Hello Everyone.
We’ve had a request to add forums to this site for all of our readers to help each other and share ideas. Jeff, Mike and I considered this a few months ago and decided that we probably didn’t have enough traffic to warrant it. But with over 100 subscribers to our feed and an average of 200 visitors a day, maybe things have changed.
If you’d like to see a forum installed on this site, please voice your opinion in the comments. If it’s a common request we’ll do our best to add one early in the new year.
Happy Holidays.
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I would love such a forum because I have some difficulties with the exercises because I’m a beginner also to PHP MySQL. :-(
/Tine
I recommend directing people to the existing Google Maps API discussion group.
I know it interface has got a lot of faults, but it’s also got several helpful people.
I don’t think the group would mind a reasonable number of postings that are specific to the book. If you start seeing large numbers of book-related postings on Google-Maps-API, that would be the time to consider creating your own forum.
If you do end up creating your own forum, I’d very much prefer real usenet, or if not real usenet, another service that uses the same NNTP protocol.
Personally, I can’t stand web forums…
Mike,
That is exactly the same stance we took at the beginning. I’ve subscribed to the digest of the Google-Maps-API newsgroup and do searches for questions on our book regularly. I rarely see questions specific to our book, though many could be answered by the content in the chapters.
I agree that a forum here is redundant and only serves to split the helpers into two places. The only reason I ask is that we need to listen to our readers as well. If their questions are going unanswered on the newsgroup (I doubt it, since I personally check for them) then we might need to consider an alternative. Thanks for the feedback.
Tine,
In the meantime, consider subscribing to the PHP and MySQL help newsgroups too. They are just as helpful as the Google Maps API one is.
Anyone else have thoughts?
Cam
i love to have such form where we all get solutions of our problems.
it will be nice if there is a form for us
Hi there,
a forum would be great as there are some areas of the book that i had a little difficulty and it would be great if we could all club together to help each other out, as well as being to expand on the bok with some ideas that others may have.
cheers
Wayne
Hi,
If there were a forum here then I would definitely follow it and/or take part. While it might be a bit redundant with the current API Discussion group, it would be convenient to have a separate forum to share information that is closely related to the material in the book.
Drew
I think a forum is a great idea. Even though other forums do exist, having one were readers of your books can talk to each other would be great. Not only would it help novices (such as myself) get through some of the exercises, but it would also help create brand loyalty for the authors of this great book. If I can get help on your book from others like me (and perhaps the authors themselves) then I’m going to both recommend the book and look for your next one.
I think is a great idea too, and this can including a spanish forum too, because are a lot o people that don´t understand english very well (like me ;-) ), and they would have a site to have support.
I agree with Mike, directing people to the Google Maps API discussion group should be more especially if you guys monitor it for questions related to your book(s).
I assume you will do the same for you Rails book?
Johannes
I find the Google group virtually useless, because it’s basically uncategorized, unorganized, hard to see, awkward in just about every way. When Google gets around to updating from circa 1994 to, say, 2002 or 2003 user-friendliness on the groups (especially for things like this), a forum here would become redundant. Until then PLEASE bring us a real forum!!
Most of my questions involve figuring out how to bridge the gaps in my knowledge from html plus very basic PHP to what’s covered in your book, and figuring out exactly what I need to learn and can ignore, especially for my relatively simple project.
I’m so happy to be here, cause I’ve learned Google Maps with this book not with googlemaps site.