In a couple weeks time we are going to be launching our new community portal to provide a much more enhanced experience for all our users. As part of the process we are looking to you to provide us with some feedback.

One of the new main features (outside of premium documentation, enhanced search functionality, unique profiles and a specific area for training and certification) is the ability to host groups for special areas of interest for our community members. Within these groups we envision members of the GNS3 community gathering together around specific subject matters that relate to their fields.

To that end, we are reaching out to you to see if you have any ideas on groups that you would like to see when we launch the portal in a couple weeks time? As a example, we are going to have specific groups for certification (CCIE, JNCIE etc.) to help users who are preparing for their exams + also connect users who have passed the exam to share and collaborate.

Any ideas would be greatly appreciated!!

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Mark Blackwell
Chief Operating Officer
GNS3 Technologies Inc.

I love the idea of having groups per certification like cisco does with the learningnetwork, within the CCIE group it is broken up further by technology.

So....how about groups for big protocols/technologies like BGP, MPLS etc, you could break them up further by vendor or make them multi-vendor/inter-operable

either way i'm certainly looking forward to the new portal!

It might be wise to use something like Stackoverflow's tags, since a lot of topics are likely to intersect with multiple groups, and a lot of people will want to see something that involves at least a part of what they're interested in, without "manually" having to go over several different forums.

For example, have a tag for each router vendor, but then also have a tag for their different certifications, and perhaps some tags about different areas of functionality, e.g. "routing" (used for BGP, OSPF, RIP, etc.), "wireless", "vpn", "traffic-shaping", "dhcp", "ipv6", etc.

This will allow the creation of topics that have the tags, let's say "Cisco, CCIE, routing", to indicate a question about Cisco's routing protocols implementation in the context of CCIE certification, while something like, let's say "Cisco, MikroTik, routing" would imply a question about interoperability between a Cisco and MikroTik routers' routing protocol implementations, not necessarily related to certification of any sort... And people who know their routing protocols would be able to easily see (=> easily be able to assist) both of those from a single view.

+1
Awesome suggestion boen_robot!

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silvertip257

- GNS3 Premium Member
- Freenode IRC: #cisco
.:|:.:|:.

OK, I've looked at the preview, and...

I'm personally somewhat disappointed.


When I said above that you should use tags, I didn't mean "have tags in addition to "forums" (which are merely renamed to "spaces" it seems...)", I meant use tags as the ONLY means to filter out a SINGLE place for all sorts of questions, regardless of vendor, certification and the like... And now, I should add, force users to have at least one tag in their question to encourage their use.

Now... I can see that there's a single "Help & Support" space, but the fact that there's even the option to post a discussion elsewhere means that inevitably, people will. I almost found myself asking a question in the "How to" section (for a test... not that I had a "real" question), but then I remembered this forum, and how the "How to" section is about user tutorials, not about "How to" questions. New users won't know better though.

A "How to" post should be a special type of blog post (that should also not be in "spaces", but be binded to a user or user group), that a user is allowed to "promote" a normal blog post to, i.e. make it both part of their blog, AND the "How to" section of the site... Perhaps via a special tag, if not otherwise doable by the system.

A lot of the other spaces don't really make much sense either... I mean, not in terms of discussions. They only make sense as pages of the documentation, or for specialized types of posts (e.g. ideas only make sense in the GNS3 ideas space).

I don't know if this Jive thing allows things to be any other way, but at this point, it's a mess...

I have to agree with you here, after taking a good look at it. Questions are buried far, far too deep.

The advantage of the current forum layout is (from my perspective) it allows me to easily see everything.... And on an almost daily basis I read the entirety of the the new posts... to be able to assist where possible whether that be guiding a fellow user or testing a feature to see if a bug exists... you get the idea!

As you mention, from an end-user perspective (rather than contributor/developer) it's not all that clear where to ask for help... unless of course you want to pay for it!

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Daniel
Forum Moderator & Debian Package Maintainer for GNS3, Dynamips & VPCS.
Standalone DEB Packages are available from http://gns3.serverb.co.uk - To be updated!

Not sure where to post this - was going to send it to Mark directly, but thought that if I documented my experiences here, then others need not submit the same information a second time.

I decided to create a new user on the new jive portal.

Problems

1. I was obliged to provide a website name!!!!
   Now I happen to have a website, so that was fine for me, but NORMAL users should not be required to supply a website name.
   
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2. When I submitted the form the first time, it simply did not go - the page was redrawn with NO error message, and a new CAPTCHA code generated (minor problem I guess)
3. Next, my CAPTCHA code was not accepted.... I don't know why - here's what I submitted
   
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4. The first page I see suggests that "If you can create it, it is in your Create menu"
   WTF is the "Create menu"? I couldn't see it
   
   Attachment:
   
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5. On the downloads page, the introductory words "The network simulation software you know and love, with some new features we hope will have you giving it chocolates and whispering sweet nothings in its ear." make the assumption that you are an existing GNS3 user. This may turn NEW users off
   Perhaps "This is where your next adventure begins, whether you are new to GNS3 or are seeking the network simulation software you know and love, with some new features."
6. I went to the Installation page, and decided to ask a question. Since I know there is not much content, I thought I'd ask a question that would be sure to find some content, because there in the FEATURED CONTENT was "HOWTO Install GNS3 and GNS3 WorkBench on Ubuntu 10.04.LTS"
   So I asked: "how do I install gns3 on ubuntu" - but got no results.
   
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   This seems to indicate that the search facility doesn't search all relevant content, or that the search facility is crap
7. I changed some privacy settings, and when I saved them, I got
   "An unexpected error has occurred"
   
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8. I know there a LOT of links yet to be added, but one on the home page that doesn't make sense is that if you click the words "GET SUPPORT", you get taken to the "Jobs" page
   
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I'm sure there's more. My biggest worry is that the new site is SOOOOOO much more sophisticated than the old site, that users will get very confused.

On a final note, I have to say I agree with Dan

Originally I thought the welcome page makes it very clear how to ask for help - but then realised that there were TWO places - and one gives better results than the other!!!

When I ask "how do I install gns3 on ubuntu" in the generic search box at the top of the page, I get a list of some articles (BUT NOT the HOWTO Install GNS3 and GNS3 WorkBench on Ubuntu 10.04 LTS featured article), whereas asking the same question in the ASK THE COMMUNITY section gives NO results.

We should have ONE search - or at least both searches should yield the same results

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RedNectar
http://rednectar.net
@rednectarchris
GNS3 WorkBench-a VMware image of Ubuntu with GNS3 and VPCS installed and a collection of exercises/labs

Thanks for the feedback Chris et al. All extremely valid points that we will take into consideration going forward.

If you wouldn't mind posting this information in the Moderators Group in the Jungle that would be great so that we can start to collect some of this feedback and make edits / documentation on the fly.

_________________
Mark Blackwell
Chief Operating Officer
GNS3 Technologies Inc.

Aww yea - this is why we open it up to our power users. Working on all these changes right now!

Thanks again - the more input the better! We will work on getting to just about every suggestion that we can!

Goal for right now -> SIMPLIFY!

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How do we get testing access to the portal?