The New home of the forum

[COBOLdinosaur]

As I write this we are preparing to seperate a comfortable nurturing old style forum from from its sibling designed for newer technologies and a different roll. It was one of the most painful and difficult decision of my life to cut the forum from the main site and I am thankful that it will be preserved and have a chance to be modernized by the Mentors who feel at home in it; including me.  

Some of you may feel hurt; so do I.  It is painful to have to choose between your children when you are convince they cannot stay together and survive. Some of you may be angry; okay. If you think it is stupid, wrong, selfish then I don't blame you for being angry.  If things work out perhaps you will understand later and soften toward me. I fear some of you may feel betrayed or exploited; you are wrong and you will come to see that, I'm sure.

There are a few who understand or are trying to. Thank you.

I will still be on the forum in its new home.  I will still be trying to extend the learning center.  The Mentors who have been here, and who I hope fight just a little longer are special.  You have a desire to help and teach; I'm trying to show you a better way to do that.  A thread in a forum will help a handful of people. After a week or two it will be buried in a database, and on a very busy site it might be seen by 4 or 5 users a month.  Now look at the articles we have on ERT the least active of them has helped at least 50 users this month, our top page helped 600+ users through the efforts of a Mentor teaching a small lesson in and easily accessible and usable form.

Those articles stay there month after month helping users everyday for as long as the subject needs to be taught. The mentor is there in his work... teaching ... coaching ... helping users learn how to do it themselves. I understand the need for the feed back and responses you get in a forum. I've worked boards back to BBS and news groups before forums were common.  I love the feeling that comes when the user finally "gets it", and says thank you.  You don't get that from an article siting on a site; but you will if you stay with this long enough to let me show you.

This is not the end.  It is a transition. A painful transition. The content side progressed and is progressing too fast for the forum to keep up.  The content side is ready to move to a new level. The forum isn't there yet.  The content side will continue to drive traffic to the forum to try and heat things up, but while that is going on, the content side will be changing from a set of flat pages.  Users will be able to address question about the content of articles to a discussion group devoted to that article. Multiple users, the author and other interested Mentors in one or more threads exploring and learning. Please, stay involved long enough for me to build it.

I did the job of building the traffic and developing momentem; bring users to the information.  I did the job of getting enough quality content on the site to create a learning center that is being used by hundreds every day. I failed to build the forum to support it; and I am truly sorry for my poor performance in that effort.  Help me do the final piece.  Stay involved long enough to see teaching through discussion groups in the round table format the site is named for.

It is still going to take months of transition.  The evolution of the content side is dependent on adding new content as we grow.  I doubt I can write enough myself.  I hope those who have been contributing will continue to do so, and I would be grateful for any others who have knowledge to share contributing.  The facilites for editing, formatting and presentation of new content for the site are still what they were.  The ability to discuss work in progress or to get a review from your peers will still exist in the new version of the forum.  Please stick it out a little longer.  Help Matt with the forum, and contribute if you can to the content side so we have a shot at being a community of Mentors instead of just displaced Experts trying to find a way to effectively help others.

Roy

[VGR]

I love the expression "displaced Experts". I don't know if you mean displaced by the forum move, or displaced from anywhere else to ERT, but anyway it's better than being "misplaced Experts" ;-)

Just two remarks :
1) I wasn't able to beta-test the new forum ; I hope this has been done thoroughly.

2) I still have in mind that the forum is the proper place for discussing "would-be articles" and "would-be tutorials", as has been done for the past months. So, perhaps, a link between the forum and the articles is feasible, and the separation between "learning center" and "discussion board" not that evident.

cheers

[COBOLdinosaur]

I still have in mind that the forum is the proper place for discussing "would-be articles" and "would-be tutorials", as has been done for the past months.

It is, and the forum will continue to be the starting point for the refinement of content.

The round table discussion groups need an interface that you can't do with conventional forum software, and so the forum remains a comforable cocoon while I build a demonstration of a better way to deliver help in an interactive format.

[nicholassolutions]

Thanks for posting this Roy. Re: beta testing, etc -- my goal is to make the transition absolutely seamless for the users; the only way you'll know you're not in the same spot is that the URL in your address bar will be different. The current forum will redirect to the new one, and the entire history of discussions there will be transferred in its entirety to our new home.

[COBOLdinosaur]

Nothing will get lost in the move.  If we discover that something is not there, it will still be here. Stuff in the subdomains like layout and build will still be there with the same access permissions, and the database will still be here.

I'm not going to touch any of the forum related code or data.  Everything I work on will be content side stuff and new apps, so it all still be here if we find something is missing.

[CrYpTiC_MauleR]

I love the expression "displaced Experts". I don't know if you mean displaced by the forum move, or displaced from anywhere else to ERT, but anyway it's better than being "misplaced Experts"

Better 'displaced Experts' than 'refugee' =oP, either way just hope FEMA doesnt get involved or we are in trouble.

[Esopo]

Moving the forum to a different domain does make business sense and was an idea thrown around since the begining. For one reason or the other this is a smart move.

I'm glad we put off the torches and can continue as usual.

[nicholassolutions]

Me too. I've just sorted out the last of the kinks with the image uploader, and I ended up integrating it into the forum even better than it was before with some URL rewriting and hotlink protection. As soon as I get the dedicated IP from them tomorrow I'll be able to import the posts that have happened since the initial data transfer and we should be good to go. While I make the transfer, I'll be locking the forum so that nothing gets lost. I'm aiming to have a downtime of under 15-20 minutes.   :wink:

[coral1]

So, perhaps, a link between the forum and the articles is feasible

I was just going to ask that.
I have a chunk of something I am going to put into General Hardware, for now, and have already put it into .html for Content, and was wondering about putting a link back to the Forum Topic in it.

If there is no hurry, I might 'puff it up' a little more before uploading it.  :scratch:

[COBOLdinosaur]

Access to the subdomains will remain the same.  So anyone who is doing uploads of content will nto have a problem, and what we have been doing refining stuff using the forum can continue.  In fact that is one of the purposes of the forum is getting the content ready.

One of the changes that will happening on the content side is that users will be getting invited to join in discussion of articles they have just finished reading.  As first step in that Iwill be adding links back to the topics.  We might need to organize a little to have trheads that support the articles.

There is a seperation physically of the servers, but if anything we want to strengthen the frontend linkages between the parts.  We are not splitting this apart because we want ot go seperate ways, but to allow inedendent development that just can't happen with the two different pardigms competing ofr resources.

If we continue to produce a good content, the learning center will be able to evolve the kind of Mentorware we set out to develop and we will be better of it is just a spinning off of part of the overall project for managibility, not a splitting up of the community; as long as people don't turn it into a negative and throw in the towel.

[COBOLdinosaur]

If there is no hurry, I might 'puff it up' a little more before uploading it

I'm at least two weeks behind on getting content up, and there is more in the pipeline so take the time you want on it.  A steady flow of good stuff over an extended time is what build the rankings and the traffic.  That is what we want.

[coral1]

so take the time you want on it

Sounds good. Vista is giving me a headache.   :wink:

[coral1]

I got a PM from:
http://www.expertsrt.net/forum/privmsg.php?folder=inbox

Is this a hiccup? or do I just wait a couple of days before I can get in?  :scratch:

[nicholassolutions]

darnit, I was worried someone would follow the link and post there. It's a double problem because I need to overwrite the other database when we make the switch. If you can PM with your IP I can open access for you -- I want to keep it closed to everyone else so that this same thing doesnt keep happening.

Matt

[nicholassolutions]

PS: If you dont know your ip go to http://www.whatismyip.com