Hitchhiker's

The forums are an excellent resource to receive help on your technical issues. There is a wide range of talented individuals who are more than willing to volunteer their time to help a fellow designer or developer out.

In order to increase the likelihood of getting your question answered, the following rules of thumb seem to work well:

1. Search the Forums
   The forums have over several millions posts from users such as yourself. There is a good chance that your question was asked and answered at an earlier time. You can search the forums by clicking on the Search link and entering your terms:

You will often find numerous results, and you can try to refine the results by searching again using more specific keywords.

2. Describe Your Question Clearly
   If nobody can understand your question, then it will be very difficult to help you. I know it can be frustrating to spend the extra five minutes to describe your problem in detail (especially after a long time of frustrated bug-fixing), but the extra effort will definitely be worth it. A clear question increases your chances of receiving a clear answer.
3. Don't Expect Others to do the Work for You
   For the most part, most kirupians will do their best to help you find the answer. You should not expect them to do the work for you. Part of the learning process is understanding what the problem is and attempting to fix the problem by yourself. We are here to guide you, but don't expect us to finish the work for you.
4. Use Descriptive Thread Titles
   A thread title that is descriptive is a lot more useful than one that is pretty generic. For example, a thread such as "Help me!" is less useful than one such as "Counter variable resets to zero after a scene change."
5. List Solutions You Have Attempted
   For many technical questions, there are many ways of trying to pinpoint what the problem may be. If you can provide a summary of the fixes you have tried, it might help the other person provide you with some tips that you might not have considered.
6. Be Courteous
   Please remember, everybody on the forums volunteers their time to help make sure that you find answers to your questions. Be aware of that, and treat them nicely. They do not have to help you (or anybody else!), but they choose to do so unselfishly.

On the next page, you will learn how to make your posting experience unique!