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Best Practices for Using Forum and Organizing TXP Knowledge
Hi All,
Edit: None of what follows is meant to suggest that anyone (and Destry in particular) is doing a bad job of organizing the information available pertaining to TXP. It’s mainly so that I can feel I have an organized and methodical approach to finding what I need, when I need it whether it’s for web building or answering questions on the forum. Mainly, as a first project I have in mind some sort of TOC that is a one stop place to get to anywhere TXP. Kind of like Anark’s suggestion for a community map.
Wondering how those of you who use forums (and respond to questions) a lot use them (this one in particular but other forums also).
- How do you track/stay on track with conversations? (Email sub notify, go to forum; new posts since last visit)
- Do you dedicate certain hours of the day or night? Or just surf willy-nilly.
- How much time does it take you to “keep up”?
- Are you concerned only with certain forums/topics? Which ones?
- Do you bookmark great informative FAQ-like posts or use del.icio.us or some other method of remembering who said what about what so you can answer the question without searching? Or do you mostly just use the TXP search bookmarket or google?
- How do you organize those bookmarks?
- Do you just have a great memory? (Mine’s only good for about 256k and then it dumps).
- Are there mods or features on other forums that would make this forum most useful? (Like Polls).
- What are your methods for navigating the info that is on this forum, in the Plugins topic thread and the resources available on the resource site? How do you manage compatability factors? ie versions of plugins/mods/and TXP
And group project oriented questions:
- Do you have your own private TXP cheatsheets that you’d be willing to contribute to a group resource/reorg TOC and/or expanded cheatsheets? What all would go on such a cheatsheet? (TAGS, Textile code, ??)
- Anyone want to work on or contribute to a forum TOC (Table of Contents), Cheatsheets and/or Forum Guidelines? We could work on a forum TOC using del.ici.o.us or one of the other bookmarking apps out there
- Start a workgroup or just email contributions? (For now feel free to email me anything you have that you think relates to organizing our resources more simply and/or comprehensively and I will complile and list and report back here.)
All of this, basic forums guidelines and a Welcome to TXP basic beginner’s guide could be put under a new forum called “Welcome” and could serve as a (simple) starting introductory pointer place for those who are new to TXP.
Feel free to let me know what else this sparks for you.
Last edited by neutrino (2006-02-26 23:45:19)
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Re: Best Practices for Using Forum and Organizing TXP Knowledge
neutrino,
First and foremost, I’d like to thank the software Gods for Tabbed browsing :)
How I keep track of forums is via Firefox bookmarks and the ‘Open in tabs’ feature. I have several sections of bookmarks depending on what I do on said forums. The first tabbed bookmarks are for forums I help moderate and each tabbed group follows in order of importance.
One of the first things I do in the morning is open up my moderated forums to answer questions and remove any spam. Next, depending on the time I’ve already spent, I peruse the other tabs or wait for a break later in the day.
Since the forums I frequent are running the full gamut of software, I’ve had to adapt to each one’s methods. On PunBB forums, my bookmark goes straight to ‘Show new posts since last visit’, while on other forums I may use their topic indicators and peruse a subforum if I want to.
All in all, I follow about 25 forums, with 6 being the main group comprising the software that I use on my sites. It takes me about 15 to 30 minutes in the morning to catch up and I check in every so often during the day to see what’s going on.
I find that Open Source project forums contain the best wealth of information and it’s where I determine if a project is worth dedicating my time to.
PS. When I find something on a forum that’s a keeper, I copy/paste it to my private wiki. I run DokuWiki on my Windows XP laptop, Apache as a service is mucho nice ;)
Last edited by hcgtv (2006-02-25 20:51:24)
We Love TXP . TXP Themes . TXP Tags . TXP Planet . TXP Make
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Re: Best Practices for Using Forum and Organizing TXP Knowledge
- Keeping on track via feed via Rojo. They keep getting better.
- Relevant bookmarks on del.icio.us.
- Search via google’s
site:restriction and local search (both suck in different fields, that’s good) - I am not convinced that any forum is a proper place for a “Nice to have you with us” page. This should go into Textbook. I see no use for a threaded view of past things for a newbie, they should receive the latest news and nothing more.
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Re: Best Practices for Using Forum and Organizing TXP Knowledge
@hcgtv
great tip—I have been using browser tabs as a home page to open up a bunch of sites but it never occurred to me to set bookmarks folders to organize different areas. This will help a lot. And I agree: Open Source is the way. For all its struggles it rocks!
@wet
I just recently signed up for a rojo account and have yet to fully check it out but I will. As far as the “Welcome” page I’m only going by my habits: Install and hit the forums for all the things I can’t figure out. The forums are where I’ve spent 90% of my TXP site time and where I know I’ll be able to find the most up to date info. Textbook has always seemed a little big and sparse, overwhelminly detailed in places yet missing what I was looking for and a bear to read. Also the forum really is where the people are—where they might say: Glad to have you here (or not). Your sig gives me pause.
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Re: Best Practices for Using Forum and Organizing TXP Knowledge
> neutrino wrote:
Your sig gives me pause.
Sorry, I am no native speaker. What does that phrase mean?
Last edited by wet (2006-02-26 07:09:10)
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#6 2006-02-26 12:28:36
- nardo
- Member
- From: tuvalahiti
- Registered: 2004-04-22
- Posts: 743
Re: Best Practices for Using Forum and Organizing TXP Knowledge
Neutrino – I browse the forums daily (new posts since last visit) but with no systematic approach. I search using google’s site:textpattern.com. The forum is my primary source. The manual is a regular reference, I have the tag index bookmarked. When core tags don’t satisfy or the forum doesn’t come through, I browse the plugin categories at Txp resources.
Best advice to newer users is to master how textpattern approaches the display and archiving of information (and try refrain from searching for plugins right away). This ‘introduction to Textpattern’ has been written by a few people (txp semantics, plus Destry I think), but could be augmented.
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Re: Best Practices for Using Forum and Organizing TXP Knowledge
Thanks Nardo
master how textpattern approaches the display
I’m assuming this means the use of templates, forms and CSS?
@wet
Just that your signature line sets me back a bit, makes me wonder, think. I’m not sure who or what it means.
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#8 2006-02-26 22:40:51
- nardo
- Member
- From: tuvalahiti
- Registered: 2004-04-22
- Posts: 743
Re: Best Practices for Using Forum and Organizing TXP Knowledge
neutrino – more the concept of article lists and individual article pages (and of course the unique home page); the use of the article and article_custom tags; how the URL defines what’s output on the page… to answer those first questions like ‘how do I create another page?’
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Re: Best Practices for Using Forum and Organizing TXP Knowledge
Any tip and tricks for using the new forum can be collected here also. Simple newbie things are good like:
- Using the Control plus/minus keys to make text larger/smaller
- Use the new expand/collapse links on the forum Topic categories if you find yourslf scrolling to much on the index page
- Set a bookmark to show all posts so that you can get there fast.
- Change your theme under your profile if you don’t like “the look”
- fo typed in Firefox’s address bar will almost always get you a list of links to forum.textpattern.com posts you might want to find again. I use it to get back to the forum index when I’m on another website. (course this won’t work if you clean your history a lot or you visit a lot of sites that start with the word forum (in that case you get them all in alphapetical order).
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Re: Best Practices for Using Forum and Organizing TXP Knowledge
More Forum Tips and Tricks (thanks to all Mary’s hard work)
Firefox Browser Extension for managing user styles
Last edited by neutrino (2006-03-07 13:54:16)
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