A guide to the AutoHotkey forums

Forums for different languages

There’s the english forum, the german forum, the chinese forum, the korean forum and the russian forum. Of course you’re welcome to post in any of these, given you can understand the answers ;-). In this section, we will look at the english forum.

Subforums

There are 7 public subforums:

• Support (previously known as Ask for Help)

• Scripts (previously known as Scripts & Functions)

• Issues (previously known as Bug Reports)

• Suggestions (previously known as Wish List)

• Announcements

• Utilities (previously known as Utilities and Resources)

• Programming

• Offtopic (previously known as General Chat)

Each of them has a short description what it is thought for. Do not ignore this! Posting in the wrong subforum doesn’t make you popular.

Solving a problem (“Support”)

If you have a problem with AutoHotkey, your code doesn’t work or you don’t even know how to code something, post in “Support”. There are some prerequisities, listed here. Most important:

• try to solve your problem by reading the docs first
• use the forum search or google before you post, check if someone else has already solved your problem.
• try some things out before posting, and post what you have tried. That makes you seem more interested in solving your problem.
• of course, don’t be rude, and check out any links you might get as answer
• my personal favorite: use a descriptive post title.

If you have a problem with a script posted in the “Scripts” section, you may either post in the script’s specific thread or in a new thread in “Support”.

In case your problem is related to working with (or manipulating) computer games, post in the “Gaming” subforum of “Support”.

If you suspect a problem in your script to be a bug in AutoHotkey, it is often useful to post in “Support” first and let others confirm that. A moderator can move the thread then.

Publishing code (“Scripts”)

If you have a script or a function etc. you want to share, post in “Scripts”. Add a description of what your script or function does, the function (or a link), and if possible, an example script.

Also note: use the “Gaming” subforum when posting scripts related to computer games, and use “Custom” if you post code for AutoHotkey_L, AutoHotkey_H, or any other version except AutoHotkey classic.

Also check out “Hosting code”.

Reporting a bug in AutoHotkey (“Issues”)

As mentioned above, it is often useful to let your “bug” be confirmed in “Support” before posting here. Also note that this is not intended for posting bugs in other scripts, post in the respective thread instead.

This section is also for bugs in the forum software.

Post ideas for future AutoHotkey versions (“Suggestions”)

This is the subforum for posting your wishes on AutoHotkey (or the forum), it is not intended for wishes about other scripts. Think about your wish twice before posting: does it make sense? Is it easy to implement? Is it worth to be implemented? Can it be done by a script? etc

Getting information on new versions and other events (“Announcements”)

This forum holds threads about announcements by AutoHotkey developers and moderators. You can’t open a thread here, but comment on the existing threads. Today, most of the new threads are about new versions of AutoHotkey_L.

Sharing cool software (“Utilities”)

Here you can share cool software, websites etc. you have found, even if it is not directly related to AutoHotkey.

Other programming languages (“Programming”)

Here you can chat about other programming languages you used, programming technologies etc. For help requests, consider to go to another forum about the programming language you’re using, because there might be more people able to help you.

More things to talk about (“Offtopic”)

In “Offtopic”, you can post about everything you want. You can discuss on what happens in other forums, the web and the rest of the world.

Registering

You can post in the english forum without registration. There’s no problem with that, but please choose any nickname and enter it in the field (and do not leave it empty). This makes discussion easier, as otherwise there are sometimes several users named Guest discussing with each other.

When posting as guest, you’ll now also have to answer a little question (to prevent spam bots) such as What's the 3rd letter of the English alphabet? or stuff like that.

If you visit the forum often, or you plan to post in “Scripts”, consider a registration. This makes you identifyable by other users (nobody else can post under your nickname) and offers you the possibility to edit posts later or to communicate via PM.

Terms of Use

When posting anywhere in the forums, please ensure you don’t violate its Terms of use.

Hosting code

There are pretty much ways to host your code. There’s autohotkey.net, a site which offers free FTP hosting (just create an account there) and a Pastebin, but only for AutoHotkey-related content.

More and more users also use github, where you can host open source code for free (or closed-source for money), regardless of the coding language. Github is also used to host this site. Usage is a little more complicate, but you’ll get used to it, and it has a lot of features.

Of course, you can also use any other hosting site, such as SkyDrive, Dropbox, or include the code directly in your forum posts. If doing so, please enclose the code in [code] ; my code [/code] tags. This also applies when posting in “Support”.

You can also combine github and posting in the forum: on github, create a so-called “gist” (which acts like a normal repo, but can be handled much easier) and paste your code there (or upload your files). Then take the gist id (the number at the end of the link to your gist) and post it in the forum like so: [gist]1234567[/gist] (put your gist id in the place of 1234567). In this way, you can

• manage your code via the github web interface or the git command line
• directly have the code in your post
• deal with multiple files
• have syntax highlighting for AutoHotkey and many other languages

IRC

There’s also an IRC channel for AutoHotkey available. Just check out this post.