevant results.