Improving the www.remarpro.com support forums

[Jen]

I think we all know that as helpful as the support forums are in some ways, in other ways there’s much to be desired. As we will be doing some work on improving www.remarpro.com this summer, let’s hear your suggestions for how we can improve the support experience here on www.remarpro.com. Thanks!

[Mark / t31os]

lol, serious dumb moment for me then… oops..

Note to self: Book appointment at opticians… ??

For the sake of my pride, could i request the seach box be made to stand out more? ??

[MichaelH]

here ya go–the world’s cheapest eyeglasses!

0^0

[Chris_K]

Well yeah, a dark gray search box at the top border is … challenging to spot.

[Rev. Voodoo]

I seriously never knew that was there! wow……

[Dougal Campbell]

It’s sometimes hard to see but there is a search box at the very top of all pages, at least in my browser.

Aw, heck. I knew that was there. But since it says “Search www.remarpro.com”, I always assumed it was still the usual site-wide search. But it turns out that when in the forums, it does default to limiting the search to just the forums. My bad, but it illustrates the fact that it’s at least not clear that the search box stays in the forums.

Plus as others have noted, it’s really hard to see. A search box is a very important feature for this site, and needs to stand out better. And a checkbox to limit searching to the currently viewed topic (when applicable) would still be nice, I think.

[edified]

Search needs an overhaul- there should be one search system for everything but we should be able to constrain to [forums, plugins, themes, etc…]

More than that each of these areas should support WP Version categories. Most of the information on these forums is outdated and useless but it’s hard to tell since it may have been written for version 1.8 but there’s no indication/

Of course search needs to be able to be constrained to versions or ranges in each category as well. Nothing like searching for a simple AJAX Comment plugin only to be bombarded by old broken outdated incompatible plugs ??

Looking forward to the improvements!

[Roar]

I’d donate money toward paid moderators who keep things sorted out.

??

[Shane Pearlman]

Sticky Posts. We often make announcements that desappear from the front page that day (for things like releases, major known bugs etc..)

[esmi]

Sticky Posts.

Noooo! Not for general use. Many of the people who post on the forums feel that they have an urgent problem that needs to be resolved in the next 15 minutes. Allow them access to sticky posts and you’d have just have forums full of stickies within 24 hours.

[Samuel Wood (Otto)]

Sticky Posts. We often make announcements that desappear from the front page that day (for things like releases, major known bugs etc..)

wp-forums mailing list. All us mods, with powers, read it. Post there, and we’ll know. Link to the post in question too.

[Erlend]

Wiki – Work with developer of bp-wiki (doesn’t have to rely on BP) to replace MediaWiki.

Search – Without a clue how difficult it’d be, I’m just gonna go ahead and say: BuddyPress.org’s collective site search is one of it’s coolest features by far.

Support Forum – Time for a couple paragraphs.

I’d suggest taking a lesson from the biggest forum “2.0” (I hate it too) services on the web today, the likes of GetSatisfaction and StackOverflow. I think these are both brilliant services, based on very simple principles. Taking what I’ve learned from these sites and past forums, I’d suggest the following:

1) Don’t do bad vs good votes, just to good vs better. When someone gives an answer, it’s either worthless (don’t read that as negative), helpful or perfect. Very rarely is a topic downright the opposite of helpful, in which case it should be reported to a moderator, not just taunted with red votes.

The best replies should logically receive a lot of positive votes and be placed up top, while moderately helpful replies should follow suit. Then if you scroll further down you’ll just be looking at a bunch of ‘reaction’ comments or maybe some of the comments that helped find the way to the answer, but by themselves explain nothing.

2) Good system for ‘related threads’. There are some great WordPress plug-ins providing the base functionality for it already. When I ask “how to make a post?” and all I find, maybe because of a bad search, is “how to make a page?”, then when I check that page I’ll find the one I was actually looking for among the relateds.

3) There should definitely be a way to merge threads. Moderators should have open access to it, users should be able to recommend it (see #4)

4) “I also have this issue”-votes (also acting as opt-in subscription to thread) are great for avoiding duplicate threads and unnecessary “+1” and “me too” replies.

[gerikg]

“bbpress plugin instead of standalone install”

Will it be “easy” to covert the bbpress’ plugins to work with this new version. bbPress software alone is pretty blah.

[mrmist]

This thread has largely been superseeded now by the wider context www.remarpro.com improvements thread. You may want to read that, though I guess input here is still valid.

[Michael Torbert]

@chip Just saw your reply. I should have subscribed. ??

Yes, I know that threads can be subscribed to, but it would be best (and shouldn’t be overly complicated) for plugin authors to be notified about new threads and new posts on existing threads about their plugins.

Still, I’m excited about new improvements to the forums. Thank you Otto, MichaelH, Chris_K, and everyone else for donating so much of your personal time and effort.

[toddhalfpenny]

Hey Jane… so you were right about the forum and there’s even a thread for the very topic ??

So here is a suggestion which would really help me when browsing the forums for either answers or unresolved posts… and the idea is to be able to order search results via date/relevance/status etc.

Cheers,
Todd