UBB.threads PHP Forum Software Community Forums General Suggestions and Feedback Make it easier to build community, please

Emma--
Your ideas have a great deal of merit.
If we were to do that, I would like the ability to make that subscription to all boards automatic for new users, then let them know prominently how to turn it off.
It seems to me that a couple of the posts in this thread so far have taken a cavalier approach of, "Well, if they won't learn to do it our way, screw 'em."
Now that is poor customer service in my opinion.
And head in the sand in a way, because the e-mail posting could be used in a planned way to get people to come to the forum, the same as you might do to encourage people to visit a new board on the forum, etc.
Perhaps if it is difficult to picture what this feature would look like, a visit to the three I am aware of which offer it, would be in order. 1. <a target="_blank" href=http://www.spoke.net/Components/forums.htm>http://www.spoke.net/Components/forums.htm</a> has a description, which might help; could not find a forum in operation; 2. eGroups: <a target="_blank" href=http://groups.yahoo.com/local/news.html>http://groups.yahoo.com/local/news.html</a>; 3. O'Reilly WebBoards (sample in operation at <a target="_blank" href=http://discussion.refreq.com/~refreq>http://discussion.refreq.com/~refreq</a>.

:-Doug.

[]Doug@FootprintsintheWind.com[/]

<a target="_blank" href=http://www.FootprintsintheWind.com>www.FootprintsintheWind.com</a>

<blockquote><font size=1>In reply to:</font><hr>

It seems to me that a couple of the posts in this thread so far have taken a cavalier approach of, "Well, if they won't learn to do it our way, screw 'em."

[/quote]

My opinion on the subject was more something like this: " If they won't learn to do it our way, there is not really much we can do...". BTW I wasn;t talking about the mail posting feature in particular, but rather expressing a more general opinion... <img border="0" title="" alt="[Smile]" src="images/icons/smile.gif" />

Exactly.

Where do you draw the line?! When all of your customers decide they are too lazy or stupid to learn how to use E-Mail to post on the forum what are you going to do? Fly to their house and train them personally?

People are going to have to learn some how. They aren't gonna get there by being babbied their whole lifes. If they were able to learn how to drive a car, fill up their gas, changing oil ever 3-5k miles, etc then they can learn how to use a simple point and click forum. sheesh.

If the people on your forum are 'customers' and they want this functionality maybe you should go get some software that was actually designed from the ground up to handle this kind of stuff.

Like I said.. It's a neat idea, but by far not even close to a priority. There is already plenty of software out there to handle this task. Why should scream spend all of his time trying to turn this forum into something it's not. Even if he did get this functionality in the forum it would still only be half-assed compared to what already exists in other software packages.

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Jeremy 'PeelBoy' Amberg

Well I've been running forums for various sites (game sites, car communities, corp sites etc..) for the past uhm.. 4 or 5+ years starting with lil old wwwboard, then UBB, and various other forums.. (including some lame ones I wrote my self)

Not ONCE have I heard anybody complain about not knowing how to post.. Is this honestly a problem? I mean this whole threaded started because 1 person was too 'lazy' to visit the forum so she decided to send an email instead. I bet if this forum was so stupidly simple to use that even a 1 year old kid could use it... MOST sites would not notice any difference in traffic compared to what they have now...... sure, maybe 1 or 2 people... yay.. and eventually those people will learn how to use this software and then they will love it.. Some people are just tooo uninterested or lazy to learn it and even if it was easy they probably STILL wouldn't post much.. Why waste your time trying to target the forum to that .001% of people instead of everybody else?!

Making the layout easier... sure.. great idea.. I'm all for it.... Making it easier to use than telling time with a digital watch? I dunno.. Gotta draw the line some where.

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Jeremy 'PeelBoy' Amberg