Hi everyone! Forumosans? Forumosites?
I’m posting here to share with you my website which I made using NextJS and I’m hosting it on Vercel. It is a helpful site for people living in Taiwan trying to do different things of varying complexity, such as separating trash properly or how to use the E Invoice APP which is all in Chinese.
It’s nowhere near as complicated or as cool as Forumosa dot com! And it is certainly not my intention to create a rival site. On my site, there is no user interaction at all (think of it like a Taiwan wiki).
Users are welcome to just peruse it and see what helpful information might pertain to them. Or if you are so inclined, you can sign in using your Google account and make guides of your own. Keep in mind that if you are on a mobile device, you should open the site in a separate browser or save to your home screen in order to log in with Google Auth.
Probably might make sense to introduce some categories and/or tags. Right now “How to order bubble tea” appears next to “How to renew your US passport”
And it might make sense to introduce some kind of comment / rating system so users can give feedback if the HowTo worked etc.
And maybe it makes sense to add a picture to each HowTo - that would make the website more approachable in my opinion.
I hear ya 100%. I love the idea of more graphic elements to the page, and that’s definitely an idea I can put into play sometime in the future. I’m planning on a rating system too, similar to upvotes and downvotes which will cause guides to get pushed further up in the search results.
Commenting is something I will completely leave out though. There are already so many forums where people interact back and forth and I’d like to provide support to those forums that I think would be conducive (like maybe the subreddit for Taiwan, Facebook, and here on Forumosa).
What I mean is, maybe there could threads on these platforms that provide discussion about my site. That will actually also help my site, TBH.
Another thing (no offense to the Forumosa team or any fans of online forums) is that I find the commenting back and forth to be exausting at times. As you guys know, some of the expat community on those Facebook groups in particular can be real nasty
So I’d love for my site just to be a wiki and a safe haven where anybody can see guides without the clutter of comments at the bottom or post a guide and feel good about it, even if it sucks
Ah ok, now I gotcha. 2000’s vibe is cool! That font style I chose was meant to look more like a stamp, and it didn’t really end up look like stamps, but I just stuck with it. There is something I find beautiful about simplicity. I’ve also noticed that everybody is using their mobile devices for everything these days, so it is optimized for that and keep everything centered.
All guide cards have tags shown underneath them now
There is now an advanced search page in place of the former search page and all guides. You can even just click the filter keywords to auto search all relevant guides.
My pal Funky Brewster (a guide writer for the site) created some guides about how to use the Easy Wallet App!
The Easy Wallet app is just a mobile phone version of an Easy Card (basically you’ll have your Easy Card on you at all times and can load it on the go). I
t’s all in Chinese (no English version) but he translates and explains how to use the app.
Hey everybody, it’s me again from How to Taiwan. I just wanted to let you know that I’ve updated the site’s search to be a lot simpler to use.
Since there are under 20 how-to-guides at the moment, it made sense to have a function to just be able to show all and filter based on just a few categories. You can see the view all under the filter button.
Hope it proves to have some helpful info for ya. I check it to remind myself how much Youbikes cost per hour.
I recently made some updates to my guide about getting a buxiban job and the one about getting a job at a public school.
Buxiban guide: in step 7 I laid out the stuff you should bring to the National Immigration Agency in a list. Actually kind of surpising how hard it was to find online. I could find loads of job application requirements and info about needing to secure a work permit and health check, but no clear list about ARC application requirements for teachers.
Public school guide: I added a link to a template contract that a lot of TFETP schools use. It includes the 2025 payscale, housing rental reimbursement, paid annual leave, and flight reimbursement info.
