Hi, now that I have more than 500 users on my Wix forum, my customers are complaining about several headaches, and asking me to switch from Wix forums to google groups, PHP BB or another forum product that doesn't have these issues. I suspect I'm not unique, and that this is something many of your customers are running into. I would be more than happy to pay extra for such features if they were available.
1) email notifications of forum comments and posts: I've trimmed my forum down to the bare minimum and (as I'm sure you know) clicking on the link to view the post and comment from a mobile device is very slow due to Wix javascript architecture (and many times slower than Google groups or other forums). I understand the architecture won't change (so that's not what I'm writing about). I'm writing because this would not be as big of a headache for users if you did some other things that competitors are already doing:
a) display the entire comment or post in the email notification. When you just put in a partial view of it, the user has to click on every single email just to see if they are interested in it or not. This is very frustrating for them, since 90% are things they would not respond to if they could only see what it was about from the beginning. If you would display the entire comment or post, then this would solve a major problem.
b) allow making comments on a post by simply hitting reply in the email client. Again, competitors allow this, and what it does is allow a user to not have to go with the slow process of trying to load the site. Especially since there are bugs with the commenting (I already reported this to support: if there are multiple pages of comments on the post, and the user clicks on the email notification from a desktop browser, it does not take them to the last page but instead the first, and then they have to page through each one, which is really really slow).
c) control notifications: Users are getting overloaded with notifications when their only choice is to get an email notification every time something happens. As a result, many cancel the notification, and fall off. Competitors allow users to choose to either be notified on every email, or have a daily or weekly digest.
2) new user membership approval. Here, the lack of features versus competitors makes me , the administrator do a lot of extra work that I wouldn't have to do with another product (and exposes me to legal liability).
a) First, as someone else mentioned here, there needs to be the ability to get the user to approve terms and conditions before signing up. Right now, the only workaround is to use Wix inbox to ask every user to approve the terms, wait for them to reply it, etc. It's impossible to make sure everyone does it. I think as you get more and more people using your forum in a serious way, this is going to be an issue for you.
b) ability to ask screening questions when users sign up. This is a *HUGE* issue for me, and I suspect many others who have to verify that the users meet certain criteria, before they can be allowed in. On competing products, you can create a form asking several questions of new users. Right now there is no way to do this on Wix. Basically, I have to use Wix inbox to email them back and forth several times to get them to answer the questions before I can approve them. As a result, lots of people drop out of the process because it's a pain, and it's also a lot of work for me. This is something where you could tie into the new Wix scripting, which allows custom forms to be created.
Again, I would be happy to pay extra for any of these features. If needed more feedback or information, just let me know.
Hi,
You can now add Terms of Use and Privacy Policy in the signup process. Learn more about it here.
Hi,
Thanks for contacting us and thank you for the feedback.
1) Thanks for letting us know, we will investigate it.
a, b & c: We've added your request to our wishlist :)
2)
a & b: We are working on this kind of features, stay tuned!