New Forums - (Ideas)

[BrandonK]

Hey all, just curious to see what forums you guys might like to see in the near future (possibly).

I was thinking:

Keep these forums the way they are. (General Questions, Off-Topic, etc)
Add an "Announcements" forum.
Add another category with "Networking Help", "Photoshop Help", and "Web Design Help" (Sub categories would be things like HTML, PHP/MySQL, etc)
"Site Showcase" forum.


What do you all think? :)

I'm open to other possibilities, so feel free to share em! :D

[ikersley]

I like the idea of some further sub-divisions within the main forum. I suspect it will help with the issue of "techie" vs. "yakker" postings. Personally, I like to see topic-specific areas, because it makes searching for an answer to a specific problem significantly easier IMHO. Go for it...

Ian

[macgyver2]

My thoughts...

I like more organization over less. For instance, I don't like how Fantastico stuff is mixed with scripting stuff. At the very least, I think there needs to be some sub-forums implemented there.

To answer your post specifically... I do think there needs to be an announcements section (#2). I think that's a given. I also like #3, with another sub-forums being "Security". I don't think #4 is necessary, as a forum/sub-forum...a sticky in the off-topic forum should be fine.

[BrandonK]

a sticky in the off-topic forum should be fine.


Yeah that actually sounds like a better idea to me.

[Taresa]

One of the ways I like to learn is through casual reading. If something catches my eye, it would be nice to just go to a particular topic and read thread after thread without a lot of questions about stuff that doesn't interest me.

I still don't really understand the difference between the General and Fantastico, etc. categories. It looks like there are a lot of threads in General that couls also be in Fantastico, etc. That's confusing to me, so I just check out new posts. The existing organization just isn't intuitive/appealing to me.

So, yes to more sub-forums!

[cajun]

1] General Information
a. announcements
b. updates/alerts
c. Forum Rules

2] Support Forum
a. ASP
b. CGI
c. control panels
d. stats
e. PHP/MySQL

3] Some other stuff

[bruphoto]

I'm all for more forums / sub-forums, but I think in this case too many forums could be more confusing than helping. Less is more, so to speak.

This is my syggestion (based on Cajun's post ;) )

1) General Information (including forum rules as a sticky)
a. announcements
b. updates/alerts
c. Control panel questions

2) Scripting (with general questions)
a. Server-side scripting
b. Client-side scripting

3) Other (like web-design)

http://www.bruphoto.com/pics/mysig.png

[BrandonK]

1] General Information
a. announcements
b. updates/alerts
c. Forum Rules

2] Support Forum
a. ASP
b. CGI
c. control panels
d. stats
e. PHP/MySQL

3] Some other stuff


We don't need a forum dedicated to the rules, I can just make an announcement post that'll show on every forum. :)....just have to wait for permission with that. ;)

[Taresa]

Yes. Add to General:

Fantastico Installs (way too big a category to be lumped in with other CP stuff)
Mail (with everything we see/hear about spam control, I think this is important)

Announcements = Updates = Alerts, in my book.

One thing BH lacks is a way to let us know when there's a problem with some or all of our services. If the forum is the place for that to happen, that should be a high priority.

I say this because BH does NOT need the bad press they can get from trouble reports on their forums/blog, etc. Also because we need (at least) one place where we can go as soon as we see our sites are behaving poorly. If there's a splash page on the help center, that may be more appropriate. We need it, somewhere...

[JCsDesignz]

Woohoo more places to post LOL

Id love the photoshop help if it gets set up. I currently use paintshop pro 8 and 9 for my graphics but also have Photoshop,Dreamweaver and fireworks but no idea how to use them LOL

Dreamweaver and fireworks help would be a good one as well if anyone has enough patients ;)

[Gizmo]

Anything with tuts on FTP would be good for me :D
How about a new members/introduction forum?
Instead of having loads of thread where members want to show their sites just have it in the one place.

[Dave]

These forums should be public...

