Shole's List

Shole

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Shole's List
« on June 1st, 2012, 01:02 AM »
Well here are few of my suggestion that i think will be useful for the software :)

1) Thread Prefixes
I am not sure if this was suggested but it would be good to see this as an feature build in the software so that no mod installation is requested. Thread prefixes are used more and more those days and I consider this as very important thing to have.

2) Point system
A point system is used for every promotion forum there is, a lot of gaming forums use it to giveaway games for a certain amount of points and other forum niches started using them for the same reasons. So i guess this has been suggested by now but well had to say it again :D

3)Chat Room
This is more of a not really important suggestion but I think a chat room would be good a simple one not to complicated that can be turned on or off depending on the admins desire.

4)Better profile homepage
I dont like the dull look of the profile, I think you should consider and make a profile homepage that looks really amazing i know this is probably hard work and i think my suggestions can be a bit to specific but this could be a positive thing as  the looks are important in the web industry.

5)Posting Template Mod
This is one more specific for the promotion niche but it can do good for any other niche as well

6)The timer
Is it really needed for the thing that lets you stay logged in for an amount of time (120 min or how much it is defoult) instead of just letting the user loggout himself ?

7) A popup
Or something to announce that you recived a new message.

8)Easy board icons changer
This one of the things i never seen on a software a build-in option that allows you to change the board icons.

9)Member List
A member list with avatars who show if the user is online or not (transparent avatars offline not transparent online) instead of the standard online image.

10)The Inbox
I think a conversation looking pm system would do good with the awesome look of the rest :D

I hope you like my suggestions and I hope they help a bit :)

Arantor

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Re: Shole's List
« Reply #1, on June 1st, 2012, 01:15 AM »
Some interesting ideas, there, thanks for sharing!

Let me explain one thing up front about our plugin system. It is designed with two things in mind: 1) No file edits, at all, are possible with the plugin system. 2) It's designed less about specific versions and more about features, meaning that plugins should be able to work across versions by detecting what facilities are available. Certainly that's been true for the last 6 months since we implemented it.


1. I'm not sure thread prefixes are really necessary in the core, to be honest. While I've seen it as a core feature in XenForo, and I've even made use of it there, it isn't something I've seen on most forums. However, it would make a great plugin, and I've certainly thought about it for here in the past. What it might be worth doing is implementing it as a plugin and seeing how much use it gets there.

2. It might be used in every promotion forum, but I guarantee you that's a tiny fraction of the forums out there. Certainly a points plugin is on my to-do list because I'm just not convinced it needs to be there by default for every forum. Remember: it's not just promotion forums out there, there are many, many, many kinds of forum, and remember that everything that's in the core has to be maintained by us and it does mean it makes it slower for everyone that doesn't need it.[1]

3. I really can't see this being in the core. Knowing as I do how many people have trouble with these on shared hosting, I'd avoid it for the most part. There *is* a sort of chat facility of sorts with the 'Thoughts' system as evidenced here (this is not a plugin) but it's not auto-refreshing, which is where it clashes with shared hosting. Live chat is also very often good at *discouraging* posts.

4. What does 'look amazing' mean? That's the problem we have to deal with - I've never really seen a 'great' profile page, very often it's pretty bare and the people who do want it to be more 'pretty' are those who want to clutter it up with stuff. Generally I find that complex profile pages discourage people from actually posting if they're spending a lot of time in the profile area instead of posting... but it invariably ends up being a high-demand low-real-use thing.

5. As you say yourself it's a niche facility. But it's certainly one we can put as a plugin.

6. Yes, yes it is needed. How often do people leave themselves logged into the likes of Facebook? There are also performance aspects to it, too.

7. That's built in. It's just off by default because it's really annoying. I did look at rewriting it a while ago, just never finished it.

8. There's a good reason you've never seen it as a built in option. In fact, there's several reasons why you've never seen it built in, and to sum those up, we have performance, security and ease of use, which are all affected by having it a core feature. Great plugin material however.

9. Well, a member's list is built in, even if I once wanted to rip it out entirely. Making it look prettier to include avatars is no big deal, though.

10. That's built in. I just don't think it's the default. Try it from your PM area.
 1. This is the sort of thing we have to consider when we're doing things.
When we unite against a common enemy that attacks our ethos, it nurtures group solidarity. Trolls are sensational, yes, but we keep everyone honest. | Game Memorial

Shole

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Re: Shole's List
« Reply #2, on June 1st, 2012, 01:21 AM »
Great reply if i come up with more suggestions i will post them :) and as for the member list goes you could rip it off...I mean i thin there is option of not showing the member list at all...

