I last banged on about this last December if memory serves, but why exactly is there no support forums for Roundcube yet? I know the developers wish to keep the mailing list going for development threads, but surely we all agree that mailing lists are not the best vehicle for end user support?
I know there was talk of setting up a wiki, but I haven't seen any sight of it yet.
I am happy to setup and host a forum, as long as there is a consensus that it is needed. I have no desire to splinter the community though.
Anyone else agree? Or is this being worked on separately?
Geoffrey
Geoffrey McCaleb wrote:
I last banged on about this last December if memory serves, but why exactly is there no support forums for Roundcube yet? I know the developers wish to keep the mailing list going for development threads, but surely we all agree that mailing lists are not the best vehicle for end user support?
I know there was talk of setting up a wiki, but I haven't seen any sight of it yet.
The Wiki is on progress. Actually the wiki is ready but it's part of a Trac system that also hosts the source repository and integrates a bug-tracker. These are both not yet properly configured. You can start filling up the Wiki with useful information: http://trac.roundcube.net but remember that the tracker and the source repository are not up-to-date.
I am happy to setup and host a forum, as long as there is a consensus that it is needed. I have no desire to splinter the community though.
The decision to use mailing lists was made some time ago and I don't like to have multiple forums that I need to check periodically.
Anyone else agree? Or is this being worked on separately?
Geoffrey
Regards, Thomas
Hi Thomas, With all due respect, a forum is not for you, its for the users. I know that sounds rude, but it isn't! A wiki is a great replacement for documentation, but Roundcube still needs a way to provide support to users who need help. Wiki's are not the place for asking questions, but as a sort of end point of all user and system knowledge.
If mailing lists are your preferred way to communicate for the community, then thats great! But what you need out of communication, is different from how I, for example, use it. Me? I personally loath mailing lists because my inbox gets stuffed with loads of threads, some I may be able to help with, some not. Also, if I unsubscribe, then I have to hack through the archive to see what I missed. What if I want to respond to a particular thread? Then I have to go through the process to subscribe again. With a forum, you chose what you get involved with, and if you leave its easy to pick back up again later.
But crucially, with a forum, you can do two things: first it cuts down on mailing list traffic because users have a different outlet for their queries. Second, over time the knowledge available on threads can be pushed upwards into the wiki. Over time, the wiki will still become the defacto knowledge center.
If you think about it, you have two fundamental streams of people. Developers and Users. Most Open Source projects keep these streams separate for a reason.
Users: forums -> wiki Developers: mailing lists -> wiki
With of course bug tracking working across the both.
Anyway, all I'll say is I'm open for people to disagree, as long as they understand that the two streams can and should be seperate. I don't see why the two can't co-exist peacefully. I mean, if you asked us, I'm sure there would be agreement that the developers should lurk where they feel most comfortable. I mean, without them (and you Thomas), there would be no Roundcube!!
Thoughts anyone?
Geoffrey
On Thu, 09 Mar 2006 11:59:12 +0100, Thomas Bruederli roundcube@gmail.com wrote:
The other thing you have to think about here is...
If people are using RC on a webhost. And there mail is also included with there webhost. And the only forum of help is email. That's taking up there allowed bandwith. Which sucks.
i'm 100% for forums. You made some really good points here. And i honestly feel that the people should make a forum. Weither it's supported by RC or not. This project has a good ways to go, with unlimited endings and modifications.
On Thu, 9 Mar 2006 12:29:33 +0000, Geoffrey McCaleb geoffrey@tabasco.net wrote:
I was actually in the midst of making a phpBB 2.0 template based off of RoundCube. Maybe I'll continue it later, but I'm totally available to setup a phpBB board (with unlimited bandwidth) at my personal site. All I'd need was the okay of the Admins.....
Could be done as early or late as today/tomorrow....
~Brett
Robbie Garrett wrote:
I'm also 100% for forums because it would prevent new users, to an
extent, from asking questions that have already been answered because
they could just do a search on the forums instead of sending an email
asking about it.
I'm not so concerned personally about the bandwidth that lists take
up because I run my own server and have plenty of bandwidth, but I do
see why it would be a cause for concern for others, also if they are
using RoundCube as their only method of accessing email and something
goes wrong, they can't ask for help because they can't use email (it
may seem obvious to have a backup email or email script to use in a
case like this, but many, many people don't).
On March 09, 2006, at 4.35 m, Robbie Garrett wrote:
OK, all your arguments make sense and I now understand that I was a bit narrow-minded about that. I also agree that digging into mailing list archives is not a very comfortable way to get help.
If you already worked on some sort of a RoundCube board and have webspace available, I agree to open an "official" web-based forum/board. Alternatively we could use the SourceForge webspace with MySQL database (if phpBB doesn't need sockets). I currently don't have time to work on something like that but I can offer to create a DNS entry for the forum host or give away access to the SF space.
Thanks for all your effort!
Thomas
Brett Patterson wrote:
You mentioned something about giving away space on SF for the forum.
I'm willing to head up the forum aspect (I don't have much on the skin
yet, but I can work on it in my free time (would be a pleasure!!)) and
manage it. Of course the devs would have access to "restricted" areas
of moderation/administration, or however you want to do it. Just let me
know what you need to allow me in, and I'll give it to you! My email on
Sf is "bpwebman@gmail.com" (no quotes).
I was initially going to use roundcube.bpatterson.net as the forum-space; but if SF wants to host it, fine by me. Either will work in my honest opinion. But SF would make it look more official.
