I only registered because I saw somebody had the exact same issue I had (I’m tagging them in this post and putting the info at the end I don’t care if it’s the wrong place), and I have basically no way to participate in that conversation or help anybody else reading up on it, because the thread didn’t get enough fresh replies so it auto-locked (It’s from July), and I’m assuming because I don’t have enough posts I can’t seem to DM the person who posted the issue with my solution.
I can appreciate the desire to prevent redundant info and spam, but too many hurdles have been introduced to getting involved in a conversation. Auto-locking stale topics makes sense on a github repo, it does not make sense on a discussion forum. Also, I’m not writing a whole new thread following a template in the help section, or jumping through hoops of making enough posts on other topics just to be able to chime in with a possible solution for somebody. There needs to be less friction involved, or people are disincentivized from participating.
Issue I had a solution to:
@TheRettom for the issues with the namecheap dns challenge plugin: DNS Challenge - Namecheap API You’re pointed at the sandbox api_endpoint instead of production ( See Intro to API for Developers | Namecheap.com ), it only allows you to do it for domains it sees you as owning which is why the namecheap api gives back an error about the domain not being found in your log.
Also make sure your other info (api_key, user) are production account values as well.
We auto-close topics because they often attract bots, as you’re aware.
But another reason is because when real people do reply, it’s often off-topic When they talk about a “similar issue” they’re facing, the reason they’re replying is because the solution in the thread didn’t work for them, because it’s a different issue than what the topic is about.
Another reason we close old topics is because they are often out-of-date. Caddy is living software that changes over the course of the years, because the Internet changes. When a solution comes in months or years after the question, it can be irrelevant because the question was asked in a different era from the solution.
To add to a closed thread, I recommend creating a new topic – this also increases your trust level faster – with a link to the closed topic (the link on its own line will get an entire box, like this):
and tag the author of the original post just for good measure.
That’s correct – I wouldn’t expect you to fill out the help template when answering a question (it is for asking questions).
In extraordinary circumstances – for example, an old thread that has a LOT of hits from search engines (several thousand) – we may update the old topic to link to the newer answer/discussion if that would be helpful for future searchers.
In general, we follow the pattern of archiving old content for searchability, but prefer and recommend new content by starting new threads. And again, if you’re just answering a question, you can delete the help template since it’s irrelevant.
Also, if we deem the reply relevant to the original topic, us moderators can move the comment into the original topic afterwards. (Matt already cross-linked it to here from there though )
Hey, thanks to both you and Francis for the replies! I definitely empathize with the simplicity-first approach, and apologize if I was venting any frustration in that post (Which I think I was a bit on the post guidelines)
The main feedback to take away in my opinion isn’t the specific instances I mentioned, although they’re useful examples, it’s that the default “entry point” to the caddy community doesn’t feel designed to guide a user into the community and encourage participation.
I actually really love the focus on questions and support conversations outside github being in a web forum and a searchable/referencable format rather than discord (or the new hotness, discord set up with threads, which just makes it a forum but worse), but discord or matrix or irc or whatever, having some kind of chat room does provide a good entry point where people can ask quick small questions and get notified of things.
Without some form of chat platform, an intentionally designed space/onboarding flow for users is needed to fill that gap imo, which was not my feeling trying to interact on here with a new account.
It’s a little hard for me to describe, but it feels like the forum (and docs/tutorials for that matter) are ambiguous in ways that make assumptions? By which I mean that they’re the kind of issues it’s hard to see from inside a project because by working closely on a thing you have certain ways of engaging and knowledge that just becomes a default assumption.
It’s always possible I’m the odd one out in my desires for onboarding, but to me those are the kinds of things that are really important for drawing in and keeping a helpful and informed userbase/community around any project. I’m loving caddy, but I am continuing to find myself thinking “I wish it had a little bit more” when I go looking in the docs or searching here (the forum) or google results for how to do something.
Also, thanks for going back and unlocking/updating the thread!
Actually there is an (unofficial) Caddy Discord server but we don’t push people to it because 95% of the time people have no idea how to ask questions in a way that we can help them (lack of contextual info) so we steer them to the forums to fill out the help topic template anyway. And we just don’t have the time to hand-hold people through collecting all that info when we can just have them read the template which tells them exactly what we need from them.
Vast majority of users have their entrypoint as making a question of their own, or getting involved directly on Github. So yeah maybe your path is just the unusual one where you came having figured something out
We’re always looking to improve the docs. If you have specific feedback, we’re all ears.
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