Bluehost Announcements
General Announcements
Get up to date news about Bluehost upgrades and plan changes here.
Network Status
Check here for service outages if you are having problems accessing your site or using email.
Public Forums
Pre-Sales Questions
Choosing a new host can be a daunting task. Post your questions before signing up and we'll answer 'em. Simple as that. These forums should be private...
Bluehost Support Forums
General Support Issues
Answers to general questions and help with common problems. For help with a specific issue, post to one of the forums below.
Email (POP & SMTP)
Sending and receiving email, configuring email programs and Bluehost's webmail client.
Domain Names/DNS
Domain name registration, maintenance and transfers. DNS issues such as MX records, CNAMEs, A records, etc.
PHP
Configuring and troubleshooting PHP scripts.
CGI/Perl Scripts
Configuring and troubleshooting perl/CGI scripts.
MySQL
Database information, help and tips.
HTML/CSS/Javascript
HTML, CSS, javascript and general web design.
.htaccess/cron
Questions, advice, troubleshooting of .htaccess and cron files.
Site Statistics/Logs
Managing webstats and using third party statistics programs.
Web Site Design Software and Tools
Subforums:
Microsoft FrontPage
Dreamweaver
PowerWebBuilder Site Building Tool
Other Site Building Tools
Content Management Systems
Subforums:
General Questions and Recommendations
E-commerce and Shopping Carts
Forums and Bulletin Boards
Portals
Image Galleries
Blogs
Wiki
Graphic Design/Multimedia/Flash/Shockwave
Help creating web site graphics and other multimedia.
Bluehost Member Control Panel
cPanel Control Panel
Webmaster Resource Center
Web Site Critique/Review
Introduce your website to the world! Show your new site and get other webmasters to review and critique your site.
Search Engines/Site Promotion/Affiliate Programs
Learn how attract more visitors and promote your site to a wider audience.
Other Forums
Open Discussions (Chit Chat)
Introduce yourself. Open Discussions. Chit Chat about anything.
Computer Help
Troubleshooting, building, upgrading, repairing and maintaining your computer.
Member Spotlight
Learn more about your fellow forum users.
Suggestions
Tell us how we can improve Bluehost! Have ideas for new features or add-ons? Just let us know and we'll do our best to accomodate you.
These should work fine for us for now IMHO.

Dave

[jdh]

Well, if we're going to get into topic-specific sub-forums (which is a good idea within reason, IMHO), we should probably break them down based on the frequently-discussed topics that we're already seeing.... I think if we try to find a logical division among what's already in the main forums we're probably off to a good start.

Dave's layout looks very well-thought-out and is probably good for the longer-term, but I think it is far too detailed at this stage... it will come across as a bit intimidating for new users and make more work for the mods keeping things sorted out, as people will show up and have a hard time figuring out what forums to post in.... In a configuration like this I can almost guarantee that everything will end up in the "General Support Forum" since people tend to just post in the default first forum they can see, particularly if it's too complicate to figure out where they should be posting.

At this point, we could probably keep things fairly broad and leave out the more detailed sub-forums... As an abbreviation of Dave's layout, I'd suggest the following:

Bluehost Announcements
General Announcements / Network Status
(note that Network Status can be a sticky in General Announcements, or a global vBulletin announcement, so I don't think it needs a separate forum).

Public Forums
Pre-Sales Questions

Bluehost Support Forums
General Support Issues
Email (IMAP/POP/SMTP/WebMail)
Domain Names/DNS
PHP
CGI/Perl Scripts
Database Support (MySQL / PostgreSQL)
HTML/CSS/Javascript
Site Management (.htaccess/cron, Site Statistics/Logs)
Web Site Design Software and Tools (drop the sub-forums for now)
Content Management Systems (drop the sub-forums for now)
E-commerce and Shopping Carts (specific enough to deserve a separate forum, and not really a CMS)
Graphic Design/Multimedia/Flash/Shockwave
Webmaster Resources (this would include web site reviews and search engines/site promotion/etc in one forum)

Other
Open Discussions (Chit Chat)
Computer Help
Suggestions

[BrandonK]

Thanks for all of your wonderful ideas everyone! I'll take them all into consideration when we're able to get things a bit more organized and I'm able to get my ideas in action. :)

[rando]

These forums should be public...


