For the sake of this mock-up, I'm pretending that this topic is from The Help Desk forum. (That link, for the record, does actually take you somewhere; if you click on it, it will show you my mock-up of the "view forum" page -- which, for the sake of my mock-up, pretends to be The Help Desk forum. I have included that link within this post to illustrate what links within a post will look like.) As topics within The Help Desk forum will likely include polls as well as many of the BBCode styles in action, I figured this was the best kind of topic to mimic.
Polls are going to be located in the sidebar column. I've decided this was the best place to put them. Why? Well, on "prosilver" based themes (the out-of-the-box design scheme for the phpBB forum platform), polls are located at the top of every page within a topic/thread. As there can be up to ten options (or however many I choose) per poll, that translates to a LOT of vertical scrolling per page. However, it is good to include polls somewhere on every page of the topic, and somewhere up at the top to make sure users notice them. Putting polls in the sidebar column achieves this without detracting from the post flow of the "view topic" page.
No doubt, you will have noticed by now that the mini-profiles are no longer in a sidebar-esque column anymore -- it's all up in the post-header. The sidebar approach to the profile info is good for when there is a lot of profile information you want available on each post (and when you want it all together). However, if a post is super-short, it leaves dead space under the post's text and the signature, because the sidebar is too vertically long for the post's text. Conversely, when the post is super-long, it leaves dead space on the right side of the post's text, because the sidebar's width goes all the way down the vertical length of the post. Since I don't think we need a whole bunch of profile information available on each post (users can visit the person's profile if they want to know more about them), I'm very pleased with my arrangement of the information. The username, avatar, rank, date joined and the post count are all in the post's header, and the various methods of contacting the user are located at the bottom of the post right before their signature (if they've attached their signature).
Obviously, this is an example of a super-long post.
Here's an example of what using the [ list ] BBCode will look like:
- This is a list item.
- Another item on my list.
- One more for good measure.
