And some of you even guessed it correctly! Conrgats! Without further delay, my super secret project:
A REAL Software sponsored message board!
I started with RS almost 4 years ago, and one of the first things I started pushing for was a message board for the company. I've always hated mailing lists and loved message boards, so and I know I am not alone in that feeling. However, there's also been heavy opposition to the idea because of fears of splitting up the community.
However, I was recently able to assuage those fears and began pushing harder for a message board. Finally, I was able to gain a foothold, and here we are today with the REALbasic Forums!
The hardware I was waiting on was a new web server because we didn't want to put the message board on the same server as our main web page because we didn't want to bog the CPU down or have space issues. So once we had the hardware, Mike got the machine up and running with phpBB and away we went.
The reason this is outside of the box for me is because I never touch the web stuff at work. I'm rather web-stupid in fact. But I'm the admin of the board, since it's my baby, and so I have to step outside of my little box and learn new things.
So go forth, join the boards, and be merry! That's my big secret, and I hope you liked it.
And it was good. I am hopeful it will be less acrimonious than the other board. Good job Aaron!
YAY! From my POV as well it's about time :P A forum system is so much easier to moderate and maintain than a mailing list. And it helps to alleviate clogged inboxes :)
I used phpBB for my own website so I know it's a good product. You should find it pretty straight forward. The only thing that ever gave me a headache was their themes & style implementation.
Way to go, Aaron! And thank you!
My only question is: Will this replace the mailing lists? If so, over what timeframe?
We have no plans to deprecate the mailing lists. We figure that there's a need for both communication channels because they serve very different preferences.
As for the themes, Mike has been awesome about working on those and getting them up and running. I think Jon's looking into making his RB syntax highlighter work as well. :-)
This is way better than the mailing list for me. I only want the info when I'm in the mood so I would rather not have a flood of emails. Congrats and thank you Aaron!!
I'm disappointed. I read the announcement as "Real Software Opens Massage Parlor." Oh, well, I'll take a little more programming information instead. :)
I should add to that last statement: Thanks again, Aaron, for looking out for RB programmers!
LOL! Sorry, but while that requires special hardware, I doubt I would want to hand out massages to REALbasic users. And I'm reasonably certain that Lis would have something to say on the topic as well.
Well, I know there are many days the massage idea would be REALLY REALLY appreciated while I'm sitting in-front of my cubicle, coding away. You could always get some additional staff, or even contract out in cities....
ANYWAYS! Thanks for the forums, Aaron!
I DO have a few suggestions for some additional forums categories: 2D Graphics, Container Controls, 3D Graphics. You already came up with some of the others I had thought of (Databases, Networks, Windows-specific, Mac-specific, Linux-specific).
Wait... I should have re-read that... I don't actually sit "in-front of" my cubicle. I'm in-front of my *workstation* _in_ my cubicle :P
Is it Friday yet? Can I go home? :P And where's my coffee?!
I know the feeling; there are certainly days I'd like a massage. :-P And LoL @ the in-front of issues. ;-)
Aaron congratulations. After missing your presence at the other well known RB board (whose name i shall not mention) I am really pleased to see you have been so proactive with this since then. I for one greatly value your know-how and consideration of even the most trivial questions.
Congrats.
PS. Where do I go to post a feature request for Sockets?
Great job Aaron!
If I may suggest, why not a "code snipets" (or anything else) area? Something where users could post some code that could be helpful for other users (and newbies), like:
- General RB (with or without categories)
- Windows specific
- MAC specific
- Linux specific
I know the RBDocs is be the preferred place, but I suspect that having it on the forum people would participate a lot more (then some of the stuff could be copyed to the RBDocs).
Carlos
@Brian -- The feedback system is the place you're looking for: here.
@Carlos -- I think it's perfectly on-topic to post those snippets where they belong on the current forums. Then people can comment on them and there's no extra clutter on the main page.
I just though on that just to have things separated and easily to find. One of my big problems in the beginning was to find examples and tips to analyze.
Using the search on NUG lists was very time consuming (and it still is) and I suspect it will also be very time consuming to find any code/tips on the default “questions†topic, as most of the topics will be questions. Any search will bring hundreds of posts in a future and will not help a lot.
I would even separate the RB General code/tips into categories, like:
- ListBoxes
- EditFields
- Popups and ComboBoxes
- ... (and so on... the most common/used)
- Others
On Windows I would have at least two categories:
- ActiveX / OLE / Windows API
- Others
Don’t know what specifics the other platforms could have, as I don’t know anything about them.
Please consider this - I think many users (mainly newbies) will be pleased to have this.
