Where Do Dev Warriors Hang Out?

Dev Warriors love to keep each other company, help each other and have fun together. The Telerik and Kendo UI Community Forums now make this even easier, and come with the added benefit of a brand-new ranking board that you can climb.

Legend has it ... that developers go out on the internet and copy code they paste into  their application, compile and hope for the best. To be honest, I’m guilty of doing that at least once in my career, so I know for a fact this legend has some truth in it.

I’ve been fortunate to be part of the developer community for the last decade, and to work with the whopping 3.4M developers using Telerik and Kendo UI for the better part of that time. If I had to explain the vibrant dev community to someone who has spent their life as a castaway, I’d say this: We don’t have all the answers but we are knowledge-seekers at heart, and we love sharing the things we know.

On the Telerik and Kendo UI team, we figured that such a special group needs an equally special place to hang out. You know, like summer camp where you would all gather around the fire and tell each other stories—on some occasions, horror stories. Regardless of which side of the knowledge table you are on, without further ado, I’m happy to introduce to you the revamped Telerik and Kendo UI community forum.

TL;DR

This blog post goes into detail about what improvements you can take advantage of, provides a sneak peek of what to expect in the future and at least one bad pun. If you are too eager to go check the changes to read everything right now, here are the highlights. Don’t worry, you can always come back and read the whole thing.

• The community forum is blazing fast, so you can access it anywhere and everywhere.
• The 1.2M forum posts from the past years have been migrated and are available to browse through.
• Based on your feedback, there are several significant UX changes.
• Helping your fellow devs will still give you that warm and fuzzy feeling, but will also win you badges and ranks, along with special bragging rights.
• We’re far from done! Today marks the first step of this journey we all are on, and your feedback is crucial in improving this new home, so please, please let us know what you think.

And here is the address of the new forum home: https://www.telerik.com/forums.

What’s Changed?

Our UX team tells me that “if you have to explain it, it’s not really good user experience,” and I believe them. In the hopes we’ve done our homework right, I’ll only touch upon some of the major changes and will let you figure out the rest.

Answer-based Threads

The new design brings numerous improvements in how you interact with each other within a thread, such as the ability to add remarks or clarifying questions in the form of comments. Answers on a specific question are organized by relevance, where the most helpful/voted ones are on top.

You’ll also notice a bunch of usability goodies, such as: a more extensive list of allowed attachments, a modern text editor and the ability to edit your own posts.

Flat Forum Structure

For easier navigation in a product forum, all threads are now shown on the same page. You can still browse topic- or component-specific questions by selecting the tags that interest you in the moment. Of course, you’ll have access to an easy-to-use search box that is an integral part of any content-driven website.

Knowledge Seekers and Conversationalists

I’ve been amazed time and time again by the level of expertise you, our customers, possess. Not only on full-stack development and your front-end framework of choice, but also on how to use Kendo UI and Telerik products.

It felt like a needed change for you to have the ability showcase your expertise, knowledge and community contributions. This is why as you engage with others in the forums, you’ll start noticing your reputation building up and will be awarded various badges.

We have a ton of things lined up for you, but in the spirit of no-spoilers, I’ll let you go on this treasure hunt unprepared. Monitor your forum statistics and learn a bit more (but not everything!) about the benefits you’ll get in your public profile at https://www.telerik.com/forums/profile/mine.

Make It Your Own

At Progress, we love developers. The new developer forums are in good company with the rest of the ways our team tries to support you in achieving your goals and have a little fun along the way. Whether in a forum thread, on social, during one of our Twitch streams, in the comments below or through a message in a bottle—we want to hear from you.

There is a lot going on behind the scenes, creative teams drawing on our virtual whiteboards, ninjas flying everywhere. Please help us make the most out of this energy and let know what it is that you like, don’t like or would like to see improved. Deal? Deal. Thanks!

We hope to see you on the forums!