Forum organisation suggestions

[Jonny]

The switch to phpBB has prompted these few suggestions re forum organisation up the CMSMS flagpole.

Newcomers in need of support have a tendency to post in the first available forum. Hence we frequently see help questions in General Discussion. I propose that there be a separate category for Official CMSMS Support, containing:

Installation, Setup and Upgrade
Product Support

This would be immediately below an informative Rules & Announcements category containing only the read-only Forum Rules and Announcements.

Developer Discussions and anything not directly related to requesting and giving help with the software would be in a separate Official category lower down, below the Community Boards. The immediately visible focus of the forum would be on the user and community rather than developers.

In the Community Boards, the forums would be arranged in order of current popularity. This would put Modules/Add-Ons first and Layout and Design (CSS & HTML) second - both of which are help forums. Help is in demand so giving it listing priority is more likely to result in people posting in the appropriate place.

[upsilondelta]

You potentially run the risk of reducing traffic to the rest of the board. Having the help forum visible near the top of the list would probably satisfy your concern but without potentially weakening the integrity of the board. You have to be pretty specific with people, always assume that people will do the dumb thing.