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06 February 2006
Posted in
Site News
The "How To/Tips" section of the site has always been popular, but sometimes you just want a quick answer to a simple question or want to be able to search the site for help more quickly.
At other times, you might enter that question in the forum, but whilst discussions are always supportive, checking up those answers at a later date requires too much searching or reading of lively chat.
Enter the new Quick Tips section launched today on NZMac.com.
The knowledge base makes use of an advanced commercial component for Joomla (the system running this site) and is intended to become the second place you'll check after discussing issues in the forum. In fact, the intention is to copy some of the responses so far in the forum to the QTKB.
The new Quick Tips section allows for:
- Full Text Search, Basic and Advanced
- Commenting - Registered users can add comments to support a Quick Tip
- Yes/No voting to let others know how helpful you found the Quick Tip
- Email Quick Tips to friends
- Automatically generate PDFs for download from a Quick Tip
- All tips can be printed using a print friendly option
- Acronyms ('FTP', 'PDF' as two examples) to be explained to users (to be added slowly)
I've taken the opportunity to migrate some of the content from the former "How To/Tips" section to the QTKB, with some of the lengthier "How to" articles being moved into the features section. Some of the existing articles have not been migrated as a simple editorial decision. At the same time, the intention is to take good Question and Answers from the forum and place these into the Quick Tips section.
I'm also pleased to announce that the Quick Tips section will feature a listing of the latest Mac tips from MacTips.info, the superb resource for Mac users, run by our own Miraz Jordan right here in New Zealand. You'll find links to her latest Mac tips in the right-hand column of the Quick Tips section.
For the most part, the forum will remain the support focus for users of the site, but I'll shortly place a small reminder in the forum that users can take selected postings from the forum and enter them into the QTKB for the benefit of fast searching by other site users.
| What makes a good Quick Tip? |
| The easy way to describe a good question for the Quick Tips section is...one with a straight forward answer. So, a question such as..."What printer do you think I should buy?" is NOT an appropriate question. It's too open ended. "How do I change my default web browser in Mac OS X 10.4?" is a great question as there is a simple straight forward answer. In this case it is... "Launch Safari. Go to the ‘Safari' menu and choose ‘Preferences' and in the 'General' tab of the window that appears, select your browser from those that you have installed." |
I have to stress that the component in use is new to me and new to the market, so over the next few weeks you'll see a few changes as the operation of the component becomes better understood. If you have technical concerns about the component, please post them in the forum or get in touch. I'll be working on the functionality and layout of the component as this work progresses as there are a few cosmetic changes needed.
Many thanks, Phil
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