First off, I have just been back to here about months ago and must say that the development of this "Simple Forum" is quite impressive!

However, as impressive as it is compared to the other WP-forum platform, it’s just ’simply’ missing these important components (plus improvements =) which make a forum a ‘discussion forum’:

*Note: I’m looking at the other forums when I post these suggestions.

1. Don’t know if I have to login or not, but I didn’t see a link icon to "PM" other users (looks like it’s in development =).

2. It would be helpful to have a "Related WordPress Posts" or "Related Forum Threads" at the bottom (or a PHP function to display it on the sidebar =). *It would also be good if there’s a iconic symbol to indicate "Hot", "New" or "Old" forum topic. How about adding "TAGS" and a PHP function to display them anywhere (e.g. sidebar), as well =?

3. For readability, bold-type the name of the Date (not time) and Author in the "Started" and "Last Post".

4. Add a "Report This" post/thread link to let users help report spam/other-bad post.

5. Add/integrated the ability for user-defined roles like the "Role Manager" plugin, needed for multi-level moderation/moderators (looks like it’s done! ;).

6. Add the "Login Form" and check box for Saved Password directly at the top of the forum, so users don’t have to click on a link to go to the Login page. *Also, link to the "Register" and "Lost Password?" next to the form for better user-usability = one-click access.

7. Add the "Search" form directly to the top or bottom of every page: this is because this is probably will be one of the most used form (along with the "Login" form), when the forum has more member and archived threads.

8. Look like it has this function already, but just in case it doesn’t, have the ability to limit the number of displayed threads/posts per forum page or thread page, respectively.

9. For the author info pop-up, the pop-up is better if it appears at the top (left?), because it’s where most people would look at a webpage (not at the bottom of the page =). Also, to help speed up the page, eliminate the icon that links to the pop-up of the author info. Rather, why not hyper link the author info pop-up to the Author Avatar image: this will make the ‘area’ clean, which you can later add "stars" or other ranking mechanism?

10. O.K. That’s it for now =P… NOW, WHERE DO I DOWNLOAD THIS FREAKING AWESOME FORUM SKIN!!!

Yellow Swordfish said:

2. It would be helpful to have a "Related WordPress Posts" or "Related Forum Threads"
at the bottom (or a PHP function to display it on the sidebar =). *It
would also be good if there’s a iconic symbol to indicate "Hot", "New"
or "Old" forum topic. How about adding "TAGS" and a PHP function to display them anywhere (e.g. sidebar), as well =?

[How do you decide what a ‘related post’ is? Actually- how do you
decide what a ‘related forum thread’ is as well? Related to what?

As for tags that’s a definite no]

I think this is covered in post linking [v2.1+]

As for Tags, the only way to implement that would be for the forum to dynamically alter the tags on the wordpress page that hosts the forum, not doable.

This does not prevent POSTS from having embeded tag information and/ or from being linked into a forum topic and/ or the POSTS OR TOPICS from having tag plug ins (Technocrati Plugin?) that read all post content and linking dynamically.  

Hi, wow. Those were very fast replies =P. Anyway, for my suggestions for usability, I think it’s theme/skin based, so please disregard, as I can tweak them later.

And, obviously I’d just realized that the tag function isn’t possible because of the way WordPress is currently constructed (for page).

Nevertheless, I think the feature to display "Related Posts/Threads [in current forum or all forums or WordPress Blog?]" || "Latest Posts in Current Forum Name" || "Latest Posts from All Forum" is quite important to further the usability of a forum/site. How about displaying these in 3-4 columns at the bottom of the single thread topic?

From experience, the "Related Threads [in current forum and/or all forum]" and "Related Posts [from WP blog]" helps connect the information posted throughout the blog and forum. As an example, I tend to click onto another related threads/posts if I were reading a post and interested in further information (it’s easy and beats my [and others?] laziness to do the search for related posts on the discussed topic =).

Anyway, I don’t know if it’s possible to integrated them or not, but here are a few Related Posts plugins for WordPress:

1. http://rmarsh.com/plugins/similar-posts/

2. http://wasabi.pbwiki.com/Related%20Entries

O.K., that’s my input for now. (Hope the above plugins help ;).

~Mint Tree~

P.S. Any interested in adding iconic symbols to indicate "Hot Topic", "New Topic", "Topic with New Posts"?

O.K. I’ll go download and tweak the theme template now (happy as a camper =)…

O.K. That’s it really for now (will check back soon =).