Problem creating new topics

Hi:

I signed up and tried to create a new “Blog Topic” and found that
a) I could not save it, and
b) this UI’s layout blocks any ‘save’ button (if one exists) and the preview poorly renders

Am I missing something?

The Blog category is locked for commenting only as it is linked to our Blog and new posts are automatically created when we post on xibo.org.uk.

I am not sure what you mean about the UI :smile:

Does this mean that the only place where members can
post is to “Solutions”?

"I am not sure what you mean about the UI"
I mean the user-interface, the form for text copy contained
in a ‘pull-down’ layer which obscures the main document and
(in my case) has a ‘preview’ layer that squats in the lower
right of the document, all but invisible in its iframe/div
and scroll bottom line is obscured by the "reply/cancel/saved/ so i cannot see what i’m typing.

But, If i could not create a blog topic then its moot
"You are not permitted to view the requested resource"

anyway

The only place you can’t post is the blog category - everywhere else you can open a new topic. Why do you want to create a topic in the blog category?

I can’t say i’ve had a problem with the UI - for me it works quite well, the reply window at the bottom allows me to read up and down the topic whilst composing a reply.

I’m sure the Discourse team would be more than happy responding to any design suggestions.

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Just so I understand:

So this website’s other cats (faq,features,guiides,android)
are open to creating posts? If I cannot create a topic in the Blog cat, then I shouldn’t see
that option; programming oversight and likely only a few lines of code to fix.
I’d imaging the “Support” cat will undoubtably be the dominant area.

I think I also remember reading a post of yours that stated (i think) that github will exist for development issues and
bug tracking while community.xibo (and ‘Support’) will be the replacement (as it were) for answers.launchpad - topics related
to the usage of the applications (Topics equiv to the apps functionality: Scheduling, Layouts, Groups, etc…) and issues bearing
on installation, setup, config…

Is this (broadly) your POV? I only wanted to create a new blog topic thinking it could be a way to get more p2p interaction and
lighten the load on you and the other ‘leaders’ in areas that others might be capable of handling. But ‘Support’, lumping all topics
and posts into one cat, makes it more difficult to navigate on single issues.
Sorry, above is not really coherent; worked late last night.

As for Discourse UI: I’m on ubuntu, Chrome renders a bit better than FF but maybe its just
my problem.

You are probably right - we didn’t write this website or software, we are just using it because it is nice :smile: the software is called “discourse” and you can visit meta.discourse.org to discuss and report problems with it.

The only place where you cannot create posts is the blog category - because that is automatically fed from somewhere else (our homepage). It is there so that people can discuss our official announcements if they want to do so.

I am not clear what topics you want to create and why you don’t feel they belong in general discussion. Perhaps you can create them in general discussion and then we can move them around if needed?

I don’t think we want to have lots of categories as it will be confusing for people - they will never know exactly where they should post. Instead we decided to have a simple set of categories that we can expand over time (start small, then get bigger if needed).

The intended usage of each category can be found in the topic pinned to the top.

GitHub

GitHub will only be for verified bugs and development (we develop using Git). Verified bugs are things that have been previously discussed here.

We imagine that only people who are actively developing code for Xibo will need to use GitHub. Which makes perfect sense, because it is geared up for development and not for discussion.

Launchpad

We left Launchpad because:

  • Answers did not provide enough flexibility for true discussion amongst the community
  • BZR did not encourage developer contribution (like Git does)

Hi Dan and thanks for prompt reply:

Seems a shame to have an entire cat (the most robust one prob) being (most likely) the least used, as “official
announcements” are usually few and far… AOT daily posts and comments.

I wanted to create a BlogTopic only because I thought I could. My preference would be to have a user consensus
of what the community might feel are worthy subjects; in my opinion, things directly related to xibo client/server but
not the applications themselves, per se… Just all the stuff that circulates/revolves around them.
In my case its all things linux, others may see something else as a good topic, dunno.

You know your members the best so its not for me to assert, but I’ve seen a broad range of people here; from non-technical
endusers to rather savy geeks w/tweaks; hard to keep all those cats in the herd, i suspect it eats into xibo coding and your day job.

But even if you came to agree, Discourse (and i’ve checked out their site, nice for what it does) is really not ideally suited to be a forum
(like vbulliten and ilk). I suspect you and I are more in concordance on our POV than not; but I would like to
stress that (IMO) its the community, and their ability to share, that makes the product, as it becomes the goto place for
answers. In that regard the platform’s functionality has to support it.

Also, it would be nice (and ultimately necessary) if you and Alex and the other leaders can off-load some of the demands
of fielding questions onto the membership. But there is little to facilitate doing that apart from isolated answers to questions;
for instance, it would be nice if members could PM each other.

"We left Launchpad because…"
Any chance of integrating all your ‘answers’ into community.xibo? or some other ‘archive’?

Keep up the good work!

TIA

anyhow.

Using the “Support”/general area is, I agree, a good starting point from which to expand.

I’m sorry you don’t seem to like Discourse.

Unfortunately alot of the assumptions you make are incorrect. For example users can PM each other but only when they’ve built up some trust by reading and interacting via the site. That is designed to reduce the need for external moderation.

We’ve opted for Discourse and have structured it to our needs. That is how it is. Ironically your long and rambling thread has taken me time to read and respond to and actually does nobody any good. If you have questions about Xibo please feel free to post a new topic about those in the appropriate category.

I think you should see how it goes, in my opinion this is a great forum and does everything we might need it to. Far better than the competition!

Create topics, discuss and enjoy :smile:

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