Developer Center Article

Helping developers talk to each other
From the earliest days of Macromedia, we recognized the wealth of information our customers possess. Given the opportunity, people in the community enthusiastically help each other. Macromedia's first online technical communities were based in forums on early online services, such as CompuServe and America Online. In April 1997, we launched our own internal newsgroups for people using Macromedia software. Users from around the world began gathering to exchange information and ideas about our products.

The communities in the Macromedia Online Forums flourished from the start. However, some people had difficulties using their newsreaders. Others couldn't access our news server due to firewalls within their organizations' networks. We knew that a web-based forum could make the online communities more accessible for many people, but we witnessed other companies' attempts at web-based forums fail. Since Macromedia has always put great faith in listening to our customers, we polled our newsgroup users to find out how they felt about newsgroups and web-based forums. While some users were interested in web-based access to the forums, the majority clearly responded that they preferred newsgroup access. We had to find a way to maintain our current setup, while adding optional browser access, in order to fulfill the requests we received.

A synched system to improve online communities
When Macromedia and Allaire merged in March 2001, we reevaluated the possibility of creating a dual-access forum. Allaire's web-based forums hosted vibrant online communities, and users enjoyed the benefits that the newer web-based forums offered. Easy access, searchable archives, and flexible privacy associated with various profile options made the web-based forums very popular. These features factored highly in our decision to develop dual-access forums for macromedia.com.

As Allaire and Macromedia management worked to complete the merger, our software engineers worked to integrate our software. Simultaneously, we worked on a strategy to unify our online communities. Our goal was to unite two flourishing online communities without interrupting the participants in either group.

FuseTalk merges with NNTP
The Allaire Forums were served by software called FuseTalk from e-Zone Media. FuseTalk is built upon ColdFusion technologies, and provides an excellent example of the power of ColdFusion. FuseTalk turned out to be a key element in our strategy to offer dual online forum access. The engineers at e-Zone Media worked with us to find a way to integrate NNTP newsgroups with FuseTalk.

After careful consideration, e-Zone Media decided that the most effective way to merge FuseTalk's web-based forums with newsgroups was to modify FuseTalk, so that it would act as a client of the newsgroup server. FuseTalk would mirror its activity with the newsgroup server very much the same way that a user would participate in the newsgroups. Although this approach seems straightforward, there were many details to work through in order to make two different systems work together.

Newsgroups use the NNTP protocol, which has been around since the early days of the Internet. Although many people used newsgroups, they were not as popular as surfing the web and sending e-mail. As a result, newsgroups remained relatively the same, and their limited functionality never expanded. FuseTalk, on the other hand, is a modern web application built on ColdFusion technology. FuseTalk is rich with features and functionality. Some of the major differences that presented the greatest challenges to integrating the two systems were participant identity, attachments, and chronological ordering of the messages into a coherent thread.

Combined user identification
Among the issues encountered, the most difficult involved our login strategy. Initially, it seemed like visitors to our website would need two different logins: one for the forums, and another for the Macromedia ID that is used throughout much of our site. Our requirements stipulated that previously established accounts must be preserved. Forum participants take great pride in the online community presence they've developed in the existing web-based forums, so it was unacceptable to ask Allaire Forum participants to start over with new accounts. We had to create a system that would allow Allaire Forum participants to continue to use their existing forums accounts with new logins, so that all participants could use their Macromedia ID going forward. Our infrastructure engineers worked to streamline this into a quick, one-time process.

Integrated forums connect the threads
The web-based forums had to be closed for the upgrade process. The transition occurred during a weekend to minimize the impact on the forum participants. After months of preparation, our web team, many infrastructure engineers, and other support personnel waited in anticipation for the combined forums to launch. We counted down to launch time and flipped the switch—the two forums reopened without disrupting each other.

During the days that followed the launch, we received some kudos and a few constructive criticisms. The greatest indicator of success was the lack of discussions about the major changes that had taken place; it was business as usual for our forum participants. For the first time, Macromedia forum participants eagerly signed on using their preferred method: browser or newsreader.