[Suggestion] Split the dev questions forums in two: Basic / Advanced

[eluser]Alex007[/eluser]
Just like the title says, should we split the "Code and Application Development" in two, one for basic questions, and one for advanced questions ?

I ask, because reading that forum is getting tiresome sometimes, it gets hammered with newbie questions repeated over and over by people who don't even try to search first. Some of them can't even ask a decent question (aka "MY blogZ not worky please HALP!!" with no details at all), some have almost no idea of what PHP is, or speak a broken engrish that even I can't understand.

</end newbie rant>

Don't get me wrong, I don't hate newbies, I even enjoy helping them *if* I feel they are trying to help themselves and will learn something from our help.

It would be cool if we could split the dev forum into two, one for basic questions (php, DB, basic codeigniter), and one for advanced questions.

I really enjoy reading the forums, and advanced questions threads are very interesting to read, we all learn a lot from them, but right now they are so diluted by basic-questions threads that it gets tiring searching for them.

Also, the basic questions forum could have a nice big sticky thread with things to do first (like reading the manual, searching the forums, etc...) and how to post a question (include error messages, code excerpts) ... to make it easier for us to help them.

Is it a good idea, or am I simply a grumpy old man ?

[eluser]John_Betong[/eluser]
Also how about a section on CodeIgniter debugging tips.

Here are some starters:

index.php

Code:

define('LOCALHOST',  file_exists('c:');

  if (LOCALHOST) {

    function show($var) {
      echo '<pre>';
        echo print_r($var);  
      echo '</pre>';
    }/

   }

LOCALHOST is good for:
1. having anchor links showing on home page only if LOCALHOST
2. setting different paths for LOCALHOST and online so only one set of files are used.
3. showing additional information such as table id or passwords


This tip is ideal for the tracing the dreaded blank screen:

Code:

echo getcwd() .' --> ' .__FILE__ .' --> ' .__LINE__; die;

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Any more useful debugging tips?
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[eluser]coolfactor[/eluser]
@ Alex007 - while I tend to agree with you, adding more forums probably won't solve the problem. It's the newbies that don't know which forum to choose to begin with, and they'll just end up posting in the wrong forum anyway. However, it would be nice to have a "Friends" list where we could choose to only see threads started by forum members that we've added to our Friends list. That would automatically filter out the newbie threads. Another option would be to only view threads started by forum members that joined "more than six months ago", for example, or "have more than 200 posts". That way, newbies would slowly work their way up into our filtered view of the Forums.

@ John_Betong - your tip seemed to be written for Windows users. Would that be correct? My tip is to post tips that are platform-independent.

[eluser]John_Betong[/eluser]
Hi CoolFactor,

Yes the tips I suggested were written for Windows. They were Php functions that I thought would be platform independent?

The only change I see is the define setting for LOCALHOST so maybe this will be platform independent?

&nbsp;

Code:

$myhost = strtolower($_SERVER['SERVER_NAME']);
    define('LOCALHOST', ('localhost' === $myhost));
        unset($myhost);

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[eluser]CI Lee[/eluser]
Maybe those who are in the know could prepend [ADV] to their question, rather than trying to shape the newbs...


BTW Loved the Canhazcheezburgerz reference....

-Lee

[eluser]coolfactor[/eluser]
Lee, I don't follow. Doesn't [ADV] stand for "advertisement"?

[eluser]CI Lee[/eluser]
I was meaning "Advanced" so we would end up with

[ADV]Hey I am having an issue attaining cold fusion in my living room

So you could just scan through the forum for [ADV] ahead of a question...

-Lee

[eluser]CI Lee[/eluser]
Does that make sense or have I lost everyone?

-Lee

[eluser]coolfactor[/eluser]
[quote author="CI Lee" date="1193391221"]Does that make sense or have I lost everyone?[/quote]

My only concern would be that such a tactic would/could be abused just to get more hits on a topic.

[eluser]CI Lee[/eluser]
Nah I think that problem is locked down by referencing RoR in the question...

I agree there is no way around it, newbs are like taxes, you just have to deal with them.

-Lee