Forum and Blog suggestions needed

Windsun

With the new server upgrade we are getting, it will allow us to expand this forum and blog considerably without worrying about overloading the RAM and CPU as we have been in the past.

Suggestions are welcome, but bear in mind that we do not want to end up with a huge number of topics that only get a few posts per month. For the blog part of it, we would like to keep it restricted to longer articles and important topics (the blog will probably not go really active until we verify that the new server is working right and we get the updated software installed, about a week).

Though the server upgrade is costing us around $2,000 a year we have no intention of changing our "free for all" policy here.

niel

Re: Forum and Blog suggestions needed

this sounds like real good news for the forum as it will make a good thing even better.

kevin

Re: Forum and Blog suggestions needed

oh that will, i think this will help us discussion and expand our knowledge. thank you administrator.

vtmaps

Re: Forum and Blog suggestions needed

I too am grateful for your hosting and also for your postings. My suggestion would be to move the RSSfeed from the forum to the blog. In my opinion your forum is the premier spot on the web for people helping people with renewable energy. News feeds are interesting, but are not people helping people. They rarely receive replies.
--vtMaps

stephendv

Re: Forum and Blog suggestions needed

Great news and thanks for hosting such a great forum. Some ideas for sub-forums:
- Generators
- Alternative fuels, biodiesel, etc.

I've seen some other forums start sub-forums for specific manufacturers that don't have their own forums, where representatives from those manufacturers can chip in and help users out. Don't know if you're interested in approaching some manufacturers about this. E.g. Trojan, Xantrex, Rolls sub forums could be interesting.

Windsun

Re: Forum and Blog suggestions needed

stephendv wrote: »

Great news and thanks for hosting such a great forum. Some ideas for sub-forums:
- Generators
- Alternative fuels, biodiesel, etc.

I've seen some other forums start sub-forums for specific manufacturers that don't have their own forums, where representatives from those manufacturers can chip in and help users out. Don't know if you're interested in approaching some manufacturers about this. E.g. Trojan, Xantrex, Rolls sub forums could be interesting.

Most of the major mfg's, such as Midnite Solar, Outback etc. have their own forums. The problem with too many subforums for specific brands is that you end up getting about 10 posts a year. There might be a couple of main topics that could be broken down a little, but forum topics need at least around 10-15 posts a week to keep them active.

Windsun

Re: Forum and Blog suggestions needed

vtmaps wrote: »

I too am grateful for your hosting and also for your postings. My suggestion would be to move the RSSfeed from the forum to the blog. In my opinion your forum is the premier spot on the web for people helping people with renewable energy. News feeds are interesting, but are not people helping people. They rarely receive replies.
--vtMaps

That is something we might do. The blog is a relatively new feature, and most of us are pretty fuzzy on how to use it and set it up for the best results. But that might be a better fit for the news stories - will have to check into it. One advantage of the forum threads is that the news feed can be pruned down from time to time to get rid of the old messages.

niel

Re: Forum and Blog suggestions needed

hmm, that does seem like a good idea. maybe if it's possible the blog could be limited to say the last 25 most recent posts, or something like that, automatically trimming it?

vtmaps

Re: Forum and Blog suggestions needed

The more I participate in the forum, the more I find myself being scooped. Can you possibly put up an alert when I submit a post:

During the time that you read this thread and typed your response,
2 other forum members have posted to the thread.
__Submit ________ Cancel ________ Reload Thread __

--vtMaps

vtmaps

Re: Forum and Blog suggestions needed

You do allow forum members to sell equipment, but if I wanted to sell a retired charge controller or some surplus cable, I wouldn't know which forum to post it in. Perhaps you should have a 'For sale' or 'classified ads' forum. --vtMaps

Cariboocoot

Re: Forum and Blog suggestions needed

vtMaps;

We do allow members to post the odd bit of equipment for sale. But we've discussed the "for sale" section idea and decided it would be a really big problem to moderate. So members are allowed to list the occasional piece of equipment as a single post under "General" and we ask that all negotiations/transactions be done by PM or e-mail to avoid the clutter and moderating difficulties. Business deals between friends can go so bad so quickly. This is why we don't allow arranging "group buys" too.

Also note that if the ads get to be a major posting issue that they may be disallowed as that's not the main purpose of the forum.

BB.

Re: Forum and Blog suggestions needed

We really do not want to turn into a "Craig's List" for solar... Just continue, primarily, as a volunteer technical support forum.

Place the equipment in the Off Grid (or Grid Tie) forum. [or General Forum, as suggested by Cariboocoot above]

-Bill

rollandelliott

Re: Forum and Blog suggestions needed

I think a for sale sub forum should exist. It is annoying to see the for sale ads in the middle of a regular forum.
OR just ban them entirely.

niel

Re: Forum and Blog suggestions needed

we could consider one running post to be stickied in general solar at best. there would be so few listings that it wouldn't ever warrant much more than this. this we did try before and nobody posted into it in the past as they continued to put them into other areas of the forum once in a blue moon. we can hear general membership thoughts on this if you guys wish.

SolaRevolution

Re: Forum and Blog suggestions needed

niel wrote: »

we could consider one running post to be stickied in general solar at best. there would be so few listings that it wouldn't ever warrant much more than this. this we did try before and nobody posted into it in the past as they continued to put them into other areas of the forum once in a blue moon. we can hear general membership thoughts on this if you guys wish.

I've got a few "yard sale" items I would post. PM negotiations would be the best. People could go back and edit posts to say "sold" or just delete them afterwards.

-Alex

niel

Re: Forum and Blog suggestions needed

ok, i'll put the post in place and we'll give it another try.