Observations on (this) dnncommunity.org website

Kudos for offering to help. I'm sure that you'll be hearing from the moderators!

Well there are a few moderators that keep an eye on the forums and we do it quite actively TBH.
But I guess the focus is mostly on answering questions.
TBH I now see that you are right and that there are a lot post in this forum that should be elsewhere.
I moved the ones that should be moved now, if you see any I missed, please let me know.

I have been trying to find out a many times why users keep posting in the "About dnncommunity.org" forum.
We already renamed it but that does not seem to make a difference. I asked user in their thread why they posted in there but got no replies. I would really like to know what the reason for this is.

About the site in general: it is,  as DNN, is a community effort.
So if find dead links or errors, please post them in this forum so they can be taken care of.
I'll also discuss this in the DNN awareness group.
IMO the place where we could use way more volunteers is for the documentation site.
I can introduce to the DNN Awareness group if you want to volunteer (for documentation or any other way)?

 

In addition to Timo's answer I want to let you know we can also use more testers for RC's. Let me know if you are interested and I will contact you

Rebarding dead links:

All the links, except "download DNN" in the How To> Download and install page produce 404 errors

OK thank you. This was casued by a restructuring of the documentation site.
I corrected the links.
If you find anything else please let us know.

Regarding the posts in "About dnncommunity": I've been running a large community site for years. In my experience you should keep the number of forum groups as low as possible, making them as generic as you can. When the volume is high enough, you can create more forums/groups.

There are too many forums and forum groups on this site vs. the level of activity. The categorization are too specific, e.g. "Building extensions" is split into 6 sub-forums, some of them with no activity at all. One forum "Building extensions" would surely be enough. Too many will kill the activity as topics will be overlooked.

My experience is that with too many (and narrow) choices, users tend to find a broad/generic category to post their question. In this case: "About dnncommunity".

I'm quite sure the overall activity level would benefit from reducing the number of forums to a minimum and then add more later, when needed.

I think forums in the format we have here are outdated. I prefer a Q&A format with tags.

Posted By Mariette Knap on 18 May 2020 01:14 AM
I think forums in the format we have here are outdated. I prefer a Q&A format with tags.

I agree with Mariette that a newer and more powerful interface would be more useful (and usable) that our "old" forums. Something like Q&A like www.dnnsoftware.com/answers or Stackoverflow, for instance.

Francisco

 

 

Posted By allane on 17 May 2020 03:56 AM
Regarding the posts in "About dnncommunity": I've been running a large community site for years. In my experience you should keep the number of forum groups as low as possible, making them as generic as you can. When the volume is high enough, you can create more forums/groups.

There are too many forums and forum groups on this site vs. the level of activity. The categorization are too specific, e.g. "Building extensions" is split into 6 sub-forums, some of them with no activity at all. One forum "Building extensions" would surely be enough. Too many will kill the activity as topics will be overlooked.

My experience is that with too many (and narrow) choices, users tend to find a broad/generic category to post their question. In this case: "About dnncommunity".

I'm quite sure the overall activity level would benefit from reducing the number of forums to a minimum and then add more later, when needed.

I agree some could be removed. We'll have a look at that.