The idea behind the forum
At the moment there are no real up to date resources for new makers to start out or for existing makers to deepen their research. Surely they can find a lot of information in the old handpan.org or in the exchange makers group on Facebook. However, the former is quite outdated and requires payment for access and the latter lacks organization and categorization because it is a Facebook group.
Our idea is that all makers, whether or not you use Ayasa material, can share building techniques, tips and tricks and ask for help with any struggles. We ourselves will try to be active on the forum and we hope that many makers will do so too!
Privacy
You can decide yourself if your username corresponds to your real name, your handpan brand name or an anonymous nickname. You can also choose to make two accounts (you will need two email addresses). You can choose thus to go anonymous if you would like to ask questions that you do not want the world to know about and you can use your official name if you want your posts and replies to be public. If you are a verified maker (i.e. if your account is created with the same email address that you use for the interaction with Ayasa Makers) we will update your status to being a maker (i.e. you will have a green hammer symbol next to your profile picture).
Software
The forum runs on “Flarum” open source software. It is much like an old school forum. Only it doesn’t work with categories and sub-categories but with tags and sub-tags. Whenever you post something, make sure to check out which tags there are and then use the correct tags to start your discussion.
How to add videos to your post
Simply copy your YouTube link and the video will be embedded in your post automatically after you post it 🙂
How to add images to your post
When you are writing a post (discussion) or a reply to a post you can add images by pressing the image button right next to the Post Disccussion or Post Reply button.
You will see something like this in your text: [URL=https://i.imgur..com/YkJVO7V.jpg]
Now your image is uploaded to Imgur and automatically pasted as a full width photo in your post/reply.
Newsletters
From now on we will upload our newsletters not to the website but only to the forum.
PS: If you read the initial newsletter and you are wondering about the Questions and Problems tags, we have discarded this idea since you can use the forum, and ask questions in any of the tags and subtags, with an anonymous nickname and it solves the problem.