:eek: :eek: :eek: :eek:

These should work fine for us for now IMHO.

Dave

I'll tell you now, there's no way you'll see that many forums, for a number of reasons. For one, Matt won't allow it, and I and pretty much every other bluehost employee agrees with that.

But for real reasons, let's put it this way:

The last 24 hours of discussion fits on one page in general discussion right now (that's less than 20 threads). The same is true of the advanced discussion forum, and the off topic forum has three threads that fit that.

There's just not enough discussion to warrant all that. Right now I can look through all the threads in a single day to see if there's anything that warrants comments from me. If I have to check 20 forums to do the same thing, you can just forget about me even caring about this forum at all. It's just too hard to keep up on that many forums, especially when those forums maybe only get a few posts a day.

To further flog a horse, that if not dead is at this point in mortal danger of expiring, here's a short list of what some of the forums you've suggested would have had discussed at all in the last day (and this isn't even new threads posted):

General Questions: I'm specifically skipping this one because it's a forum we already have, and I don't want to count these because it's most of the threads we've had discussed in in the last day. There's at least 10-15 of these.
Email (POP & SMTP): 2
Domain Names/DNS: 0
PHP: only 2 that I saw are specific to PHP
CGI/Perl Scripts: I think I counted 2-3 of these
SQL: 1
HTML/CSS/Javascript: 0
.htaccess/cron: 0
Site Statistics/Logs: 0
Web Site Design Software and Tools: 0

Microsoft FrontPage: 0
Dreamweaver: 0
PowerWebBuilder Site Building Tool: 0
Other Site Building Tools: 0

Content Management Systems: 0

General Questions and Recommendations: 0
E-commerce and Shopping Carts: 0
Forums and Bulletin Boards: 1
Portals: 0
Image Galleries: 0
Blogs: 2 (joomla's a blog, right? if not these go under whatever that is)
Wiki: 1

Graphic Design/Multimedia/Flash/Shockwave: 0
Help creating web site graphics and other multimedia.: 0
Bluehost Member Control Panel: 0
cPanel Control Panel: 0

As you can see, most things would fall into the more generic categories anyway, and all you're doing by adding a few hundred forums is hiding them from the areas of serious discussion.

We may add one or two more forums, but for now, "Basic Questions " and "Advanced Questions" is filling our needs quite nicely, and if something's borderline between the two it doesn't matter which you post it in because someone will answer it anyway.

Also, there's a lot of things that could be borderline between multiple forums, or you could assume it's a problem that fits into one forum, but it's really a symptom of a problem in a completely different forum.

[jdh]

I'll tell you now, there's no way you'll see that many forums, for a number of reasons. For one, Matt won't allow it, and I and pretty much every other bluehost employee agrees with that.
I'm inclined to disagree with the extra-long list (as I said, I think it would be unwieldy and scary at this point for most users), except to say that it's something that's good to keep in mind for future growth. It's hard to say where we'll be a year from now, and a template for how things might eventually need to be divided is fine.


The last 24 hours of discussion fits on one page in general discussion right now (that's less than 20 threads). The same is true of the advanced discussion forum, and the off topic forum has three threads that fit that.
Naturally, a review of the existing threads and points of discussion makes the most sense, but at the same time we also have to consider the direction things were going before we lost the forums the first time around.

Email (POP & SMTP)
Not only did this one seem to get a few more threads in the last version of the forums, but I think this is a specific enough topic to warrant it's own forum. Not every Bluehost customer uses e-mail extensively, and I think it's fair to say that when somebody wants to read up on or get support with e-mail problems there should be an easy reference point for that.

Domain Names/DNS
For now I agree. Again, in Bluehostforums v1.0 there were several threads on this, but could probably live in general until it becomes a big point of discussion. However, it's again a unique topic.

PHP & CGI/Perl Scripts
To be honest, I could see lumping this together into a "dynamic content" or web-scripting, except that the languages themselves are very diverse, and you likely wouldn't have a lot of people in the same areas.

HTML/CSS/Javascript
Truth is, this is pretty generic stuff, and there are probably other better places to discuss these questions than here.

.htaccess/cron & Site Statistics/Logs
My suggestion had lumped these into "site management" and there were certainly a few threads on these before. Again, I could see the point in leaving them in a more general area for the time being, however.

Web Site Design Software and Tools
I don't think this is a bad idea as a separate forum, however the sub-forums under this would be a little excessive. Again, there were several threads in the previous iteration on this.

Content Management Systems
To me this would perhaps be a split-off of the current "Fantastico" and "Advanced Scripting" forums, with the former turning into this, and the "Advanced Scripting" belonging up under the PHP/CGI one above.

Again, however, sub-forums would be very excessive here.

Graphic Design/Multimedia/Flash/Shockwave
This one is a big <shrug> to me... Probably fits into the same category as the HTML one... Better places to discuss.

Bluehost Member Control Panel
cPanel Control Panel
General topics for sure.

Ultimately, I think an expectation needs to be set for what these forums are intended for, and what they're expected to become. The discussion on what areas are required centre around the following, IMHO:

Do we want to be all things to all people, or just a support forum for Bluehost-specific topics? In other words, do conversations on more generic topics such as HTML, CSS, graphics, etc., belong here, or are people better referred to other boards that would provide more comprehensive discussions on this. The same could also be said for PHP and Perl/CGI coding. Personally, I have no real opinion on this, and of course the answer is up to Matt and the Bluehost staff, since it's their forum.
Do we want to build a knowledge-base out of these forums over time? Today the search engine will generally turn up what people are looking for, but it will become more cumbersome as things grow. Once we have 1000+ threads in here, some organization will be required to allow people to use the forum as a resource, if that's the intent. If so, when is the best time to do this organization? Creating additional forums now allows threads to be sorted out as we go. Creating additional forums later will require moderators to go through and move the appropriate threads into the appropriate forums if there is ever going to be a sense of organization.
Is this a support forum for Bluehost, or are we trying to create a community (I realize the correct answer is probably somewhere in between). If this is going to be a fun place for Bluehost users to hang out, then this speaks to the need for an Off-Topic forum or two, as well as the possible need to eventually have discussions on generic HTML and coding topics.

Personally, I would like to see this ultimately become a knowledge resource, where threads are organized in such a way as to allow users to find the information they need quickly, or for that matter just browse through a topic that is of interest to them. To facilitate this, a more organized forum layout will eventually be required, although I admit that this is probably not necessary today.

Ultimately, it's been my experience from working with several very large sites that most users are going to drop their questions into the general area anyway, which ultimately creates more work for the moderators in sorting things out. In the short term, having a small number of general areas is probably not a bad thing, however, the time may come when the signal-to-noise ratio in the general area requires the separation of discussions into more areas.

I agree that we are not anywhere near that point today. The only question that remains is whether it is more prudent to prepare for that now, or to wait and see what happens.

[macgyver2]

Right now I can look through all the threads in a single day to see if there's anything that warrants comments from me. If I have to check 20 forums to do the same thing, you can just forget about me even caring about this forum at all. It's just too hard to keep up on that many forums, especially when those forums maybe only get a few posts a day.
All you would need to do to solve that is hit the 'New Posts' link on the menubar on top. It should give you all of the posts that have occured between now and your last login.

Also (and jdh already spoke to this), I disagree with using the state of the forums now to argue against a category structure that is intended to support future growth.

Finally...the basic vs. advanced categorization system just doesn't make sense to me. Things should (IMO) be categorized based on an objective quality (like what it is we're talking about) as opposed to a subjective quality. Consider that to someone who is having difficulty, the issue will more often than not look advanced to them even if it's not advanced to others.

[rando]

I'm inclined to disagree with the extra-long list (as I said, I think it would be unwieldy and scary at this point for most users), except to say that it's something that's good to keep in mind for future growth. It's hard to say where we'll be a year from now, and a template for how things might eventually need to be divided is fine.

I don't think it's that hard to transition as the need arises, and I also think that's the best plan. If we find ourselves being overwhelmed with certain types of questions, we can separate those out to their own subforums. This does mean that we have to get to the point that it's actually necessary, but it also means that we don't jump the gun and have a bunch of completely unused forums.

