Really good people want to use your site but are not good with computers

Got a favorite grandmother? People like that.

I'm getting great people using the 'contact us' link thinking that what they type will appear on the forum either, as a post or a brand new thread.

These are truly good and nice people that just don't understand.

In the past I've traded emails and even sent them my phone number and walked them through the basics, but that takes much time. If I put up a special notice for these people explaining how a forum works I doubt they would understand what I typed.

Any ideas? Is there a really basic website that explains how a forum works?

 

I'm not sure if there are any sites like that (there probably are), but you *could* do a series of videos or even screen captures highlighting the basic functions of your specific forums.

I'd say that this would be better than a general forums education site as most forums have unique skins, and every forum software package has different features. People in the category you're talking about (like my dad) would get confused if you gave them instructions on one forum and the next is completely different.

I have one user that, when he gets reply notifications with the message in them is constantly replying to the email and not on the forum. I need to remind him quite often that he can't do it that way if he wants his messages to appear.

 

I'm getting people replying to the PM notifications too. Not too often (yet) and may strip out the actual message at some point.

On another site I did a series of 'how to' posts such as how to post a picture. That attracted many people that were progressively less computer capable. My thought was if they received the information from a completely different site then I would get less 'please help' PMs. I suppose I could create that other site under a different url. Since other forums must have the same issues thought one might already exist.

There are a lot of extremely good people in this world that are experts at what they do, but simply lack computer skills.

 

ive had a few like that, so i made a thread explaining in pictures how to to everything, and set it as a sticky.

although i did feel like that when me and my friend made our first forum....but after a few hours of pressing random things to see what happens, and makiing several threads on the support forum saying "how do i add sections" "omg i think i broke it!!!" "ooohhh what does this button do?" we got the hang of it.

 

I used to have issues like this all the time.

My solutions:

1 - Created a thread basically explaining what a forum, thread, and post is; how to create new threads/posts (plus a tutorial video): How to post and use the forum

2 - Removed the PM text from PM notification e-mails, because users would reply to the e-mail, assuming it gets to their recipient.

3 - Put a notice on the Contact Us page stating that this form is not to make a post.