Arantor

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Re: Shole's List
« Reply #3, on June 1st, 2012, 01:22 AM »
Well, I originally wanted to remove it and make it a plugin but others disagreed with me, haha. My view on such things is that things being made plugins means I can work on them and develop them individually without having to worry about waiting for another main-line release date. I already removed SMF's calendar and made it a plugin.

Shole

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Re: Shole's List
« Reply #4, on June 1st, 2012, 01:28 AM »
Quote from Arantor on June 1st, 2012, 01:22 AM
Well, I originally wanted to remove it and make it a plugin but others disagreed with me, haha. My view on such things is that things being made plugins means I can work on them and develop them individually without having to worry about waiting for another main-line release date. I already removed SMF's calendar and made it a plugin.
I consider the calendar a really useless ting never ever have i used it lol
Beside that i got another idea for profile like an avatar where you can get him cloths and items and such (this is more fore a plugin) would be a fun thing for some people :D

Arantor

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Re: Shole's List
« Reply #5, on June 1st, 2012, 01:33 AM »
That's also a massive task to actually perform in terms of art assets (having looked at it before), again it's plugin material, though I know exactly how I'd do it if I had the art assets handy.

Shole

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Re: Shole's List
« Reply #6, on June 1st, 2012, 01:41 AM »
Yup i said its a plugin porbably something for the future after the first stable version is released and everything :thanks:

Arantor

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Re: Shole's List
« Reply #7, on June 1st, 2012, 01:43 AM »
The one thing I do need to remind people is that it's all wonderful coming up with fantastic ideas but that someone ultimately has to make them, and I guarantee it takes a lot more time and effort to make it than it does to come up with the idea ;)

Just implementing this list is probably several weeks' worth of work.

Shole

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Re: Shole's List
« Reply #8, on June 1st, 2012, 01:47 AM »
Yeah i know a lot of things have to be done from 0 and such I know the feeling :D same goes for writing you have a nice idea of a story but you just cant write it to be long enough for a book.

Arantor

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Re: Shole's List
« Reply #9, on June 1st, 2012, 01:52 AM »
Oh, I know that feeling too, having actually written a novel in the past, heh. But yes, it's certainly true and you'd be surprised how many people don't actually realise that's the case.

Shole

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Re: Shole's List
« Reply #10, on June 1st, 2012, 02:15 AM »
I know its sad people think you can do it in five minutes if you know php and all that but in reality its really totaly different .

Arantor

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Re: Shole's List
« Reply #11, on June 1st, 2012, 02:18 AM »
*nods* Take the feature I'm working on: making the anti-spam questions support multiple languages and multiple answers per question instead of one language, one answer per question... so far I'm up to about 10 hours and counting for what is theoretically a tiny feature.

godboko71

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Re: Shole's List
« Reply #12, on June 1st, 2012, 02:20 AM »
Quote from Arantor on June 1st, 2012, 01:22 AM
Well, I originally wanted to remove it and make it a plugin but others disagreed with me, haha. My view on such things is that things being made plugins means I can work on them and develop them individually without having to worry about waiting for another main-line release date. I already removed SMF's calendar and made it a plugin.
I wish it where a plug in, not only because there are sites I would not install it, but not being core would make it easier to make improvements well like you said haha. No need for me to repeat. Weird iPad keeps changing need to Ed.
Thank you,
Boko

Nao

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Re: Shole's List
« Reply #13, on June 2nd, 2012, 12:10 PM »
Quote from Shole on June 1st, 2012, 01:02 AM
1) Thread Prefixes
I am not sure if this was suggested but it would be good to see this as an feature build in the software so that no mod installation is requested. Thread prefixes are used more and more those days and I consider this as very important thing to have.
Except that you don't say what thread prefixes are supposed to do... It's not a feature, it's a concept.
In Noisen.com (which is pretty much my prototype for Wedge), before "thread prefixes" even had a name, I had some custom code to unlink them from topic links. i.e. if a topic was named "[Off-topic] Hello world", the resulting name in the topic list would be "[Off-topic] Hello world".
That's all I can think of... And, interestingly, this can easily be implemented on the fly in Wedge -- in fact it would be fun to do. But what else..?