I also don't like the idea of basing our judgements on the pre-crash version of these forums. There were a lot of people spamming us to death trying to earn themselves a moderator rank, and there was also the initial influx of posts of people excited to post on the shiny new forums. The first day had 1000 signups. The last week since the crash has had 200 re-signups.

The plan is to mostly just keep an eye out for what is actually cluttering our forums, and when something gets to the point that it should have its own forum, we'll give it its own. We really can't predict what the most popular types of threads are going to be a year from now, so we'd rather not do it. It only takes a few minutes to make a new forum, and we don't even care about moving older threads into the a new forum. That'll clean itself up after only a few days.

[JCsDesignz]

The last 24 hours of discussion fits on one page in general discussion right now (that's less than 20 threads). The same is true of the advanced discussion forum, and the off topic forum has three threads that fit that.There's just not enough discussion to warrant all that.

Granted but surely as more people join and know the forum is here all that will change. Especially if they see there are actually people here who can help them.


Right now I can look through all the threads in a single day to see if there's anything that warrants comments from me. If I have to check 20 forums to do the same thing, you can just forget about me even caring about this forum at all.
Someones has already suggested the new post button :) As for "forget about me caring" Isnt that kind of the wrong attitude to be taking with members LOL :p


It's just too hard to keep up on that many forums, especially when those forums maybe only get a few posts a day.

Thats what moderators are for. If there is something that specifically needs your attention it can be done so by a moderator on a private board set up soley for staff :)

[smiffy]

Personally, I'm a believer it waiting until a forum is required before I'd consider adding it. I would wait till the subject matter built up before I began sub-dividing the forums into various categories.

[rando]

Granted but surely as more people join and know the forum is here all that will change. Especially if they see there are actually people here who can help them.

Yeah, but adding forums before there's need is a bad idea. If that need never comes, you've got a useless subforum.


As for "forget about me caring" Isnt that kind of the wrong attitude to be taking with members LOL :p

What, Honesty? :)

I can't read a forum with a bunch of really unused subforums. At that point it would cease to be useful to me as the bluehost mail admin and uninteresting to me personally.


Thats what moderators are for. If there is something that specifically needs your attention it can be done so by a moderator on a private board set up soley for staff :)

There's this thing you have to understand- getting the right things filtered to me is very very hard. I get a lot of stuff I shouldn't that has nothing to do with me, and I miss a lot of things that never get to me because people don't think "maybe rando should answer this".

That's why I keep an eye on these forums- Before the crash, for example, I found out that the cpu exceeded stuff was happening in a scenario where it absolutely shouldn't. This has been happening for months, but it never got brought to my attention.

I stand by this: if you can look at a forum and see less than 5-10 posts (not even threads, just discussion in more than that many threads) per day, there's no way that that subject deserves its own forum.

[Dave]

I'll tell you now, there's no way you'll see that many forums, for a number of reasons. For one, Matt won't allow it, and I and pretty much every other bluehost employee agrees with that.

But for real reasons, let's put it this way:

The last 24 hours of discussion fits on one page in general discussion right now (that's less than 20 threads). The same is true of the advanced discussion forum, and the off topic forum has three threads that fit that.

There's just not enough discussion to warrant all that. Right now I can look through all the threads in a single day to see if there's anything that warrants comments from me. If I have to check 20 forums to do the same thing, you can just forget about me even caring about this forum at all. It's just too hard to keep up on that many forums, especially when those forums maybe only get a few posts a day.