Eagerly awaiting your reply!!
~Brett
Thomas Bruederli wrote:
..and if you don't want the burden, I'm happy to pop it under my hosting too, and promote as needed. I can probably get some web developers who teach with me on codingforums.com to come over and try to answer some CSS/XHTML/HTML/Design/PHP/MySQL questions, or cross post to them, or get CSS Beauty in the mix. Either way, a forum would be useful.
*Brady J. Frey* creative director // *dotfive*
Brett Patterson wrote:
Hi all. I just want to agree that a forum would be great, it's fun getting mail but... RC is just the best. Se You around. /Gunnar
On Thu, 09 Mar 2006 08:38:20 -0800, "Brady J. Frey" brady@dotfive.com wrote:
Hi Everyone, Well give the people what they want I always say!
I've installed a simple forum on a domain I run to test it out with the community. If we all like it and Thomas is happy, we can look into pointing a subdomain towards it. Or, we can migrate it over to SF. Either way is cool with me. My server has loads of bandwidth so I'm happy to host it for the time being.
The system isn't based on PHPBB. I thought it fitting that since Roundcube was the first major Open Source webmail system born in the Web 2.0 generation, that the forum should be to. Its called Vanilla, and it has a lot of great features as well as a great community behind it (like ours).
The forum is here: http://roundforums.verada.net If you want more information on Vanilla, go here: http://www.getvanilla.com/
If anyone wants to volunteer to moderate a category, feel free to email me. Any comments on the forum itself, please reply to all.
regards,
Geoffrey
On 09/03/06 16:42, GunFro wrote:
Hi all. I just want to agree that a forum would be great, it's fun getting mail
but...
wrote:
Yeah, Vanilla seriously cooks with gas. You can have RSS out the wazoo, clean xhtml code, and each user can have their own stylesheet!
Brett was mentioning he was in the process of building a template for phpbb. I wonder if it could be ported over easily?
Geoffrey
On 09/03/06 21:05, Brady J. Frey wrote:
pointing a
was
If anyone wants to volunteer to moderate a category, feel free to email
me.
I've already got a forum up: http://roundcubemail.sourceforge.net/forum
The main layout is there, I have some work to do on the skin, but it's getting there. Feel free to register and everything. Let me know of any issues and I'll try and take care of them immediately.
~Brett
Geoffrey McCaleb wrote:
I will say that phpBB is much more powerful -- Vanilla couldn't handle some of the advanced stuff that high end forums do, but porting over a style... I don't know if that would be easy. You might find it faster to just create the CSS to mimic the style of his look/feel.
Geoffrey McCaleb wrote:
Hmm, not sure I would agree with that. PHPbb can't handle saved searches, and doesn't support RSS if I remember correctly.
On 09/03/06 21:10, Brady J. Frey wrote:
clean
xhtml code, and each user can have their own stylesheet!
Brett was mentioning he was in the process of building a template for
phpbb. I
cool
with me. My server has loads of bandwidth so I'm happy to host it for
the
time being.
The system isn't based on PHPBB. I thought it fitting that since
Roundcube
was
the first major Open Source webmail system born in the Web 2.0
generation,
that the forum should be to. Its called Vanilla, and it has a lot of
great
to
answer some CSS/XHTML/HTML/Design/PHP/MySQL questions, or cross post
to
them, or get CSS Beauty in the mix. Either way, a forum would be
useful.
skin
> yet, but I can work on it in my free time (would be a pleasure!!))
and
> manage it. Of course the devs would have access to "restricted"
areas
work
best
a
>> Trac system that also hosts the source repository and integrates a >> bug-tracker. These are both not yet properly configured. You can
start
>> filling up the Wiki with useful information:
No, not currently, at least not without "hacks"; however, I can write a
short something to give an RSS feed. Not that an RSS feed is needed
since the roundcube.net site should host that seeing as it's the "home"
of Roundcube. And phpBB is a much more powerful piece of software.
I've worked with vanilla, SMF, IPB, vB, phpBB, UltraBB and many others.
I find phpBB to be the best (in all respects) and as the next version is
coming down the line, it's only going to get better. I've seen the CVS
of phpBB 3 (Olympus) and many of the issues that people complained about
where answered.
I am in the middle of making a phpBB theme; although wouldn't port it to any other system as it's too hard.
~Brett
Geoffrey McCaleb wrote:
Really? I don't doubt you but the whole point of Ajax is to introduce more separation between presentation and logic. Maybe this is just me, but I've never seen a phpbb forum that I could call quick.
I'm probably caught up in semantics, but I think its a shame a slick Web 2.0 product like RC doesn't utilise an efficient, Ajax-based BB as well.
My 2 cents,
Geoffrey
On 09/03/06 21:25, Brady J. Frey wrote:
and
the
try
forum.
let
why
any
of
don't
So am I, you wont' see a break tag or hr in any of my sites anymore:)
but that's not what I mean - example we tried it with
codingforums.com, but the sheer size of traffic, vanilla wouldn't
hold up to it, there's just too much information. Not saying RC will
get there but it's a nice thought.
On Mar 9, 2006, at 1:30 PM, Geoffrey McCaleb wrote:
-
Brady J. Frey -
Brett Patterson -
Geoffrey McCaleb -
GunFro -
Michael Bussani -
quasi -
Robbie Garrett -
Ryan Boswell -
Thomas Bruederli