Off Topic: Forum wishlist

[Stez2]

If I were going to write a new forum, what features would you like to see included? What features do you think are a waste of time?
Eg: Would you like to be able to expand the thread listing to see a preview of posts, or maybe mark a thread for watching, or have threads in which you have posted be automatically highlighted, or ignore threads, or have an email sent when a thread you don't even participate in is updated, or... hehe

Have your say...

Not that I am going to, I mean if you heard that I am it would be a vicious rumour, and even if I were/am programming now I would categorically deny everything

[Wombat]

I think it would be cool if there were a way to distinguish between unread, read-but-unchanged, read-and-changed, and maybe even changed-after-your-post.

-Wombat

[Stez2]

Ok, so for instance, lets say normal threads were in black text, and of those, ones that had new posts could be bold text.

Threads with your posts, or ones you have elected to watch would be red text, an in bold if they contained unread posts.

How does that sound? Make sense?

Done. I mean, if I were working on it, I would do that for sure, but I'm not working on it, so it can't be done.

Keep 'em comin..

James.

[Joelg]

What would be great is if they would just upgrade to the latest version of UBB.

Joel

[SCompRacer1]

I'd like to see a preview button so you could get your post out of that little box before submitting.

Expand it, in all its glory, so the mistakes, if any, can jump out at you easier.

I like the fact that all the posts show up at once so you can scroll through them easier. Deja can be a pain to view if there are alot of responses.

[Stez2]

Joel, so if I were to do some programming (which I'm not) I would be wasting my time?

I agree with the preview and fix before post..

[Joelg]

No, but you want to know what I'm talking about go take a look at Steve's temporary site at 194.201.241.3/Steve/cgi-bin/Ultimate.cgi?action=intro it seems to have some of the features we are talking about.

Joel

[Stez2]

What do you guys think about these ideas:

The ability to see a list of who's logged on

Being able to send private messages to other forum users when they are logged on

[M Ragsdale]

Hi Stez2,

I think that if I want somebody to know when I am online or logged in, I would give them my ICQ number. Same thing goes for the messages. I think that it could get quite annoying if these features aren't controlled by the individual user, not the website.

Rags

[Stez2]

Good points to which I would agree. Just trying to spark up some ideas..

[OrangeJulius]

It's amazing how fast things are on Steve's temp max server.

However, things would be even better if UBB got out of the fifth grade and started producing some major features like those in http://www.delphi.com

They still haven't fixed:

- their TINY 4-pixel reply/edit icons
- their silly UBB code 2% of the people use
- their frustrating requirement of IE5 to put in your username automatically EVERY SINGLE TIME you post a message instead of storing the info in a cookie.

- their postage-stamp-sized reply-to window

They have some neat but overused (and server-beating) features, like :O but for the most part UBB is total stink.

For another alternative check out the message boards at Jack's Place:

http://www.shugashack.com/news_reply.x/832/0/
(the always interesting PIRACY topic)

[Flangor]

Although I can not tell ya if they are using the latest version of UBB, I can tell you that they have disabled a lot of it. I am sure they are using the lame-ass excuse of keeping security tight. Something I do not buy into. I think the folks that are in charge of the servers and the cgi-scripting are just complete dumbasses.

This has got to be the worst implantation of the UBB script I have ever seen.

But hey the above is only my poor excuse of an opinion!

Stez2: A few ideas I am throwing at ya here.
1. Preview with a spell checker.
2. HTML code in the signature
3. The option to chose between threaded and topic only.
4. More expressions other than smiley faces.
5. The ability to delete your own post. And I mean completly delete them.


