Since April 25th, forum rules will be enforced.
Dear friends,
Since a very long time ago (more than a year) we have put some forum rules in place. These rules are only applicable to non-subscribers requesting our free support. They are designed to help us help you, minimize our unpaid workload and are very simple to follow:
- Do not reply to another user's thread to ask for support about your issue; start a new thread instead. 99% of the times this happened, the original poster's thread was completely different than what was asked from a later poster. Also, if we're trying to solve two or three different issues in a single thread the chances are that nobody's problem will be solved. It's OK and very welcome to post answers to other people's threads, or confirm an unresolved bug.
- Do not post anything which is off-topic regarding to the thread or the forum you're in. For example, asking an Admin Tools question on theAkeeba Release System is off-topic and forbidden. It's a matter of order. Would you go to the grocery store and ask for spare parts for your car? It's the same thing with the forum.
- Do include information about your system setup and, if requesting support for Akeeba Backup, do include your log files. We're not psychics. Posting something like "I see error X, what's wrong?" isn't helpful. Would you call the doctor and tell him "My stomach aches, what can I take to get better"? No, because your stomachache could be attributed to more than 200 diseases, from dyspepsia to some terminal disease. You would expect your doctor to examine you. When you come to our forum for support, we're the doctor and your site is our patient. Give us the necessary information which will allow us to perform a diagnosis, otherwise your issue can't and won't be solved. As simple as that.
- If you are not a subscriber, do not post to the Professional forums or ask for support regarding features of the Professional editions. That's self-explanatory, isn't it?
- Read the documentation and search the forum before posting. We've been doing support for almost five years. We can assure you that there is a 95% chance that we've seen your issue before, we have replied to the forum and we have already documented a workaround. If you don't read and search, you'll have to simply wait for 12-48 hours for us to get back to you... with a link to the documentation you didn't read in the first place. Why not read it yourself and spare both yours and ours time?
We have noticed that half of the support requests we receive are in violation of these forum rules. These posts not only wreck havoc in the forum (it's impossible to find relevant posts by searching) but also make it extremely difficult for us to provide support. This results in you being unhappy with the level of the free support you get. So, we have made a few changes to the forum to alleviate this issue. Right above the post area, there is now a big yellow box with a red border stating what you can post in the forum area you're in and giving you self-help instructions if applicable. Please respect and follow these instructions, or you'll certainly be violating the forum rules. The new post area contains a pre-written message that you are supposed to fill in with your system setup information before posting your new thread. Please read it and fill it in. We think that with these changes in place it is trivial not to violate the forum rules if you do as much as read the text in the box and follow its instructions. As a result, any post which is violating these simple rules will be deleted without a reply.
Please help us help you and you can be sure that we will help you, as we've proven thousands of times.
Nicholas K. Dionysopoulos
Lead Developer, AkeebaBackup.com