Announcing the new e107 Support Desk

A distinct support desk by community leaders for the e107 community

e107help.org: a new peer-to-peer Question & Answer platform

In our last blog post, we announced some changes with regard to the support framework we instituted as part of the shift of focus to e107 v2 Bootstrap. Behind the scenes, a new platform has been setup and thoroughly tested to ensure that the community has access to an area where they are able to interact with the community by asking and answering questions about e107.

e107.org is pleased to announce a community-led initiative for the community:e107help.org. This website will serve as a platform for the e107 community (separate from e107.org) to ask questions about e107 while at the same time, the platform encourages users to answer each other questions as well (so-called “peer-to-peer” support). Through a points and reputation system, users are encouraged to become experts in e107 and help each other out as much as possible.

Q&A: Questions and Answers

The setup of the new platform is somewhat different compared to what most people were used to when the forums were used as a support platform. The main focus lies on asking concrete questions which allow for objective answering. There will be less focus on discussions (ie. regarding the development process), as such questions are far more suitable to be asked (and answered!) through other platforms (such as Github, our main development platform).

The e107help.org Q&A platform is meant for general support questions which allow for concrete answers. Sharing your progress on your theme or plugin, for example, is currently outside the scope of this platform (but still in our minds for future plans!) and is therefore discouraged at this time. Similarly, asking for people's opinions or recommendations for certain themes and plugins is currently also outside the scope of this platform.

Currently questions can be sorted in either of the following categories: Core, Plugins, Themes, Installation and Updating. Please be sure to categorise your questions accordingly. In addition, the Q&A system allows for adding ‘tags’ to your questions. Tags are important keywords which summarise your question. Adding tags will help to associate similar questions which makes it easier for other users to search through and find answers to their own questions.

When asking questions, you will also be asked to enter which version of e107 you are using. Please pay attention to this as questions may concern either e107 version 1.x or version 2.x (development version).

Reputation: points, badges and permissions

The Q&A platform uses a points and reputation system to encourage high-quality participation. For each contribution users are awarded with points (and badges). Contributions include but are not limited to: asking a question, adding an answer, being selected as providing the best answer, voting on questions and answers, authoring your personal profile and so on.

High-quality contributions, as determined by the community, will be awarded more points, whereas low-quality contributions will receive less or even remove points from this user. The more points one has, the more valuable this user is to the e107 community, and the more permissions this user will be awarded. Permissions are for example the possibility to edit other questions, answers and comments (to re-categorise them, clarify them, or even close them if needed).

When asking and answering questions, please reward your fellow community members for their time and effort in contributing the community by voting on their questions or answers. The more you contribute to the platform, the better.

A break-down of the points, badges and permissions awarded to each contribution will be published on the e107help.org website in the near future.

Future plans

The current state of the platform is not final. Over the coming weeks and months, the Q&A platform will be tweaked and improved based on your feedback. We are eager to hear what you think, please share your thoughts through the feedback form here: https://e107help.org/feedback.

See you there.

Regards,

Moc