"Start a discussion" button on home page of community

[zoetetal1]

We have several forums but want to put a simple "Start a discussion" button on the home page of the community. However the community managers don't want to create a default forum. So we need a way for the user to choose what forum the discussion is started in. Is there an existing UX pattern for this? 

[DanK · Accepted solution]

We have one of those that goes to this URL; https://<community URL>/t5/forums/postpage/choose-node/true/interaction-style/forum

It is a standard post creation page but it has a drop down under the subject line that a user must pick from before they can post, the drop down has a list of the first 20 boards on the forum with a show more option at the end that brings up the entire community structure. The first 20 boards are picked from the top of your navigation going down I believe.

Note that my community is currently not on responsive yet.

[JasonHill]

@zoetetal1

We have implemented this. See workshop.com.au for an example. It is common practice and certainly a good idea to encourage participation on the site. 

On Workshop when the member clicks on the Start a discussion button, underneath the the topic heading there's a drop down where they select the board. Our list of available labels then changes dynamically based on which board the user has selected to post in.

Jason 

[zoetetal1]

thanks this will work

[KateF]

ahh perfect, I was considering this for our site but would have to be done extremely carefully.

We're currently looking at tweaking our homepage to encourage / stimulate conversations better.

[EmilyBilling]

Hi everyone, this is exactly what I'm after however, I want to put this "Post" button on a category page, and only want the boards that are part of that category to appear in the Board drop down list. Do you know how to do that? 

[Payal]

Hi EmilyBilling,

You can use the following URL to get only those boards which are part of the particular category.

https://community.MYCOMMUNITY.com/t5/forums/postpage/category-id/[Category-ID]/choose-node/true

Thanks,