New and reorganized categories and forum topics

[jminatel]

Later this week, I'm going to be making 2 sets of forum changes on p2p.wrox.com. The first change is simply adding and renaming some of the forum categories and rearranging the topics within the categories to better fit them. The new list of categories will be better aligned with out book publishing categories:
Wrox Announcements and Feedback
Books
ASP and ASP.NET
C#/C++
Database
.NET
General
Java
Mac
Microsoft Office
Open Source
PHP/MySQL
SQL Server
Visual Basic
Web
XML
I'll also be adding some new topic forums within those that have been requested. The only 2 changes that might not be 100% obvious will be, there's no longer a top level "Macromedia" category - all of those forums will be in "Web" and the VBA forums will be in "Microsoft Office." NO forums will be locked or deleted as a result of that reorganization.

The second change is, I'll be implementing some changes to the ASP and ASP.NET forums. The changes have 2 purposes. First, we have too many overlapping and redundant ASP/ASP.NET forums right now. Too many people don't know where to ask their questions and their are too many forums for the moderators to monitor. Second, with ASP.NET 2.0 releasing soon, we need to expand and clarify which forums those discussions belong in. With those 2 things in mind, we'll be locking some of the forums so that new posts will no longer be accepted. NO POSTS WILL BE DELETED. Everything that's there will remain. We're not reducing the scope of the topics to discuss, but renaming, expanding, and rearranging where you should post your questions. So, here is what the new ASP/ASP.NET category will look like:

- ASP.NET 1.x Beginners
- ASP.NET 1.x Professional
- ASP.NET 2.0 Beginners
- ASP.NET 2.0 Professional
- ASP.NET Application Design (1.x and 2.0)
- ASP.NET Espanol
- Visual Web Developer 2005
- ASP.NET Web Services (1.x and 2.0)
- Classic ASP Databases
- Classic ASP Espanol
- Classic ASP Beginners
- Classic ASP Professional
- Classic ASP Components
- Classic ASP XML

That means the following existing forums will be locked:
- ASP CDO
- ASP E-commerce
- ASP Forms
- ASP Pro Code Clinic
- ASP Web How-To
- ASPX Professional
- Pro ASP How-To

Please post any questions you would have posted in those forums to the most appropriate remaining or new forum.

Because I know not everyone reads the "feedback" forum where this is posted, I'm taking the unusual step of cross-posting it to all of the ASP.NET forums that will be locked.

Over the new few weeks, I'll also be doing some house-keeping within the .NET categories, C#, VB, to prepare those for the new releases coming as well.

Jim Minatel
Senior Acquisitions Editor
Wiley Technology Publishing
WROX Press
Blog: http://wroxblog.typepad.com/
Jim's Book of the week: No book this week - Donate to the Red Cross!

[rstelma]

Hey Jim,

This is a really good idea. Keep up the good work. And thank you.

Richard

[amitjoshipune]

Idea is good. But only question in mind raised is
whether all replies or messages will be lost?
Or can we assign moderators for this groups
like yahoogroups so that we can have housekeeping
activity distributed between us?

Thanks and regards,
Amit A Joshi,
Pune India

[jminatel]

Amit: These changes have actually already been made and no replies or messages were lost or deleted.
We take a pretty light hand as far as moderation goes. We have a team of Wiley staff and external volunteers who help moderate in our spare time.

Jim Minatel
Senior Acquisitions Editor
Wiley Technology Publishing
WROX Press
Blog: http://wroxblog.typepad.com/
Jim's Book of the week: No book this week - Donate to the Red Cross!

[jminatel]

The new launch of the forums on December 11, 2008 brought a few additional forum organization changes:

• The forums now support a nested organization of subforums. That's allowed us in ASP.NET to group together ASP.NET 3.5, ASP.NET 2.0, DotNetNuke, In C# to group various versions, and so in
• Most of the "Beginning XYZ" forums that weren't about a book with "beginning" in the title have been changed to "XYZ Basics" instead to reduce the confusion