Hiden Forums, Top or Bottom?

[Ryan]

Were on your forum do you have your hidden board, boards like the ones the staff use. I have mine at the top so the staff can see if there is anything they should know.

[Dave]

Towards the bottom....but we have a few hidden forums for other user groups as well..

[Chris]

Ah, always at the bottom. I think it would look a bit awkward if they were placed at the top.

[Demo]

At the bottom. It saves some scrolling, when I check the other forums. At top also looks weird IMO

[Savage X]

I keep them at the bottom, always. And (almost) always have the announcement/feedback section at the top. The content of the forum would then be in the middle.

[Nick]

Well here they're on the bottom, but on the linnie forum they are at the top. If my staff doesn't automatically check the Staff Forum immediately upon logging in, at least they will see it at the top of the forum.

Other hidden forums though (like for Premium Members) are on the bottom.

[Peggy]

On one forum I had the staff forums at the top. My staff had a bad habit of not checking it if they didn't see it right off. At vBFAQ we have them at the top also.

However on all other forums, I have the staff area at the bottom.

[Rizzo]

All at the bottom, any hidden forum.

[TomZilla]

There spread all around.

The archive is at the bottom, on Bird is the Word as well as the staff forums.

And, on Setsou Design, at the very top.

[Soliloquy]

I keep them at the bottom to make sure the mods scroll down all the way

[labrocca]

Always on bottom. Hidden forums are used less often by staff and top fold space should be reserved for the most widely used areas.

Just a tip...use Google Webmaster tools (Overlay) and check the clicks. If you have something in top fold with a very low percentage..place it lower on the page and bump up something that might do better. This can lower your bounce rate.

[Lynne]

I keep our Staff forums on the bottom. I've never had a problem of the Mods missing anything. We have a couple of other hidden forums and they just go wherever is the best place - some are in our top category, some in the bottom one. However, we don't have hidden forums showing like some sites - you have to actually be able to view the forum in order to see it even exists.

[Wayne Luke]

I had mine at the bottom to balance out the categories with 4 forums each. Now the categories on vBCodex are all messed up and out of whack because I added a forum and some sub-forums to organize some things better.

They are on the top at vBulletin.com and there are so many of them that I find them obtrusive and that they get in the way of real content.

[Justin S.]

RCTgo's one staff forum is at the bottom of the top category. If it were an entire category, I would place it at the bottom, but that's really not necessary for our two-member staff.

At MyBB, we have our staff forums at the bottom, but above the Community Archive.

[Ryan]

Originally Posted by Wayne Luke

I had mine at the bottom to balance out the categories with 4 forums each. Now the categories on vBCodex are all messed up and out of whack because I added a forum and some sub-forums to organize some things better.

They are on the top at vBulletin.com and there are so many of them that I find them obtrusive and that they get in the way of real content.

So when you say there are so many hidden forums on vBulletin.com do you mean there is a whole new universe there?