To further flog a horse, that if not dead is at this point in mortal danger of expiring, here's a short list of what some of the forums you've suggested would have had discussed at all in the last day (and this isn't even new threads posted):

General Questions: I'm specifically skipping this one because it's a forum we already have, and I don't want to count these because it's most of the threads we've had discussed in in the last day. There's at least 10-15 of these.
Email (POP & SMTP): 2
Domain Names/DNS: 0
PHP: only 2 that I saw are specific to PHP
CGI/Perl Scripts: I think I counted 2-3 of these
SQL: 1
HTML/CSS/JavaScript: 0
.htaccess/cron: 0
Site Statistics/Logs: 0
Web Site Design Software and Tools: 0

* Microsoft FrontPage: 0
* Dreamweaver: 0
* PowerWebBuilder Site Building Tool: 0
* Other Site Building Tools: 0

Content Management Systems: 0

* General Questions and Recommendations: 0
* E-commerce and Shopping Carts: 0
* Forums and Bulletin Boards: 1
* Portals: 0
* Image Galleries: 0
* Blogs: 2 (joomla's a blog, right? if not these go under whatever that is)
* Wiki: 1

Graphic Design/Multimedia/Flash/Shockwave: 0
Help creating web site graphics and other multimedia.: 0
Bluehost Member Control Panel: 0
cPanel Control Panel: 0

As you can see, most things would fall into the more generic categories anyway, and all you're doing by adding a few hundred forums is hiding them from the areas of serious discussion.

We may add one or two more forums, but for now, "Basic Questions " and "Advanced Questions" is filling our needs quite nicely, and if something's borderline between the two it doesn't matter which you post it in because someone will answer it anyway.

Also, there's a lot of things that could be borderline between multiple forums, or you could assume it's a problem that fits into one forum, but it's really a symptom of a problem in a completely different forum.


(I think this is our first real meaty discussion! Congrats everybody!)


Rando,

Obviously the forum layout I suggested was not based on our current post history. It was based on my opinion of the industry standard. This is typical of a support forum used by just about every other hosting firm that has one.

Of course we don't have posts to fill it right now and I understand that it would be strange to come to a forum with zero posts. But unfortunately that's just because the forum is just, well.., new. Give it some time and the forums will eventually fill up.

You should create a good layout, then hide the empty forums until you get a couple of posts that fit. Then unhide them and place those post there. That way you don't have any empty forums yet the layout in place early on and then this discussion will not be necessary when the forum is full of clutter and the forum will need to be reformed.

If these forum divisions are not created early on, it will be hard to decide when to create them and what to call them. Over time, the general support forum will be littered with all kinds of different posts along many different topics. It will be a nightmare for people to find info about their specific problem. It will show poor moderation because everything will be lumped together in the general support forum.

And at what point does one decide to form a new forum, when there are 100 topics, or 1 topic? Analyzing this as time goes by will be a nightmare for the moderators, deciding when to create a new forum or not.

And if it is never decided upon, the forum will become slower and slower, why? because to find anything you MUST use the search which takes a lot of processor power. When many users are using the search at the same time, the forum slows down. You want to try to minimise the need to use search as much as possible by laying out everything in categories that people can understand and easily find.

For the moderator, it doesn't make a difference if there are many forums to look through, a moderator doesn't browse around looking at posts. they use the new posts feature. It's' very simple to see all the posts at a glance no matter how many forums there are.

Dave

[JCsDesignz]

Gotcha but i still think its better to add a few sub forums that you know will be used rather than waiting for a hundred posts and then having to divide them up and move them :D


Yeah, but adding forums before there's need is a bad idea. If that need never comes, you've got a useless subforum.



What, Honesty? :)

I can't read a forum with a bunch of really unused subforums. At that point it would cease to be useful to me as the bluehost mail admin and uninteresting to me personally.



There's this thing you have to understand- getting the right things filtered to me is very very hard. I get a lot of stuff I shouldn't that has nothing to do with me, and I miss a lot of things that never get to me because people don't think "maybe rando should answer this".

That's why I keep an eye on these forums- Before the crash, for example, I found out that the cpu exceeded stuff was happening in a scenario where it absolutely shouldn't. This has been happening for months, but it never got brought to my attention.

I stand by this: if you can look at a forum and see less than 5-10 posts (not even threads, just discussion in more than that many threads) per day, there's no way that that subject deserves its own forum.

[rando]

And if it is never decided upon, the forum will become slower and slower, why? because to find anything you MUST use the search which takes a lot of processor power. When many users are using the search at the same time, the forum slows down. You want to try to minimise the need to use search as much as possible by laying out everything in categories that people can understand and easily find.

