Hi guys and gals, I love the Buzztouch forums, I spend 90% of my waking day (and night) on them. We all know the search and find function has never been perfect, and the amount of duplicate posts is ridiculous. I have always been an admirer of the stack overflow website (www.stackoverflow.com) it has helped me out immensely over the past year. I found a lot of this went over my head initially because we weren't using the same types of view controllers, what the hell is a xib or a storyboard (I know no no need to post telling me) I have set up a buzztouch version called Buzztouchoverflow you can access it at www.kittsapps.com or http://kittsapps.com/buzztouchoverflow/ (hopefully when I pull my finger out kittsapps.com will have my own stuff on lol) As with any community it's only as good as its community and its members. I'm looking for people to help me moderate, people who are literate in ios and android to become experts. This should hopefully give us a bit of clarity, and help reduce duplicates when it comes to fix common errors and difficulties. Another bug bare of mine is when people ask for help and don't reply to say it worked, this service offers tick boxes, kudos and detailed comments. I've put a few examples in, I'm going to add a few common questions in there to get the ball rolling. Let me know what you think, and hopefully if it kicks off and works we can transfer it to the buzztouch website.

Registered. Like the idea

Once again, thanks Kittsy!

Hate to say this but don't you think adding an external forum to ask questions will just cloud the issue? Not trying to rain on your parade but you are essentially trying to set up a community within a community? Dilutes the brand in my opinion but then again I'm a cantankerous old fool. People come to the Buzztouch forum with issues and over the years it is becoming less common to direct people out to stackoverflow as the forum grows and more and more questions are answered. There are ongoing changes to the BT site and services and I don't believe a secondary external forum is needed or indeed will get the traction you desire. With the new BT team a lot of the gripes some folk have will go away, easier access to common gotchas, more comprehensive FAQs and so on. I'd keep doing what you have been doing buddy, help people on here and with time we'll not need to direct people elsewhere.

I agree that identical problems being posted time and time again is ridiculous. Don't know how GoNorthWest has the patience! But, anything on buzztouch can be found just by doing a google search.

I understand completely, its a bit of an experiment, and I'm trying to see if this model of forum would make things a little easier. I'm sure you have used stackoverflow and you can type the gist of what your looking for and questions similar will appear. This doesn't happen with this type forum. Adding FAQs hasn't done much to improve this either as people will flit through and not read, as we've already seen some of the FAQ are in the FAQ section but are surrounded by other things and people don't read them properly. Sometimes just asking the question and getting a few answers from already answered questions is the best. I've almost ignored peoples questions on this forum thinking if it's already beein asked and answered they will find it. Unfortunately this isn't the case, and people will repeatedly ask the question. This will happen on the overflow version for sure. My idea is that if this works then it can be handed over to buzztouch. It also has better and easier way for people to be mods, move questions, identify duplicate posts. I don't want people to move away from this site, I eventually want this to become part of the site

Hey Kittsy, It's awesome that you want to make an external site to buzztouch, and many of us have done this before! I was in the same position you were a few years back and have learned a few things: Buzztouchmods used to have a forum the same way, my idea, for developers only and user support, and for a list of downloadable plugins, as buzztouch grew, this was no longer needed (the forum was never needed). MacApple told me the same exact thing back then and I wished I would have listened to him more - diluting a community is not the best idea, however, if you can add something to it GO FOR IT (example check the resources page). The community will tend to stay here, you might get one or two active users on your site, but the most benefit everyone can have from these discussions your planning are the people actually NOT interacting on the forum, and only those will be viewing the forums here for help. Make sense? You think GoNorthWest helps a lot of people? You can't imagine the people that haven't registered or posted here that have received help from his constructive posts on this forum every single day. Those are the same people you want to continue serving, as they will always be here. Hope that makes a little sense, it took me a while to understand that trying to start a forum on buzztouchmods, no matter how good I thought my forum formatting and idea was, was not the best way to serve buzztouch. p.s. just friendly advice from a guy who's been there and tried that. there are many many many other ways to serve through :) and i'm sure I speak for all that we will support anything you do to help regardless if its a forum or not. Cheers, David https://buzztouchmods.com

buzztouchmods.com and other websites have filled an important gap for the buzztouch community. In a bit of time, buzztouch will be able to meet all of the needs and we will be less reliant on external resources. David has a vision, and that is why he added additional people into the buzztouch team a few days ago. I think part of the vision is that the new team will work to fill the gaps that David and Stephen couldn't fill on their own. It is all new, but things will move a lot more quickly now. For one thing, if the new team can take some of the marketing and maintenance work from David, that will free up his time to build us an even better buzztouch. In regards to the more technical people involved on the forum, I will take the lead in developer relations, and work to build strong resources for those of us who want to build custom apps and plugins. I have a lot of ideas, and I will be sure to incorporate your ideas too. If you have something useful now that fills the gap, we will be sure to use it in the meantime, and I truly appreciate your efforts to fill the void. But within a year, I would hope that developers will find what they need within buzztouch.com. It will be an exciting year!

I might just leave it and check up on it, see how it's accessed. I love the buzztouch forums, but for use as support it can be a pain in the backside. I've spoke to david before about the forums and that style (stack overflow) for people asking questions is amazing, then have the more social forums to say" hey this is what I've done" "checkout this article" " I'm having a rubbish day" I think peoples problems and issues with coding get clouded by the more social aspect, and is a reason why some visitors to the site don't stay. Even if I start copying some frequently asked questions in my spare time, i'm sure it would be of use to some.

I might have to put thus under epic fail before it's even an even an hour old lol I'll stick to making plugins

@Kittsy You have an obvious talent and vision, running an external FAQs or forum type thing will take away your time (more than you can imagine) from doing all the cool stuff you do. @MrDavid makes some good points above, kudos to you buddy.

