Thanks for the input, lemerise and tomaradze! We're going to go our own path with custom forums for a number of good reasons, many of which won't be evident for some time. (You'll just have to trust me!) Here are a few things I can tell you now:
1) I couldn't look at the MacNN forums that you mentioned, because they're down as I post this. This is typical of many off-the-shelf forum implementations-- they don't cache well and create an inordinate amount of expensive database load. We could handle this load under our normal traffic, but when we get high-load situations (like first-look announcements and new product launches) it would be very difficult to keep the forums running smoothly. We focus really hard on the speed and scalability of our platform, integrating technologies like memcached into our application.
2) We are heavily integrating the forums with comments on our repair guides and info pages. The most elegant way of doing this is with a custom implementation.
3) We try really hard to provide a streamlined, intuitive user interface. I think that in most user interfaces, less is more. And we have a different goal here than in most forums-- we're trying to help each other fix problems. That may require some custom interfaces down the road. We're very open to input on this.
4) We are using these forums to test some cutting-edge software that we're working on. I can't tell you much yet, but I can promise it's going to make a lot of people very happy.
So, what are the features that you really miss from the 'universal forums' that you use elsewhere? We really care about your input, and we're working crazy hard to make it as easy as possible for us to share ideas and repair information.
Regards,
-Kyle
[quote|Kyle Wiens]Thanks for the input, lemerise and tomaradze! We're going to go our own path with custom forums for a number of good reasons, many of which won't be evident for some time. (You'll just have to trust me!) Here are a few things I ''can'' tell you now:
1) I couldn't look at the MacNN forums that you mentioned, because they're down as I post this. This is typical of many off-the-shelf forum implementations-- they don't cache well and create an inordinate amount of expensive database load. We could handle this load under our normal traffic, but when we get high-load situations (like first-look announcements and new product launches) it would be very difficult to keep the forums running smoothly. We focus really hard on the speed and scalability of our platform, integrating technologies like [link|http://www.danga.com/memcached/|memcached] into our application.
2) We are heavily integrating the forums with comments on our repair guides and info pages. The most elegant way of doing this is with a custom implementation.
3) We try really hard to provide a streamlined, intuitive user interface. I think that in most user interfaces, less is more. And we have a different goal here than in most forums-- we're trying to help each other fix problems. That may require some custom interfaces down the road. We're very open to input on this.
4) We are using these forums to test some cutting-edge software that we're working on. I can't tell you much yet, but I can promise it's going to make a lot of people very happy.
So, what are the features that you really miss from the 'universal forums' that you use elsewhere? We really care about your input, and we're working crazy hard to make it as easy as possible for us to share ideas and repair information.
Regards,
-Kyle[/quote]