Well I am sure if I wanted to I could come up with some more. Just don't make it like Delphi's. they suck big ones man. (Sorry OJ, had to throw that one at yaz)




------------------
Flangor StrongAxe
flangor@matroxusers.com

System specs: One bourbon, one scotch and one beer

[Stez2]

OrangeJulius,

Most of what you don't like is basically a non-issue with the way I program things. Issues such as Reply icons, text area sizes etc are controlled 100% by the webmaster, not my coding. Each page in my applications is based on a HTML template, with XML tags to indicate where and what data should be inserted onto the page (note that it is 100% browser independant). The webmaster / system administrator has full control over every aspect of how each page looks, and doesn't need to know a scrap of programming to edit the templates - they can be designed and edited in packages such as FrontPage and Dreamweaver. ( I hope my explanation is understandable )

Other things like the smileys in UBB, don't really put a big strain on the server during page creation, but they do increase overhead during delivery: Each and every graphic that is on a page must be checked against the local cache. Even if your browser has the graphic cached locally, it still takes 400bytes of data to check that your cache contains the current version of the graphic. Start multiplying this out and you'll see that there can be quite a bit of overhead in a page, even if every graphic on it is already in the cache..

I was thinking of letting ppl set in their preferences whether or not they would like to be automatically logged on - not everyone would want this - ie: shared/public computers

As for Scary's boards, they are basically a HTML front end for an NNTP (usenet) server. I like the topic/threaded display (by date seems a bit useless to me), but I don't like having to click through to read replies - anyone else agree?

Flangor,
I'll go through yours one by one..

1. Preview with a spell checker.

Great idea, could be difficult to maintain due to international differences. Also, do you let users add their own words to the dictionary? If not, the admin will sure have a lot of work to do updating the dictionary (think about all the unqique terminology, product names etc). If you do let users add new words to the dictionary you run the risk of the dictionary becoming contaminated.
What do you think? To be useful the spell check would have to be very comprehensive, otherwise users will get sick of every second word being marked as incorrect...

2. HTML code in the signature

This is *relatively* straight forward to implement. The main issue with allowing any form of html is tables - incorrectly formatted they could potentially destroy the page. The UBB code system is a good idea for getting around problems with html, as they limit what html commands are available. It is feasable to creat scripts that will allow html code to be included, automatically disabling those html commands that can be problematic.

3. The option to chose between threaded and topic only.

Like that one. I have to admit there are times when i like the topic only style of UBB, and others when i prefer to see expanded threads. The only problem with allowing both is the server time required to process the page. If you do one or the other it is straight forward to optimise your database and scripts for it, providing the option for both is going to need some serious thinking to optimise.

4. More expressions other than smiley faces.
No problem. In fact this could be totally under the control of the webmaster who administers the site. Through the online admin they could add a new text 'watch' and upload a corresponding graphic..

5. The ability to delete your own post. And I mean completly delete them.
You mean absolutely gone, no "This message has been deleted" in it's place? Hmmm.. I was actaully thinking of incorporating the ability to undelete a message .. may have to rethink that one...

As for Delphi, I have to agree, some of it's features are great, other are a total waste of your time and server CPU cycles...


James.



[This message has been edited by Stez2 (edited 08-08-99).]

[This message has been edited by Stez2 (edited 08-08-99).]

[StevieC]

A better example of what UBB can do is on the temp site I set up for when these forums go down...

<A HREF="http://194.201.241.3/Steve" target=_blank">http://194.201.241.3/Steve</A>

Cheers,

Steve

[Stez2]

Steve,
Thanks for the link (I was there yesterday )..
While the current version of UBB is substantially better than this one, it still has inherit limitations due to it's design.

Basically, each time a thread is edited/added to with UBB it creates a hard coded page, based on it's internal templates. This hard coded page is delivered to everyone the same (ie: it cannot be dynamic for each user). This imposes limitations on functionality and reduces flexibility.

I assume they have taken this route to reduce server overhead, as it does not have to generate each page on each request - which makes sense.

The project I am planning can be driven in either direction - static updated pages (like UBB) or dynamically generated pages. There are a number of additional options / features that I have implemented that simply cannot be done unless it is configured for dynamic display.

Just for reference, using SQL server 6.5 on an NT4 box, a Pentium Pro 200 can handle the page requests for around 3000 simultaneaous users without too much latency, given the current server tech I feel that dynamic delivery is a definate option. (These numbers are from Microsoft)

What do you think?

James.


[This message has been edited by Stez2 (edited 08-08-99).]

[This message has been edited by Stez2 (edited 08-08-99).]