Yes, but you're just assuming that if we don't do one extreme (having only a few forums forever) we must do the other extreme (creating 30 forums now).

I'm suggesting a medium ground; as new forums are actually required because a topic begins to clutter any certain forum up, then we create a new topic for that. I don't see any reason to have a separate forum that wouldn't even see action in 10-20 threads per day.

[Dave]

I'm suggesting a medium ground; as new forums are actually required because a topic begins to clutter any certain forum up, then we create a new topic for that. I don't see any reason to have a separate forum that wouldn't even see action in 10-20 threads per day.
Understood , but I still think avoiding clutter to begin with is better than having to unclutter a forum topic later. Remember the movie? "..if you build it, they will come." If you put the forum topics in place, people will know what kind of topics to discuss here and they will also know where to begin their thread. Threads started in the wrong topic by mistake will simply be moved one-by-one as it happens by the moderators. In no time at all, these new forum topics will be teeming with relevant threads and moderators won't have to sort it out later. Remember, the forum topics I suggested are not my idea, they are already being used by at least 3 of the leading brand of support forums. http://www.edenite.us/jeddi/d/9024-1/icon_thumright.gif

Dave

Incidentally there's a very interesting forum discussion going on these last few months at groundspeak.com (http://forums.groundspeak.com/GC/index.php?showtopic=105704) about how to categorize a new kind of directory called waymarking.com. The forum topic is about how to actually create the categories in the directory. Over 1200 threads started with regards to that topic and it still has not been solved. http://www.edenite.us/jeddi/d/9031-1/judge.gif

[jayman228]

Hello,

In my opinion, I would love to see it organized a little better. Yes, what Rando said made perfect sense to me but my fear, as a end user, is those messages getting lost in the loop. Granted we could do searches but its hard to do a search because the user who might of posted the message might of used different phrases then what is actually being searched. If it was organized in a certain category it would be less cumbersome. If it was organized by lets say 5-10 categories but only have 2-3 sub categories not 5-10 im sure that would work and also please everyone.

Bluehost:
Announcements - Bluehost Announcements
Suggestions - Bluehost Suggestions
Problems - Any problems you might encounter with Bluehost regarding bill, web, etc.

Internet
Web Design/Programming - Post your web design ideas/programming issues/suggestions here
Websites - Post your websites here - with rules to make it easy and not hard to find

General
Other

If this forum picks up to where you have to create a sub category then so be it then thats what a "archive" category could come in to place.

Lets make this forum organized but not go overboard with the categories (PHP, MySQL, HTML, Java, etc) just have ONE spot for that category in the "Web Design / Programming" category under Internet or something. So in my case..I'd post my cgi counter message I posted yesterday in the Bluehost / Suggestions since its a suggestion. If I wanted to talk about the Sun outside Id post in the other section under General.

Hopefully I made sense and didn't mumble on and on and on. If it helps I have my own forum as well (www.hobartweather.net/forum) and i'm doing the best I can to make my forum organized. :-)

[Dave]

Well I guess that's the end of that discussion.

[Dave]

Is this forum where people post their problems still open to the public!?!:eek: Hey! that certanly won't help you you know. What with so many negative threads here and all.

[macgyver2]

It's open to the public. There's nothing linking my forum account to my bluehost account.

I suppose it might be possible to change things around to do that...an integrated bluehost/bluehostforum login. I don't know enough about vbulletin to be certain. I also personally don't really see the need for it.

[Dave]

But a support forum should not be open to the public. It should be BH members only. Anyone who doesn't have a BH account already should not be able to see the support forum at all. They should only be able to see the forum for pre-sales questions and praises.

I'm an affiliate. I don't want my prospective clients browsing the support forum. All they will see is the negitive feedback. Not the solutions. No wonder my sales has stopped since they opened the forum.

[macgyver2]

I understand where you're coming from, but I just don't agree that the support forums should be closed. It seems quite biased that the public should be allowed to see positive feedback yet should be kept from seeing anything negative. Related to this, I would think that closing the support forums might cause some to wonder what Bluehost is trying to hide.

