The Joomla! Forum ™

Why is the Joomla forum constantly up-and-down? I frequently get the "Sorry but the board is temporarily unavailable, please try again in a few minutes." message, sometimes for prolonged periods. It's getting to the stage where the forum is nigh-on unusable, and has worsened significantly over the previous few weeks.

Isn't it about time for the people in charge to consider alternative forum/support software, such as the excellent Stack Exchange network (proposal for Joomla site here: http://area51.stackexchange.com/proposa ... la-answers)? Availability is not the only aspect of the forum site that could be improved.

Thank you for your feedback regarding Joomla forum!


The regular search uses Google, and there are no unavailability issues with that.

The advanced search option + searching other posts of a user is handled by phpBB3.
Last week I experience more of those "temporarily unavailable" messages as well.
When the forum has a traffic peak, phpBB3 will disable resource intensive processes like the search functionality as safety measure to prevent the software/website from going down.
We are monitoring this and we are constantly looking for improvements and solutions.


A Q&A extension might be a good addition to the current technical information resources we have (like docs.joomla.org + forum.joomla.org).
However, people who don't (know how to) use search won't be able to find the right answers.
How should we support those people?


What other aspects can be improved?
What can you do to help us with those improvements?

_________________
Kind Regards,
Peter Martin, Global Moderator - Community Leadership Team
http://www.db8.nl - Joomla specialist, Nijmegen, Nederland
Joomla 2.5 multilanguage in 10 steps: http://www.db8.nl/multilanguage-in-10-steps

Is there not a similar "underused" version on http://people.joomla.org/answers.html

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HU2HY- Poor questions = Poor answer
Un requested Help PM's will be added to the foe list and possibly just deleted
{Community.Connect Administrator }{ Showcase & Security Moderator}

Hi Peter,

Many thanks for your reply - much appreciated.

The issues I've seen with the forum aren't just related to search. Sometimes, I'll post a message and get the error. I've actually taken to selecting-all, copying, and pasting into a text editor before I ever submit a comment here, just in case I lose it on submit. Sometimes I'll see the 'unavailable' error when just trying to view a post.

Stack Exchange handles search quite well. For anyone asking a question that has already been asked, the system does a really good job of preemptively finding duplicates and suggesting them to the asker. And, of course, duplicates DO still get through (no system can control human behaviour to that extent!) but are handled promptly by other users. Are you not familiar with Stack Overflow? If not, I highly recommend trying it out and seeing the benefits for yourself.

Other aspects that can be improved:

Forum hierarchy: I find it quite confusing knowing exactly 'where' to post. Stack Exchange solves this by having just one big site, but tagging all questions so they can easily be grouped.

Quality of questions: I've noticed some spam recently; Stack Exchange provides a rating system for questions, so quality is maintained.

Response organisation: a traditional forum such as this one handles responses simply one after the other, in a linear flow. Stack Exchange organises answers in a 'best first' order (with a commenting system available for any linear discussions) which really helps to build up a knowledge base of great answers over time.

Our two main 'competitors', Wordpress (http://wordpress.stackexchange.com/) and Drupal (http://drupal.stackexchange.com/) have Stack Exchange sites. Check them out and compare the level of support they're able to offer in comparison to the Joomla forum.

Thank you for your explanation.

Yeah, spam is annoying indeed.
We've a team of Moderators memberlist.php?mode=leaders that is constantly fighting spam.

Regarding your Stack Exchange idea: I'll discuss your solution within the Community Leadership Team (CLT).
thanks!

_________________
Kind Regards,
Peter Martin, Global Moderator - Community Leadership Team
http://www.db8.nl - Joomla specialist, Nijmegen, Nederland
Joomla 2.5 multilanguage in 10 steps: http://www.db8.nl/multilanguage-in-10-steps