SME Server:Community

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Revision as of 19:15, 26 December 2008 by Cactus (talk | contribs) (Major rewrite)
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Before you dive in

Since SME Server is a community product, mainly powered by a small number of developers and a small crowd there is a large user community. There is a wide variety of communication media used and a lot of valuable information shared in this community. All people contributing donate their free time to this product and get nothing in return as SME Server is free, as in beer.

SME Server is a collaborative effort to create a secure and solid server product based on Linux. Development is done by a small team of developers in their free and spare team. The community not only consists of the development team, but also of a very active community and has a lot of information sources and communication media.

As it can be hard for new people to decide where to expecy and/or put their information or question we kindly ask you to carefully read this page as it tries to briefly describe what to expect where.

Manuals

The manuals are located here SME Server:Documentation.

Purpose

The documentation section contains the manuals and is an extensive source of documentation. It is a must read for everyone who is willing to use SME Server. It may be large and overwhelming to you at first, but experience, over time, has proven that a lot of problems could have easily been solved or would not have existed if users would have read them. It is also worth to re-read the manual after working some time with SME Server as a lot of information that did not stick or did not seem interesting at first might very well be interesting once you gained experience with SME Server.

Information.png Tip:
Although it may sounds silly we advise you to read the manuals at least two times.


FAQ

The FAQ can be found at SME Server:Documentation:FAQ.

Purpose

The goal of the FAQ is to be a condensed list of questions raised (more) often in other media used in the community. It lists a wide range of topics all related to use and administration of SME Server.

Bug tracker

The bug tracker can be found at http://bugs.contribs.org.

Purpose

The bugtracker is for reporting issues with SME Server and is used by the developers to track problems and new feature request needed for development of SME Server. Here you should report all problems you experience with SME Server installation. All problems or issues you experience with stock SME Server, SME Server contribs or with other products like the wiki and forums should be reported in the bugtracker and not in the forums.

Wiki

The wiki is where you are at now, a good starting point would be the Main Page.

Purpose

The wiki is a collaboration effort and is a source of information. It contains a variety of manuals and a wide variety of HowTo's and tips, tricks and installation instructions of additional packages.

Forums

The forums can be found at http://forums.contribs.org.

Purpose

The forums are used for discussions on a variety of topics considering SME Server. Here you can discuss configurations, ask opinions and support that is not provided by the bugtracker. The forums is the place where users can help each other and exchange experiences and knowledge.

Important.png Note:
The development team is also member of the forums but please report problems with SME Server in the bugtracker.


It is appreciated that before posting in the forums you first read the manuals and try to search for you answer in the manuals, wiki, forums and bugtracker before posting a question in one of the forum boards.

Mailinglists

The mailinglists can be found at http://lists.contribs.org.

Purpose

The mailinglists are used for a variety of purposes that do not suit the forums, you can think of facilitating in the delivery of commit messages but also for discussion on development that does not fit in the bugtracker.