Is anyone interested in tracking down the answers to common questions about customization from this forum, and providing links to them in sort of an FAQ of FAQs? This includes general customization, adding tags & headers .. etc., changing category link display, to some of the less documented features, such as changing the display of the "Top Rated" tables.

The following is an (in)complete list of questions that I know have been asked quite often in this forum and are not in the resource center, and sometimes difficult to find:
--Drew

Hey Junko

Very good idea!
i don't have enough knowledges to do that,
but very good idea :o)

ciao

Hey junko,

he he he, somebody finally got my idea straight that I had about a year and half ago when I first started looking at DBman, I've mentioned something like this at least 5 times (did say something similar aobut a month ago too) but never any where near like you just did, wow and another wow!!!

You know if this would have came out about a year ago, I bet -- you, widgetz, eliot and others would have saved yourselves a sh_t load of stress and frustration when dealing with folk like me

I've built a virtual library of all the mods I've been playing with, somewhere around 30 ... well a few more but rating stuff doesn't really count does it. See I told you there are frustrating folk like me, and just imagine I've only off'd about 10 or so email messages about problems I've had, and I DON'T even know perl, everything was in the archieves, well I did rack up a hell of a phone bill and chewed up a lot of alex's bandwidth to get my fix. I've pretty much organized it too, if you're interested I could M$ip/sit/gnuzip it for you ... I'm a mac guy but I pretty sure it'd be ok, full threads included not just 1 off questions or answers.

-- this idea of your's (well ... this has really been floating around in my head for over the last year) would've really saved so much trouble and time and bandwidth and FRUSTRATION.

Now my two cents worth,

yeah a lot of us don't know perl and many of us are just too busy ( <-- me ) or just plain lazy to learn it, but that was why this forum was created NOT to get winked at just cuz we just 2 dumb plain stupid cuz we asket the same twit Kuestion 3 Xz in a row. Really though, I've read so many posts that have the same question posted 15 different ways, (aghh, one of those is probably mine ) with at times 3-4 different solutions depending on your brand of GURU.

How sweet life would be if there was a dipping well with the nector of the gods just waiting to be plunged into. ie, -- just go to # 3 - a of Junko'z library it's all there. BUT more than likely that answer would drop by at least 70% cuz most people coming out of the installation forum would already be familar with the system and real problem mods / new mods can be posted without all the UNKOWNINGLY repeated questions, sure we still need the regular forum cause everybody's system is slightly different with different problems.

Junko, I'll do what I can with my limited time available to help...

maybe, you should talk with JPDeni about this too, I'm sure she'd be up for something like this.

I'll be watching this thread. GOOD LUCK

Yep more FAQ's would definitly be a good idea.

Good Luck!

Glenn

http://mir.spaceports.com/~glennu/

...and that's only the first 40 or so things I thought of! I haven't even touched general discussion or installation forums yet.

Well, the idea is to compile the FAQ's into an unofficial LINKS resource center, similar to what JPDeni and Pugdog did for DBMAN and LINKS SQL, respectively.

--Drew

I have a basic installation of Links with a few top-level categories set up. If you want to start adding resources just submit to a category and I'll create the appropriate subcategory later.

http://ucmd.virtualave.net/faq/

(ignore the ugly category table -- I was trying to figure out a universal cell height to use for nested tables so it'll line up nice...)

--Drew

Well, I think this is a great idea, but I can't see why you don't want to use the official resource center FAQ area. If you want to expand on the FAQ areas there, I'd be happy to add new subcategories etc. Alex might also want to give you editor access, so you can do updates directly.

John
Resource center manager

My point exactly, John! It would reduce confusion of telling people to go to different "stores" to get parcels rather than a "one stop shopping center" of goodies!

Regards,

Eliot Lee

Okie-doke . I'll send Alex a private message this afternoon or evening (whichever comes first after I get some work done...).

--Drew

Frankly, I would prefer the FAQ to contain "real content" rather than links to the forum, or perhaps, have links to the forum as complementary to the explanations. Of course, this will take longer to add, since you will have to write up the explanations. These will, however, be rather easy since it will mainly be copy-and-paste, because if a foum thread is worth adding in the FAQ, it will contain all the answers

As for contacting Alex, feel free. I for one, however, would as I said be happy to validate all FAQ entries as quick as possible, so you being editor is frankly not necessary. What is needed is for people like you to actually add things, and the add.cgi is perfectly suitable for this ...

I agree .

Do want to go ahead a develope some category structure, then?

--Drew

Here's a proposal: Let's discuss the category sturcture here. I'm sure some deliberation on this would be good.

I looked over your list, and would suggest a different approach, such as:

- Template issues
- Homepage issues
- Category issues
- Search issues
- Newsletter issues
- ...

A first exercise would be for someone (Drew?) to look over the existing FAQs and categorise these.

Looking at the existing FAQ's, you could add:
I would still break down "template issues" by page/feature, so that all things relating to "x" would be under subcategory "x":
Additionally, the names and descriptions of some existing FAQ's should be changed to make their content more obvious. For example, the one named "Fix to" should be named "Malfunctioning script headers" and the description rewritten, and should be placed under the "Troubleshooting" category.

--Drew

Junko, you're awesome, finally taking the horse by the bit which nobody here before was really willing to do, probably this is going to take some time but for people like me this will really be something good for links and links newbies.

I'm sure you're going to get lots of support.

Hello

we could add some categories :
- compatibities problems between mods
- how to add a field and usefulness of it
- troubles with search engine (relevancy, And connector...)

I could help for them
Sorry 4 my english!

ciao