I thought I would let you all know that today there have been some new changes that have come to our humble CNC Forum. These were all made to hopefully make navigating, finding information, and talking to others easier - and of course if you have any feedback then feel free to let us know
Hereâs the shortlist:
More information stuck to the bottom of the screen: links to our company social media but also to the Forum âAboutâ and more have always been at the bottom of every Forum page, but it felt that it was too far out of the way since you had to scroll all the way down. Now itâs able to keep you company - hopefully without taking up too much space. In the same breath, the header of the Forum was also given a small touchup.
Machine Help and Software Help categories merged: this has now become âCommunity Supportâ. We are always trying to offer the best support we can, and we do that either via email or over the phone (both available on our main Contact Us page). One thing we donât want people to misunderstand is that with few exceptions (gSender and SuperLongBoard) this Forum is meant to be a place for community discussion, not official company support. We want to help create a knowledgeable and helpful community of CNCers, but avoid creating scenarios where someone is having a major issue and comes here instead of through our main support lines and in the process becomes frustrated with our company or machines without us realizing it ever happened. Hopefully with this change, itâll help clarify that
Solving and closing topics: this is still an ongoing effort where weâre trying to make sure that not every topic gets closed since sometimes itâs useful for someone to come by later and ask for more elaboration, but also other times itâs good to tick off when an issue has been resolved. Because of this, moving forward only the officially supported categories (gSender and SuperLongBoard) and âCommunity Supportâ will be marked as solved or closed, otherwise the handling of other topics will be left more âlightweightâ to give everyone space to come in and out of different conversations.
Moving Forward
There are still some other items on my mind Iâd love to continue chipping away at, so if you have any comments to leave on the following then let me know:
Sidebar that displays links directly to our documentation for easy reference
Possibly redesign the front page
Updates to Forum âAboutâ, âFAQâ, âToSâ
Interested in adding another Mod to our team, so if thatâs something youâd like to do them please feel free to reach out
As for my input, I would like to see something in that side bar that would easily take me to a place with detailed explanations of firmware settings. This, of course, is encouraged by a recent issue I had where had I understood firmware settings, I may have avoided or even been able to figure out my problems without having bothered other people.
Nonetheless, I am rereading the technical manual for the SLB and realizing that the first time I read it, I didnât know what I was reading. In just a matter of an hour or so, not only did I fix all my problems but I also added some really nice customizations to the machine.
@Bud Welcome to the forum. As it appears you have already found, excellent folks and sound advice. Thanks for joining our group!
On a side note, this forum is the reason why I purchased a LongMill in the first place. I had questions before purchase, and @gwilki welcomed me and answered my questions. I was so excited that a complete stranger would take the time to answer my questions, I decided to join the Sienci family. No regrets at all! Once again, welcome!
Jake
My moving forward would be a way to mark posts read without reading them. We can see them, but we need a check box to mark them read, e.g. not interested.
Thank you for nixing the closing of topics. If someone has a better idea later how can they add it? Of if some one else has an auxiliary question to the original one how can they ask that one without explaining the entire problem? It doesnât hurt to leave them open?
Well, you just message Grant @gwilki , and he very willingly opens the thread for any additions. Heâs a nice guy and keeps a neat forum.
What Iâve seen on other Discourse forums is folks coming on and posting to 3-4 year old threads before looking to see how old the thread is. One can easily quote from an old thread and just start a new thread with that quote. It makes more sense than leaving all the ancient artifacts out there for the spammers, too. (Not talking about @Spamming_Eddie ! )
The Community Support topics will still be getting closed once the problem is solved, alongside topics opened for gSender, SLB, Marketplace, and Community Feedback. The remaining threads are much more casual in nature like discussing ideas for accessories, CNC setups, projects, new learnings, etc. I thought itâd be best to continue these discussions all in one thread rather than break them up into multiple ones.
As I mentioned prior though, the forum is always a work in progress so itâs something that we can try and if it doesnât work out then we can always change it again if needed
From the other comments so far, thereâs also interest in:
