* Sub-Forums in General Usage

[dbnut]

A question for our long-suffering, wonderful Jane: is there any prospect at all you could provide sub-forums within forums, as I've used elsewhere? If that structure is just not supported, sorry for wasting your and everyone’s time.

There is now such a mass of content that we rely heavily (and often unsuccessfully) on Search to locate topics or posts of interest. Perhaps General Usage (approaching 10k topics and getting on for 70k posts) would benefit from splitting into separate categories?

Off the top of my head it might make sense to have FH Versions as one level-2 forum (or even be a top level itself) with sub-forums for each version (and even lower for sub-versions?).

Ancestral Sources gets its own forum, but other programs/sites that link in some way (e.g. Parallels or mapping) don’t get collected together, as might be helpful.

There are certain other (perhaps many) focused topics that are clear candidates for grouping too (e.g. Witnesses), but you of all people will be well aware of that.

Thanks for reading.

[Jane]

Historically we did have forums for each version, but many people got very confused as to where to post a question, so we flattened the structure. Many questions are not version specific, so in many cases an answer to a question on FH5 is still correct for FH7.

[dbnut]

Ah, great point there. Do you have similar reservations about other examples I mentioned?

[dbnut]

BTW (off-topic from a really nosy person) any chance of (number of) Views being added to the header of an opened topic?

[NickWalker]

Ancestral Sources gets its own forum, but other programs/sites that link in some way (e.g. Parallels or mapping) don’t get collected together, as might be helpful.

The Ancestral Sources forum is slightly different I think, as it is the 'official' support forum for the software, i.e. the recommended place to go for AS support, whereas Parallels, etc. obviously have their official forums elsewhere on the web.

On the general point, the more sub-forums you have, the more people will post entries into the 'wrong' place and that then causes more work for the moderators to move them to where they should go!

[ColeValleyGirl]

I'll add that often a query doesn't slot neatly into a single topic area -- or the solution to a problem actually 'sits' in a different topic.

[tatewise]

When the current Forum structure was designed the concept of FH General Usage sub-topics was discussed and rejected.

[jimlad68]

Take a look here
Forum Usage Tips
near the bottom "Extended Search for Keywords with Google Site Search"
I find this invaluable for many web sites not just FHUG.
If you use it a lot you can add this extension to Chrome
https://chrome.google.com/webstore/deta ... fombdekjcp

[ColeValleyGirl]

If you use it a lot you can add this extension to Chrome
https://chrome.google.com/webstore/deta ... fombdekjcp

It works in Edge as well, and is definitely invaluable.

[tatewise]

Those Forum Usage Tips are reached from the FHUG KB Key Features for Newcomers and Other Sources of Help.