How to post questions so you get useful responses

I recommend that everyone who wants to post a question to the forums reads this article by Eric Raymond entitled 'How to Ask Questions the Smart Way'. It deals with how you should frame your technical questions so that we can help you.

www.catb.org/~esr/faqs/smart-questions.html

Pay specific attention to the following sections
www.catb.org/~esr/faqs/smart-questions.html#bespecific
www.catb.org/~esr/faqs/smart-questions.html#classic
www.catb.org/~esr/faqs/smart-questions.html#examples
www.catb.org/~esr/faqs/smart-questions.html#lesser


We see a lot of posts in the forums where people ask their initial question badly. If you follow the general guidelines in that article, you'll be assured of a quick and accurate response as opposed to a game of 20 questions where we try to figure out what you were saying in the first place.

Cheers,

Since this is a sticky thread I'd like to add another piece of advice:
Google first
While our members are happy to devote their time to answering your questions it's worth pointing out that it is their time, and there's little point in them spending it doing searches on Google for information you could have so easily found for yourself. Please take the itime and trouble to search the web and Firewall.cx's searchable archive before you post

This is particularly true of educational assignments - If you simply post the question your tutor gave you word-for-word and expect us to write your homework you may be disappointed and you certainly won't learn much; do a bit of research first then post your specific problem areas and we'll be glad to help you