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How can i ask questions on the Joomla forum that get answers?

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This applies to Joomla 1.0.13 and 1.5

The Joomla user community has a central “hub” for asking questions, the Joomla Forum. This website is at http://forums.joomla.org, and it is a busy place. At the time of this writing, there were over 160,000 registered users and over 1.2 million messages on the forum. Just about any question that could be asked has been asked, and answered a hundred times.

The forum is operated by the Joomla community. It is a “user-to-user” discussion, and there are some “rules” for the forum here.

How should you ask questions that get answer?

Here are some hints.

Can't find the Joomla User's Manual?

Try this link.

First of all, read the manual. Don’t ask someone to explain something to you that is in the Joomla user’s guide or the administration guide. It is amazing that people will say something like, “I’ve installed Joomla and I see the default site. What do I do now?”

Read the user’s guides. Then, visit the Joomla FAQ for frequently asked questions and answers.

Next, if you can’t find the answer, do a search in the forum. Sometimes it is hard to use the search if you don’t know how to describe your problem. Then, if you can’t find an answer, then ask a question.

A key to getting a good answer is often a good message title.

Here are some subject headings that I have seen that are not very helpful:

Joomla doesn’t work
Help me please
How do I ?
I’m a total newbie. Please help me!
Bug
3 questions
Lots of problems

It is much better to have a good descriptive message title. Here are some better titles:

Error when adding new weblinks
mySQL error on line 372 in com_content
Question about putting the same content in more then 1 section
http://forum.joomla.org/index.php/topic,248596.0.htmlPage title is displayed dispite administrator settings
Module title not aligned properly

So, by all means use the Joomla forums. They are a great source of information. But remember: All of the question that can be asked probably HAVE been asked, and answered. So, be sure to search first, then post your question.