Also, there are other places that the public can see negative (and positive!) feedback. For instance, there's Matt's blog. And any one of us (but most particularly those with problems) could link from their profile to their site and post a far worse rant than anything that would ever be allowed on these forums.

Anyone with a lick of sense will know that there will be issues with any host. Nothing's perfect. It's my belief that to censor the 'negative' information while showing only the positive pushes things a bit further from perfection.

[jdh]

Well, like anything I think that perhaps the answer lies somewhere in the middle...

It's probably reasonable to close the support forums to unregistered users, since those who are just kind of browsing at random probably aren't serious users, and you want to try to prevent too much information being visible to just anybody.

However, it's probably fair to suggest that if somebody takes the time to register for the forums at all, then it's reasonable to allow them to read whatever it is that we have here. This would at least allow the semi-serious users to have access to all of the support resources, while filtering out those who are just kicking the tires.

[Dave]

I understand where you're coming from, but I just don't agree that the support forums should be closed. It seems quite biased that the public should be allowed to see positive feedback yet should be kept from seeing anything negative. Related to this, I would think that closing the support forums might cause some to wonder what Bluehost is trying to hide.

Also, there are other places that the public can see negative (and positive!) feedback. For instance, there's Matt's blog. And any one of us (but most particularly those with problems) could link from their profile to their site and post a far worse rant than anything that would ever be allowed on these forums.

Anyone with a lick of sense will know that there will be issues with any host. Nothing's perfect. It's my belief that to censor the 'negative' information while showing only the positive pushes things a bit further from perfection.


Yes, since you put it that way, it is not a good idea to hide the bad stuff...

But when someone is looking for a new hosting company, they are looking for anything bad with that host. They usually don't see the solution. They just see the bad. You want the prospects to see the good in a company. The praises. Not the bad.

I say bad but I really mean topics that are requiring support. The support threads posted here are usually resolved very quickly and they are usually NOT related to the general service of the BH. They are usually related to some setting or something a customer missed in the Help Center or needed a tip on. But all a new customer who is looking for new hosting is seeing is BAD. Problem after problem.

Actually they don't really need to see any of that stuff. It has nothing to do with their decision. The support threads are only relevant to the BH customers.

[macgyver2]

I say bad but I really mean topics that are requiring support. The support threads posted here are usually resolved very quickly and they are usually NOT related to the general service of the BH. They are usually related to some setting or something a customer missed in the Help Center or needed a tip on. But all a new customer who is looking for new hosting is seeing is BAD. Problem after problem.
They also see the good...that support threads here are usually resolved very quickly and are usually not related to the general service of bluehost. :)


Actually they don't really need to see any of that stuff. It has nothing to do with their decision. The support threads are only relevant to the BH customers.
I disagree. An example...I found out how exactly to use turbogears with fastcgi from looking at the dreamhost wiki. Support threads from bluehost may be relevant to others. Whether the bluehost staff thinks that the possibility of solving another hosting provider's support issues is a good or bad thing is another story...

[Gredon]

As a newbie to web sites and to BH, I've used the forums to gain help, insights, and tips.

The current setup, while sometimes entertaiining, doesn't provide answers to specific problems and issues. While the suggestion by Dave may be too extreme, maybe something somewhere in the middle would work. Use trial and error, starting with the basic forums and expanding as needed.

;)

[vegasgwm]

Personally, I like to see topic-specific areas, because it makes searching for an answer to a specific problem significantly easier
I second that.
Most earlier posts have various viewpoints on several issues, so i'll just add one idea:
tutorials forum (no questions or discussions) just tutorials to help BH customers build better sites, specially in the area of security

[dvessel]

This is such an old thread. Time to let it die. The current sections are filled so I doubt anyone will change anything at this point.

[vegasgwm]

This is such an old thread
oops my bad. :o I usualy follow the "todays posts" link. Didn't realize this was such an old topic. they should just close these treadhs

[Reichling]

I think it would be awesome to get a section where people can post suggestions for and constructive criticism about Bluehost along with their experiences with Bluehost.