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Mailing lists or Message boards for offering software support?

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Eóin:
Hi, I'm working on a small project which is approaching a state where it can be released. I am curious as to how I should let people contact me to request help or just ask simple questions. I would be expecting a very low volume of support issues certainly initially while the library is being developed.

The two obvious choices are mailing lists which I can get through SourceForge or setting up a small message board which I can do with my own web space provider. Now personally I prefeer message boards but I get the impression that for low volume support mailing lists seem to be the norm.

So I'm interested to hear opinions from the developers here (ok I suspect you'll be a bit biased towards a forum seeing as how well this one is run).

Thanks, Eoin.

mitzevo:
You have to take the initiate and try some thing new.. Just choose any one and go with it :P
If I was working on a small project and need to communicate with other developers about it's development or what ever.

I would probably use a newsletter/list based approach.

Setting up a forum like phpBB, or the other free ones, or the commercial ones might be more trouble than it's worth.
You have to spend time moderating and cleaning the forums etc. Maybe some spam nut will come along and spam the
hell out of it. A new bug might be found and used against you before you could have done any thing about it.
I know I'm leaping into big proportions here but it could happen,  :tellme:

A newsletter is a nice and convenient way for delivering your content.   :Thmbsup:

Eóin:
Thanks for your feedback mitzevo. I actually decided to opt for the forum solution. A bug plus for it was the fact it more easily acts as an archive of answered question than a mailing list does, though I know a mailing also offers this.

I agree with you regarding the initial workload but thats once off, however the security issue you mention is very valid, espicially since I opted for phpbb over smf, and I believe phpbb has a higher history of exploits.

I'll try it for a while anyway and see how it works out.

Josh:
While phpbb has had its share of hacks, if you stay on top of the patches, you are fine. A forum provides a better method for users to support each other (as opposed to just you supporting them). It also has a much easier way for users to search for past answers to a problem they might be experiencing.

I personally have never used mailing lists as a primary means of support simply because they are very tedious. With a forum, I can go to one central place, search for an answer, and if none is found, post it and get a response that much quicker.

f0dder:
While phpbb has had its share of hacks, if you stay on top of the patches, you are fine.

--- End quote ---
Iirc http://www.asmcommunity.net/ used to run phpBB before it switched to SMF... and considering the amount of times the win32asm community has been hacked before it made the switch, well, I certainly wouldn't recommend the previous board software. As holed as a sieve.

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