Layout and Theme Ideas for Forums

[Allen Montgomery]

I’m setting up a website for investment related discussion forums. It will be at tickertok.com, in case anyone’s interested.

I have decided that simplepress is probably the best plugin for what I’m doing.

A general investment forum might have the following subforums:

1. stocks
2. mutual funds
3. fixed income
4. commodities

Once the traffic in my stock forum justifies it, I might add the following subforums to that:

1. auto manufactures
2. airlines
3. utilities

I’m starting out with a few basic forums, but I could easily end up with thousands over time. Needless to say, I need to give some thought to how a user is going to navigate my site.

My first task is to select a good theme. I am looking for simplicity. Fancy special effects in the header are a definite turnoff. I just want a theme that is simple, and easy to customize.

Although I intend to monetize the site, using Adsense, that is a simple enough thing to add later. I don’t need any specific support for something like that.

I would also be interested in hearing ideas, regarding the placement of menus and sidebars. My big concern there is that I anticipate many users are going to be accessing the site with their smartphones.