Just read an interesting post by Spike over on the Rhino forum that I think highlights some valid points. The tutorial section is not the easiest to navigate and I agree that sorting it by App, and posting a thumbnail as well would make it a lot more user friendly. HJ

Sounds good to me... it also has quite a few dead links....at least it did last time I was there about a month or so ago, which is why I gave up...the ones I was really interested in couldn't be accessed. Cheers, Mike

I'll put it on my list of things to look into improving. Thanks for the feedback.

The 3D Commune is, if I understand correctly, going to be posting Tutorials just like they post the Free Stuff - in it's own area, with each record either being a link to the wherever the Tutorial is posted on the web, OR a downloadable file, at the author's choice. Could something like that work here?

Maybe CB, maybe. It's easy to promise the world when you have a new site. This site has 32,000 members with 25% visiting weekly and 50% visiting monthly. There are over 135,000 messages in the forums and about 15,000 images in the gallery. We have to consider not only drive space, but also bandwidth limitations. We do our best to keep the site fairly responsive with the load the machine continually has. By only allowing links to be posted to the free stuff and tutorial sections, we are able to offload some of the bandwidth requirements to other servers and at the same time drive traffic to the websites of our contributors. Just one coders opinion.

Actually, that's what is going to be done at 3D Commune as well. In fact, they'd offered to host the tutorials using a template and we said, "No." Instead, we're asking for the same sort of set up as for the Free Stuff: Put in a description, check off what program(s) the tut applies to, and a link to the tutorial. When someone wants a Rhino tutorial, they can go to the Tutorial section, click on Rhino, and see all the tutorials made for Rhino hosted on other people's sites. BTW: Does anyone check out the tutorials? People are posting randomly just because they can. (They admit even in the tutorial descriptions they're playing with the system.)

If you see any tutorials you think are in question, feel free to email me at: rcook@edgenet.com and I'll look into it.

Well, I was talking about EN hosting the tuts. It just gives more control and puts a end to the dead links. There would have to be some sort of standards set up. Like all tuts would have to be in html, PDF or Word. or something. I see this as being a big resource for our members. I do understand the Bandwidth concerns, But there has to be a way to come up with something.

{There would have to be some sort of standards set up. Like all tuts would have to be in html, PDF or Word. or something.} That's the problem... Some Tut writers don't have a PDF converter, prefer to work in Flash, or otherwise are "stuck" to a format. And one writer at the 3D Commune rejected the "template" idea simply because, unless his (or her?) tutorials WERE the template chose, s/he would have to re-write them all, and wasn't about to do THAT!