:edit: Okay, I implemented it... It should work everywhere in wedge.org. Have fun! The process is not executed if the topic name only has a prefix in it (or several, or whatever.) Which makes it much better than my noisen.com implementation, ah ah.
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2) Point system
A point system is used for every promotion forum there is, a lot of gaming forums use it to giveaway games for a certain amount of points and other forum niches started using them for the same reasons. So i guess this has been suggested by now but well had to say it again :D
Forums aren't always a game...
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3)Chat Room
This is more of a not really important suggestion but I think a chat room would be good a simple one not to complicated that can be turned on or off depending on the admins desire.
Plugin stuff IMO.
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4)Better profile homepage
I dont like the dull look of the profile, I think you should consider and make a profile homepage that looks really amazing i know this is probably hard work and i think my suggestions can be a bit to specific but this could be a positive thing as  the looks are important in the web industry.
The profile layout is one of the things I'm going to do after our alpha is released, I think.
I never liked the simple SMF layouts for this, and as you can see on noisen.com, I'm using UltimateProfile over there, which is much better. Since I can't use that in Wedge, I'll rewrite it myself, and try to put everything into the same page, including a snippet of one's latest posts. The 'about me' box should be easy to reproduce too, either through a custom profile field, or the data field in the member table.
Also, the idea is to have it across two responsive columns, just like the Credits link at the bottom of this page. (Or the Stats page. Stats page is cool in Wedge, too.)
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5)Posting Template Mod
This is one more specific for the promotion niche but it can do good for any other niche as well
What is that?
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6)The timer
Is it really needed for the thing that lets you stay logged in for an amount of time (120 min or how much it is defoult) instead of just letting the user loggout himself ?
Maybe just a warning at the top of the page when you have less than 5mn left...
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7) A popup
Or something to announce that you recived a new message.
See Pete's reply.
Also, we have a notification system in progress (thanks to Dragooon for the offloading!), and I'm thinking jQuery will be nice enough to show them... (See an example in your profile area, anytime you find a "?" icon, click it... It's an example of a 'big' popup à la Wedge.)
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8)Easy board icons changer
This one of the things i never seen on a software a build-in option that allows you to change the board icons.
If it were just up to me, I'd remove board icons the way they're done now, and replace them with an 'avatar' or something, and show only a "NEW" icon next to the board name, just like sub-boards do. (Well, first we'll have to fix the bug that makes it show only on a handful of sub-boards...)
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9)Member List
A member list with avatars who show if the user is online or not (transparent avatars offline not transparent online) instead of the standard online image.
Final Wedge will show avatars, like Noisen does, but in a reduced height (probably like the Wireless skin here.) I don't want to break too much of it... Also, I'm hoping to do it in a tableless way, but it warrants for a longer and more complicated rewrite and I don't really have the time.
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10)The Inbox
I think a conversation looking pm system would do good with the awesome look of the rest :D
See Pete's reply.

Arantor

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Re: Shole's List
« Reply #14, on June 2nd, 2012, 04:07 PM »
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Except that you don't say what thread prefixes are supposed to do... It's not a feature, it's a concept.
Actually, what he's thinking of is not the same thing you were - in his (and my) view, thread prefixes are a way of selecting a prefix from a dropdown, e.g. what I did on whatsthatgame.co.uk in particular in http://whatsthatgame.co.uk/index.php?forums/aralander-discussion/
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What is that?
A posting template system can take two forms, either it can be for having one or more predefined blocks of content that can be easily inserted into posts, or it can take the form of being an outright form that users have to fill in to generate a post out of it, e.g. for application forms for certain things.

Both would be good to have as plugins, but I'd argue they should be done separately as plugins.
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Maybe just a warning at the top of the page when you have less than 5mn left...
That might be useful. But there are good reasons to leave it in.
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If it were just up to me, I'd remove board icons the way they're done now, and replace them with an 'avatar' or something, and show only a "NEW" icon next to the board name, just like sub-boards do. (Well, first we'll have to fix the bug that makes it show only on a handful of sub-boards...)
That's half way towards what he's talking about, incidentally.
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Final Wedge will show avatars, like Noisen does, but in a reduced height (probably like the Wireless skin here.) I don't want to break too much of it... Also, I'm hoping to do it in a tableless way, but it warrants for a longer and more complicated rewrite and I don't really have the time.
Then it needs to have less content in it if it's going to be done without tables; right now a table is the correct semantic item for it because it's tabular data.