You are working on a project in hand and you are stuck with problems that you are unable to solve even after several attempts? You are trying to search for a tool or database to incorporate in your pipeline? You are getting errors in your script that you have written to automate a tedious task? You seek help from your peers and they express their inability to help you due to various apparent or obscure reasons. You feel frustrated and think of giving up the task. If it is the case with you then you need to worry. For there are “Friends” on the World Wide Web that will surely extend some help if you reach out to them. Here is a list of some internet sources to go to in case of troubleshooting and problem solving.
It might at first seem mundane to suggest you seek help from google. But if you know how to make use of it with specific and targeted queries, Google might give you really exciting results that will help you solve your problems. You might not be the only one to have a particular problem while working on a task. It is likely that someone somewhere had the same problem and he tried to discuss it with others. This way you have higher chances of getting help and get your problem solved.
Stackexchange and Stackoverflow
Both these platforms accommodate thousands of experts from computer science and information technology that are actively involved in addressing the queries posted by users. These platforms give access to various community-based forums that are general or platform specific. You can access these sites either by a simple google search or actively joining them. You just need to have a sense of putting up your query in comprehensive terms so that people can understand and help you out.
Biostars is specifically dedicated to Bioinformatics and Computational biology-related problems. It provides both general and topic-specific solutions to the queries posed by users. There are separate navigation pages for RNA-Seq data analysis, CHIP-SEQ technology, various tools and tutorials, and also job advertisements. Biostars is home to more than a hundred thousand threads on various topics. It is easy to use and get benefited from. You can either join the site by signing up or explore it as a guest user. The choice is yours.
ResearchGate is a scientific community network home to around 17 million scientists and researchers from all over the world. It is an open network where you can find millions of research articles, data, and its most impressive feature is its Q&A forum which provides answers to various questions and problems that you are facing during your research. For bioinformaticians, it has hundreds of experts from the field that are quite active in giving solutions to the posed queries. Justin Lemkul, Annemarie Honegger, Rafik Karaman, Martin Klvana and so many others are actively involved in Bioinformatics related problem solving.
Community Forums
Besides the above-mentioned sources, you can also reach out to various communities and forums related to specific programs. Like for python or biopython related queries, there are active forums for problem solving. Similarly, R programming related queries can be solved by exploring various dedicated forums. Bioconductor also provides a dedicated support site to its users. Ask Ubuntu is a dedicated platform for Ubuntu (Linux) related issues. Software hosting site GitHub also has a devoted support community where you can find solutions to your queries. Besides, all the major bioinformatics sources like databases and tools have their community forums to solve user-specific queries.
Therefore, whenever you find yourself stuck with a problem and you have no one to seek help from, just refer to these sources and you have higher chances of finding a solution.
Bioinfopedia 
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