@Kittsy, I think improving the forum is good idea - for example, as others have said, certain features such as search is a bit basic, but we all keep coming back to the same place every day. I personally think you are onto something, and the example the idea of closing a topic with a solution is great. However, taking us to two places is the problem. What I'd like to suggest is that your idea's and solutions are incorporated in an evolution and improvement to this system, if that is feasible. Keep it up, please Alan

I think for this idea to work it would always require 2 different forums. people don't go on stack overflow to chat. Ideally you would click on it and it looked the same as the buzztouch page. I have always said we need a different errors/help part to a forum. It just came into my mind today to see if there was an open source version, and I found it, I gave it a go, if it doesn't take off so be it, I'll leave it, if people wish to see how it works. I don't particular want to mod it on my own, in an ideal world the more experienced buzztouchers would be the mods, and it would look after itself, after all if you ask a question, you get an answer it works then, other people know. I have answered tonnes of questions, and sometimes the asker doesn't acknowledge them that they work, I kinda hoped a press tick might solve some of that. I don't know, I'm getting a few PMs off people saying persevere so for that reason alone I don't want to bin it instantly

I agree with a forum just for Devs. I also agree with a forum that shows related questions. And one that says "my question is solved". As I suggested in response to Susan's Plugin post, all of that can be achieved by establishing a hierarchy within the BuzzTouch web site: 1. Developer.BuzzTouch.com 2. BuzzTouch.com/extend/plugins 3. BuzzTouch.com/extend/themes Perhaps it's a (oh-so-hard) simple switch the BT Forums to another Forum tool, such as the one that Andy Kitts has implemented on his site? If that new Forum software has an easy pluggable authentication, then our BT Accounts can seamlessly crossover into that Forum's user database. In the back of my head, I keep wondering if a WordPress + BuddyPress + OverFlow combo would be a more sustainable and scalable fit for the now-and-future of BuzzTouch. I have briefly conversed with David Book on that topic and showed him how Appsify.me has used WP as a competitor to BuzzTouch. Yet, I recognize that David has to prioritize his team's focus areas. Thus, I only dream for such a major switchover to a different platform for the BuzzTouch web site. :-) -- Niraj

A thing that's getting overlooked is the incredible search engine friendliness of this format. Posts are indexed and available on google within minutes, which can only be good for the visibility of buzztouch. Multiple posts about the same problem but worded differently (and no archives to kill old posts) equals multiple ways of being found on search engines. Add in http://freeappbuilder.com/ (who knew about that?) and it makes it a risky business to move over to another format - either as duplicate content penalties or a platform without the extreme search engine stickiness.

Love the idea but hate to say that macapple is right i had the idea of doing this long time ago and yes it will take most of your time from the genius you are Maybe make a site were you tech us your skills from basic Just my opinion dont mean to get no one offended

I'm a noob to this but I'll throw out my 2 cents: I search on the BT forum first, then stackoverflow (which usually doesn't answer the question), then iOS dev support. If I don't find anything I'll ask the question here. I'm slowly not even bothering with SO. I think this might happen to another forum if I use it and it is not as robust as the BT forum. My fav non programming forum, www.waterpoloplanet.com, is great (I coach also) but I know the administrators spend a ton of time on their forums. The only way I see it making sense for you is if you provide original content on top of the forum. BT does not have a regular official/professional content function. Maybe this is where you can show off more than your coding skills. Ryan

Hey Kittsy I think it's a great idea, I also think it should be done within the BT framework. Hopefully the new team will upgrade the forum to fill those gaps you have identified and we all know about. Think it's something David might already have on his list and should consult you about. In the meantime I think everyone is making it clear they value your plugin skills and vision and passion in making some awesome functionality available to all. Love your work mate.

Say, how important is it to separate out the personal from the technology discussions? When the search function works properly, will that alleviate the issues? One of the things I like the most about buzztouch is the relationships. Stack overflow is all about the question, and you better not ask a question that was not thoroughly researched! We could try to keep this section of the forum more clear of personal discussions--the Plugins, Customization and Source Code section.

@Susan the problem is that there is no "General Discussion" or "Off Topic" forum, our personal posts and topics (like the one I made a bit ago) had no logical place for any of the current forums. Labeling each forum "personal free" wouldn't be the answer I think, rather, a personal only board like the two I mentioned above, should do the trick. Cheers, David https://buzztouchmods.com

I'm split on the issue. On the one hand, it would be nice to have a separate forum for developers to talk. I can definitely see how that would benefit me. On the other hand, I came to Buzztouch as pretty much a non-programmer and was intrigued because it advertised itself as a place to learn how to program apps. (hence, Buzztouch U) More than a developer forum, I'd like to see resources put into making the current forum more user-friendly. Search is one piece of that. But so are sorting options (by date, unread status, views and/or responses, etc) and pagination for folders and threads. Some of these threads have gone really long, and it would be much better to have 10-15 posts per page in the thread, with an easy way to navigate forward/back pages.

sub forums, helper sites, always a sticky wickett.. I have seen a lot of great ideas from folks. I do check BTM and idevdepot, but not daily. buzzoverflow won't be a fail if Kittsy spends his time there tending to it. that q/a format rocks, it's what makes stack overflow so powerful and useful. if just for a good code block to be able to correctly cut/paste snippets it's a win. But I think the masses would much rather have you here. All I know is I'm following your posts wherever you go! and thanks for pointing the question2Answer site out, I so need something like this for a client. More new stuff I didn't have time to research that I will be now. Look at some of the plugins/features it offers, good stuff. thanks!