BTW, why not create a pool to check what users think about this? This way you would have some feedback to decide ;)
---
Changing subject, you could ask on the “Sticks†something like:
Add to you signature the RB version you are using and your machine OS version.
Carlos
The trouble is balancing a simple interface with a complex one. The more categories you add and the more forums within them, the more complicated the site becomes to people visiting. There's no "drill-down" feature to phpBB that I'm aware of, and so we tried to keep the forums quite broad on purpose. We didn't want users to come to the forums and get scared because they don't know where to post things.
I will keep your suggestion in the back of my mind, and may come up with a reasonable solution. But as it stands, we want to keep things simple.
Carlos, if you have more than 4-5 forums, nobody will visit any of them except maybe 2-3. Seriously, I've seen dozens of boards, and you'll find that's true about all of them with excessive forums. (Typically, if you look down the last updated list, it'll read: today, a year ago, two years ago, a year and four months ago, today, three years ago and 1 post. Or something similar.)
If you want a BAD example of support forums, look at Matrox's.
http://forum.matrox.com/mga/index.php
1) You have to agree with a EULA to even view topics there.
2) Posting is disabled during the weekend. WHY?! Do they think people will get confused and wonder why service is so shoddy on saturday night at 11:30 PM?
3) There are about 50 different topics.
4) None of the topics have clear labels.
It's not clear what topic you're supposed to post in. Here's my problem: I have a Matrox MED/3 card connected to dual monitors, and sometimes it won't boot up both monitors when the computer starts. Try to figure out what forum to post in. None of them mention the MED series of video cards, except perhaps "Other Cards" (but that's in the gaming section, and the MED cards are certainly not for gaming.) Not to mention I don't know about half the terms they use. What is NLE? What is DCC? Is our x-ray viewer computer a AEC machine or a GIS machine? All of these Three Letter Acronyms are dropped with the assumption that the user knows what they mean, but that's a really bad assumption.
Anyway, long story short, if you want to look at about the LEAST useful tech support forum on the web, Matrox has got it.
(PS, I solved my problem by swapping in a beefier power supply. I think the video card was getting starved of current when it was initializing and so sometimes it wouldn't have the juice to power up that second monitor. I might be wrong though.)
Boooooooooooo........ I'm disappointed. I was hoping for some REALbasic-made X-10 controller software packages or something...
Wouldn't you want automated Venetian blinds over a silly web forum? :)
How about a web-interface into those Venetian blinds? Huh?! Huh?! You might just want to give your house some sunlight while your at work! LOL@Seth :)
lame
since when is this realbasic.aaronballman.com ? :)
ohh i guess an explination would be good... i can't just say lame without at least some tidbits..
What am I supposed to do with it? :)
LoL, in case you didn't notice, this was posted under REALbasic Gems. ;-) It's a message board Jake, you post questions and answer questions on it.
Hey Aaron, out of curiosity, what's the specs on the server that runs the forums?
Ya know, since I never got my hands physically on the box, I'm not certain. Whatever it is, it couldn't be too shabby, it was an old dev box. :-P
Ah. Linux? or did you did you fight with it to make a WAMP box? :)
Nope -- OS X
WOW! Never saw that coming! And how the heck do you respond so fast? Do you get a IM everytime I post a comment? *gets all paranoid and wraps his head in tinfoil*
I get emails whenever a comment is posted, and my email checks quite frequently. So I respond quickly if I can. :-P
Oh. Okay... But I'm keeping the tinfoil on :P
Awesome! Thanks Aaron.
Aaron, have you thought about converging the list and the forums. I personally prefer mailing lists to web forums simply because my e-mail app is a more responsive UI and works via push instead of having me poll for messages manually. AFAIK phpBB doesn't support e-mailing out forum posts or posting via e-mail, but it's open source, so maybe this is something to look into for the future? That would completely eliminate the splitting part at least.
I believe there's a mod for phpBB that lets you combine a mailing list and a message board, however, that would also put quite a large tax on our servers I think. Basically, if we see a real problem, we'll take steps to rectify it -- but until we see a problem, there's no sense in putting a lot of time into solving it. Since the boards have been up, I've noticed only 3 or 4 cross-posts with the mailing lists. So it doesn't appear to be a huge issue as it stands. But we'll see!
First: Thank you for your efford, Aaron! I already love your RB Board :)
May it be possible to add a Betatester Group and to give them an own Forum on your Board ?
I am already on the Mailinglist, but i am also not really a fan of such Lists...
Thank you in advance :)
While it may be technically possible (it'd involve setting up usergroups and a bunch of other fun stuff under the hood), the beta testing group really needs to be in one focused area so that their feedback doesn't get lost. I doubt there'll be a beta testing group on the new forums.