I've commented a number of times on various improvements I'd like to see to the forums. And I don't think I have anything else to add, but rather would like to echo all that again. I think you probably remember the various suggestions that I've made.

Beyond that, it would be better if you didn't have to open the topic to get to the forums. So if you had more popular forums available on p2p.wrox.com itself, I think you wouldn't see as many off-topic posts.

With AJAX, and all these other great technologies, it would be pretty easy to pull off something like that. It would just take a more creative categorizing.

I still think the books section is far too big. And we get as many book questions in general forums as in the book forums themselves.

Think about all the space that is wasted on the main page too. You have all the upper-level topics there, but all that gray empty space to the right of each topic. Of course, that's not empty if you have topics open, but, it's a lot of under-utilized space, IMO. Especially when there are so many ways to get all of those topics onto just one page and within just one click. Popup menus. AJAX. If Joe forum goer sees Crystal Reports on the main page, he'll go to that forum. If Joe forum-goer clicks on Wrox Announcements and Feedback and doesn't immediately see the forum he wants to post to, he'll just pick one of the ones that are there. Naturally, not everyone does that, but the lazy always take the path of least resistance.

But that still means Wiley would have to get a programmer committed to maintaining and improving just p2p. I think it's unfortunate that we haven't seen any updates to the site in a good long time. Not what I expect from a technical book publisher. I expect the latest and greatest, source code that validates, et al.

Just my 0.02.

Regards,
Rich

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