Revision as of 2005-05-17 10:25

Current

To redesign something, one must understand the current way things are. Let's have a look.

We have 6 main Categories:

• General
• Getting Started with phpWebSite
• phpWebSite versions 0.10.x-x
• phpWebSite versions 0.9.x-x
• phpWebSite versions 0.8.x-x
• Forum Development

Currently, the phpWebSite version the poster is using is differentiated through a forum category. People using phpWebSite 0.10 for example would post into the "phpWebSite versions 0.10.x-x" forum.

General Category

The General forum is basically a mix-up of all kind of things that aren't really related:

• Security Alerts (newest posting from 2004)
• Announcements
• Off-Topic Forum
• New Mod Announcements
• Designer's Gallery

The Off-Topic Forum and the Designer's Gallery are very busy, whereas the Security Alerts, Announcements and New Mod Announcements are mainly used by moderators.

Getting Started with phpWebSite

Contains a forum called "phpWebSite FAQs" and a forum called "Installation / Configuration Support". The first one is locked, moderators move usefull stuff in there.

The second is rather busy and used by people who can't get phpWebSite running in the first place.

phpWebSite versions 0.10.x-x

Just by reading the categories, one could think that "phpWebSite versions 0.10.x-x", "phpWebSite versions 0.9.x-x" and "phpWebSite versions 0.8.x-x" have the same content. This is not the case.

this category has three forums:

• Help 0.10.x-x
• Modules 0.10.x-x
• Open Discussion 0.10.x-x

You can note that every of the forum names has a "0.10.x-x" forum suffix even though the category would suggest that you already are within the phpWebSite version 0.10.x-x realm.

"Help" suggests that people have a problem and want it solved in here. "Open Discussion" is similar. But people discussing here don't want their problem solved but discuss about certain things regarding pws010.

The Modules forum is used for discussion modules. If someone has a module problem, would he post in the help or in the modules forum? If someone wants to discuss a module, would he post it in "open discussion" or in modules?

Well, that's mixed. There are help-seeking people with module problems in the Help forum as well as in the Modules forum.

phpWebSite versions 0.9.x-x

The "phpWebSite versions 0.9.x-x" forum has the structure that got the support forums started in the first place. From the start on, there were a "0.9" and a "0.8" forum with the same structure.

• Open Discussion 0.9.x-x
• Development 0.9.x-x
• Help 0.9.x-x
• Modules 0.9.x-x
• Themes 0.9.x-x

The "phpWebSite versions 0.8.x-x" forum got slimmed down to a single forum later on, because people didn't use it and support for it was officially closed down.

We see a similar concept to the current 0.10 forums here, but there are also forums for Developement and Themes. People usually put there Developement questions to SourceForge?, because the support forum is not visited by the phpWebSite developers too often.

The Themes forum on the other hand is still rather busy.

phpWebSite versions 0.8.x-x

Last modified 2005-05-17 10:25 by rck