Tutorial or How To Section

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triumphtt

Juvie Member
1st off sorry if someone made of suggestion for this I did do a search but didn't come across one. I wouldn't be surprised if there hasn't been a request made yet.

Anyway I was just going through some pages old pages and had a few people ask when I was going to make a few How to's since I had mentioned doing so in a few posts. Then I got to thinking why don't we have a section on the site strictly for administrator/ member approved Tutorials or How To's? Basically my thought was for new members and old members trying new things to have a specific place to go and find a Tutorial or How To that has been voted or somehow determined to be the "Go to guide" by members. This could be determined by a number of things such as simplicity, information, easiest to follow, so on & so forth. That way when someone is looking for say how to breed superworms they don't have to do a search and go through all the different tutorials out there when they could go to the tutorial section and find say for example h0ndap0w3r's http://www.beardeddragon.org/forums/viewtopic.php?f=76&t=100703. Just him as an example because of how well he wrote it and the help he got & used from other members. I think as a community we could have some of the best Tutorials/ How To's on the web if we do them all that way.

I came up with this because I have been wanting to do a How to breed superworm's Tutorial for a long time now and have read through h0ndap0w3r's and liked it so much I figured why bother. It would be pretty much be identical except a few small things I did differently. So I was going to contact him and see if he wanted to add some of my photo's & options I would give him to add to his tutorial. Then I noticed it was marked inactive (since it has been a very long time since it's been done). That is my proposal. I figured we as a community could put our heads & experience together and have the best tutorials out there as well as the easiest accessible.

I would be willing to try and come up with a starter template for us to use (with critiquing by others to make it best of the best of course). Also maybe a method of how everyone could get their input included without have a tutorial with 1000 pictures on it. A few ideas I had were to maybe have sub section in the General Tutorial section, so say using the superworm example, have a tutorial but then have sections for pictures just for each stage that way others can add their own pictures if they wish and also for people that like to see a bunch of different methods. That way if your just starting out your not relying on just one person's idea or photo's from that tutorial. I haven't really put much thought of how to organize this and have members "approve" other ways of doing things without making a ton of work for our admins who do plenty already. Maybe have approved members for each section. We could volunteer to do them or something like that. Just a thought. Also by a "approved way" I mean a way that has been suggested by a member and then researched by the people chosen to moderate that tutorial and is found to be lets say "safe" or "works" for better lack of words.

This is all just idea if this is actually put into action. I think everyone is kind of tired of looking through tutorials to find one that is #1 Trustworthy, #2 actually works, & #3 cost is actually realistic. Ex: making you own silkworm chow most anyone who has searched this realizes that you basically need to be a chemist to find some of the ingredients that are used in the manufactured chow and also the $ of those items to make you own don't justify the headache of taking on the task yourself and you are better off just buying it from the manufacturer.

Can't wait to hear what others think of the idea. I look forward to your comments.
 

h0ndap0w3r

Sub-Adult Member
Awesome idea they were supposed to make it a sticky... however I wrote the how too almost two years ago and from what I know it just recently went inactive... the mods could unlock it and the material could be changed. Sounds like a good idea to have a how to section to have it all in one place ...
 

Claudiusx

BD.org Sicko
Staff member
Moderator
I think it would be better to just have "good" howtos get stickied in their appropriate sections. Like a howto build an incubator in the DIY section, a how to breed superworms :D in the feeders section.

It still seems it would be difficult to locate the information if all genres of howtos were in one section.

-Brandon
 

beardie

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Cailyth, Pinky, & Brain
I am open to the idea. I don't like to use the forums for such things. It's the sort of content that fits best with the articles on the site (see "Care Sheets and Articles" at the top). A separate page could be put for the How-to's list. The hard part is the creation, review, and editing of the actual content, so that it reads clearly and understandably.
 

h0ndap0w3r

Sub-Adult Member
beardie":2yhnagib said:
I am open to the idea. I don't like to use the forums for such things. It's the sort of content that fits best with the articles on the site (see "Care Sheets and Articles" at the top). A separate page could be put for the How-to's list. The hard part is the creation, review, and editing of the actual content, so that it reads clearly and understandably.

I think i did a pretty good job... =T
 

triumphtt

Juvie Member
Original Poster
I like that idea beardie. I just know when I'm was looking for how to's for horn and silk worms it wasn't to easy to find the ones I had seen a bit ago. Like Honda said and I agree he did a good job. Again though I'm willing to help as much as I can. I don't know much about website stuff but I can try come up with a standard, even though honda kinda already did that or organizing. Just let me know what to do next or anything. sorry took a bit to respond I was visiting family.
 

beardie

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Well, lemme ask this of you guys...

How many different How-to's do you think we'd realistically be able to get put together?

I do think they should be articles. The Google search box would allow people to find them pretty easily (not the forum search though). I've been thinking about configuring the forums to support paged content to migrate existing articles to. I already use a hidden forum for the content on the home page. Then I have the home page custom developed to display it like it does (and not like a forum). I was thinking of something similar (but different) to make managing articles easier. It would also allow for the ability of others who want to help to prepare articles, and to have a group to do the review/editorial stuff (making sure it reads like proper English, cross the t's, dot the i's, etc.). With the articles we do have I've done the basic editing stuff, but also given feed back on early drafts on how I think organizing things differently could help (breaking up paragraphs, grouping topics together instead of being less structured, etc.).

Anyway... if we have enough How-to's that we would be putting together, I'll put more priority on getting that article interface put together. It would be a hidden forum, but I would enable the group of people who seriously want to help with the project, to be able to post and edit stuff in that forum. And then maybe I'd have a second hidden forum which is where the final articles would get moved to when they're ready to be "live" on the articles pages.

Thoughts?

-Alex
 

beardie

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Oh... and the other advantage of the articles section, is that listing things there is more flexible. We can group it in ways that makes sense and makes it easy to find.
 

Claudiusx

BD.org Sicko
Staff member
Moderator
Well, I could think of a lot of How to's, are you asking for kind of a list of possible how to's we would put in the section?

-Brandon
 

beardie

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Not a wish list... one that we realistically think we'd be getting together... taking into account already having the knowledgeable and experienced people to speak intelligently and accurately for a topic (where that applies).
 

triumphtt

Juvie Member
Original Poster
I have no idea about all the hidden search stuff lol but I know it's tech stuff. As far as a list goes I was thinking Basics as well.

1) Maybe one for each main feeder - Roaches, supers, silks, maybe horns & crickets...any others?
2) DIY Viv - Crossfire (maybe just a link), maybe one for furniture in a viv, I think if done right we could make one that could pertain to anything from a dresser to maybe a tv
3) Set-up inside the tank - mainly thinking popular items, items to watch out for (ex: heat rocks)
4) Necessity needs setup - Lights ex: Different ways to place lights etc

I think some of these are not really How to's though. I tried not to get to carried away. I thought to leave the list here though just for some discussion.
 
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