Should How To section have sub sections?

[bigpup]

do you think the How To section could use some sub sections?
Something similar to the Additional Software section?

I think it needs some organization.

It is slowly getting messy and soon it is going to be just a big bunch of topics all mixed together.

Maybe these sub sections:
Booting
System settings
Installing
Running programs
Getting Software
Tips and tweaks
etc...........????
Ideas????????

[wiak]

do you think the How To section could use some sub sections?
Something similar to the Additional Software section?

I think it needs some organization.

It is slowly getting messy and soon it is going to be just a big bunch of topics all mixed together.

Maybe these sub sections:
Booting
System settings
Installing
Running programs
Getting Software
Tips and tweaks
etc...........????
Ideas????????

Subsections are certainly good for grouping items into categories. However, their use comes at a heavy price in that you can't at a glance see the latest list of howtos that have been added. Newest howto gets announced, but even one howto released before that remains buried in its subsection. When no subsections are used you see the whole list of most recent howtos that fit onto web page display. The reason I call that loss a "heavy price" is that that single list of howtos tends to show the most regularly responded to howtos (they move up and down the list as replies are received) whereas howtos people are not particularly interested in quickly vanish out of sight. For that reason, I'm also not myself actually all that fond of the multi-subforum Additional software section - once an app has been published it tends to be forgotten about in its subfolder either - had it been part of a big messy list at least it would have always appeared in the top page of that list if it was receiving regular thread replies... Fact is we probably find available forum apps via search function than subforum categories (at least that's what I do, though it is true that I do occasionally look into particular subforum category if that interests me, but I'm sure I do miss a lot of interesting/popular available apps overall because they lie hidden in their subforum category that I haven't looked into).

wiak

[bigpup]

If a how to or a software package in Additional Software is not replied to. It will slowly go into the deep pages of the section.

If a how to is written correctly and needs no replying to.
It will go deep into the pages of the how to section.

I guess I have been around long enough to remember when Additional Software had no subsections.
If you where looking for a web browser pet.
It could be on page 1, page 5, page 15, page 26, page 33.
Yes these were all good usable pets.
And it would be only one post on a page that would be a web browser.

Yes sub sections can have many pages, but the stuff in that specific sub section is all the same type stuff.

If you first log into the forum.
Click on the Quick links.
Select New Posts.
Anything new to the forum since your last log on is going to be listed.

[wiak]

If a how to is written correctly and needs no replying to.
It will go deep into the pages of the how to section
...
Yes sub sections can have many pages, but the stuff in that specific sub section is all the same type stuff.

If you first log into the forum.
Click on the Quick links.
Select New Posts.
Anything new to the forum since your last log on is going to be listed.

Yes, good points. You are probably right.

[rockedge]

I am leaning towards having sub sections in the How To. It seems logical from an organizational stand point. It could be helpful to narrow down searches for a particular type of How To set of instructions or methods. Like in a library the way the books are indexed and sorted in a way.

Lets make a list of potential sub sections and we can look it over and decide how to proceed. Let us start with what @bigpup has suggested. and begin to get some ideas flowing.

1. Booting
2. System settings
3. Installing
4. Running programs
5. Getting Software
6. Tips and tweaks

[Flash]

I think a sub-section for servers would be useful.

[wiak]

I think a sub-section for servers would be useful.

Yes, that's a good idea. Setting up any kind of server configuration is definitely a special subcategory case, which is a particularly powerful and useful one (especially since many of us have at least one more powerful computer and a couple of extra under-powered machines) and possibly regarded as a bit of a black art by many.

[bigpup]

Sub sections more ideas:

Graphics

Network/server combined into one sub section

Repair (anything not working)

Security

Upgrade

Audio/sound
How to fix different Firefox sound issues will fill this one up

Backups

[bigpup]

Any update on doing or not doing this?

How to section is slowly adding pages to it.

Now would be a good time to do subsections with not too much to move around.

[rockedge]

Yes is the answer. We should add the sub sections. we will do it today.
@bigpup Throw together the list that will be the sub-forums and we'll set it up.

[mikeslr]

I agree that organizing the How to into Subsections would be helpful. There was a post a little while back about how difficult it was for a newbie --even one experience in Linux-- to become oriented in the way Puppy accomplishes things. Such organization would go a long way toward overcoming that.

May I suggest one further step. If it is possible some posts could be 'marked?' as 'Stickies'. Of course over time things change, new practices become possible, even required. But for a long time the Stickies on the old Forum were very helpful. When it becomes necessary, Stickies can be 'unstuck' or, better yet, re-written.

I know that when it was feared that access to the old forum would not be possible bigpup and I wrote posts intended to carry forward comprehensive overviews of some of the knowledge which had accumulated on the old forum. By now those posts have been buried.

If employing 'Stickies' are a good idea that rather than requiring rockedge to read through all the posts now on the Forum, perhaps this thread --or another-- could be used to receive recommendations of posts he might consider for such designation.

[bigpup]

Looks like you already got most of the ideas for subsections already made.

Maybe add this:

tips and tweaks

Example topics:
viewtopic.php?f=85&t=511
viewtopic.php?f=85&t=512
viewtopic.php?f=85&t=263
viewtopic.php?f=85&t=705

[MochiMoppel]

"Instructional HOW-TO's Section"

What's the purpose of the apostrophe in there?

[bigpup]

Thanks for doing the subsections rockedge!

After you get the last few topics moved into a subsection.

I suggest you lock the how to so only stuff can be posted in the subsections.

[Makoto]

Should a notice be posted in the main how-to subforum description - and possibly in the header for each of the subsections - about not posting "How do I do _______?" questions there? It wasn't a big problem on the previous forum, and I'd move them to the correct subforums if I noticed them, but I'm wondering if it made it harder for some people to have their questions answered (since some might not have noticed their questions posted in How-To as opposed to one of the more 'common' areas).