New guy questions

I' m moving this from the demo request area to here.

Hi HeavyBombers, I will answer your questions one by one:

1) sub categories and sub forums are not implemented in the current version. I will think about adding them once I got enough requests.

2) can you be more specific about this " new window" ? Do you mean pop-up window or the " target=_blank" attribute?

<snip>

4) Paper clip is a image designed for attachements, as Alice explained.
if you do have attached a file in your message, the link to the file will be displayed beside the paper clip.

1. Sub categories would be my primary request. If you have large forums with many topics, it really helps from an organizational and from a page load (size) stand point.

Might be something to get my programmer to look at for customization (he' d also cheer for .NET support).

2. " target=_blank" was my original line of thought. Should be easily configured.

3. Was spell check (not a biggie).

4. Paper clip. You might consider hiding the clip if there' s no attachment, make it mean more when there is an attachment present.

I look forward to seeing the demo and tinkering with it.

Thanks for your input.

I will answer your questions one by one:

1. Sub categories would be my primary request. If you have large forums with many topics, it really helps from an organizational and from a page load (size) stand point.

Might be something to get my programmer to look at for customization (he' d also cheer for .NET support).

1) We really need more requests for the feature before we will implement the sub-categories. Sub forums and categories requires a major code change and we do not plan it until the .NET release

2. " target=_blank" was my original line of thought. Should be easily configured.

2) target=_blank is very easy to implement

3. Was spell check (not a biggie).

3) thanks for your understanding for the spell check feature.

4. Paper clip. You might consider hiding the clip if there' s no attachment, make it mean more when there is an attachment present.

4) I will make paper clip disappeared in the upcoming release, thanks for your very thoughtful suggestions.

I look forward to seeing the demo and tinkering with it.

I will send you the demo very soon, maybe tomorrow.


_____________________________

Samuel Chou
Forum Administrator
ASPPlayground.NET Developer

i wouldn' t think sub categories and sub forums are very important features...how many forums do you expect to create? 20 or 30? In most cases, 20 forums will be enough. And most of the time if you separate too much, you tend to get less posts.

people are lazy..don' t want to read forum descriptions so I guess keeping the forum # up to 20 would be the best. in this case, I don' t think sub forums are necessary.

just a thought


_____________________________

What goes around, comes around..

It all depends on the application, for your needs it obviously isn' t important (and I can understand that).

However, a quick survey will show that all the top tier forums support sub categories.

For my particular application, I have at least five major categories and over 80 sub forums - and I could care less about the volume of posts.

Different features appeal to different users.

- Just another thought

Hi,

I have put the sub forum/categories features in our list. but it won' t be out before our planned updates are finished.

So HeavyBombers, do you still want the demo? Our current features do not have the sub-categories and sub-forums.

I am about to send out 10 demo' s, just want to know if you still need it.


_____________________________

Samuel Chou
Forum Administrator
ASPPlayground.NET Developer

ORIGINAL: HeavyBombers

It all depends on the application, for your needs it obviously isn' t important (and I can understand that).

For my particular application, I have at least five major categories and over 80 sub forums - and I could care less about the volume of posts.

Different features appeal to different users.

- Just another thought

Wow, Seems to me you are running the busiest forum I have ever seen


May I know where ur forum is ? I want to see how the subforums and sub categories work in your forum..

Don' t get angry, my friend

May I know where ur forum is ? I want to see how the subforums and sub categories work in your forum..

Boy I wish I could!!! If my forums were working correctly I' d be happy to show you....but they are not and as a result I' m shopping around for a better solution.

Our forum was not a high volume forum, but it' s value was in the detail and quality of what was posted. I' ll attempt to describe it here in lieu of actual example.

The site is oriented toward research of the Heavy Bombardment Groups of World War II. The forum structure is broken down like the United States Army Air Forces (the precursor to the modern US Air Force).

General section:

- sub forum for announcements
- sub forum for moderators (hidden)
- sub forum for test posts
- sub forum for general chit chat

Atlantic Groups

- 3 sub category titles
- 60 or so tertiary categories spread between the sub categories

Mediterranean Groups

- 24 sub categories for each group

Pacific Groups

- 7 sub category titles
- a bunch of tertiary categories spread between those 7

POW Section

- 8~12 sub categories for each camp

Aircraft Section

- 4 sub categories

Uniforms & Equipment

- 4 sub categories

A similar arrangement of sub categories works for a company with multiple products, and in many other applications. But like you said, others might never need or want them. The flexibility is nice though.

Cheers,

hi again.

thanks for the very detailed description of your original forums. Sounds like lots of interesting things. I didn' t know much about air forces though..

I will go to your site to pay a visit after I finished my design project...by the way, although this forum doesn' t have the features yet, but by all means test it out..you will be surprised by its other functions.

I have put the sub forum/categories features in our list. but it won' t be out before our planned updates are finished.

Could you guestimate how far down the path that might be? Past 1.40.10 but before 2.0?

I do like what I see in the demo so far. One question, I' m seeing scientific notation in the " it took this page XYZ seconds to be generated" stat.

And finally, do you know what the price break will be for 1.X owners to upgrade to 2.0 (and future major upgrades)?

ORIGINAL: HeavyBombers

Could you guestimate how far down the path that might be? Past 1.40.10 but before 2.0?

I do like what I see in the demo so far. One question, I' m seeing scientific notation in the " it took this page XYZ seconds to be generated" stat.

And finally, do you know what the price break will be for 1.X owners to upgrade to 2.0 (and future major upgrades)?

Hi HeavyBombers,

I will answer your questions one by one:

1) We are expecting to finish all the expected updates in 2-3 weeks. We released a major update every week past few weeks, but to get the private message out flawlessly, we might need one extra week. So 1.38.09 will be tested thoroughly and released sometime next week (which has more enhancements on administrative functions than user functions), and then another major one for 1.4.10. After that, 1.5-1.6 should come out in about 2 weeks after the 1.4.10, which we believe will be some minor performance tweaks as well as bug fixes (if there is any). We have planned to add the sub category and forum features in 1.6.

As for 2.0 release, since it will be a huge rewrite, it should be out sometime in July this year. We will be the first to offer full-fledged .NET forum and continue to support our 1.X customers (because not everyone needs .NET) Minor updates will continue to be added to 1.x, if there is a real need to do so. So please don' t be afraid that we will cease our excellent support after the .NET release to our existing customers.


2) Thanks for testing out our demo. To answer your question, let me quote a timer format for you right now at our support forum:

4.003906E-02

The E-02 means " X10^-2" , so the whole thing means the forum took 0.04003906 seconds to generate the page. It measures the page rendering time from the very top of the page to the very bottom, excluding compilation time. It is an excellent indication of how our database coding works (the fastest available) and since our code is also the shortest available (shortest compilation time even after the language file has been added after our 1.03 version, which almost doubles our ASP page size), our forum software is guaranteed to beat every single forum in terms of performance, even component based forums. If you would like to know the details, we have an article that was available in our first version of our web site (not available online at the moment), and I can send it to you.

3) We will be offering a upgrade price for our existing customers. So if you purchase today for 197US, and our .NET is 297, you can upgrade to .NET for 100 US. Although we haven' t set the price for .NET (as we are still beta testing our .NET version), we will not ask our customers to pay unreasonable amount for it. The pricing will be very competitive, GUARANTEED.

Thanks for your time, and if you want to purchase your license now, you may do so at http://www.aspplayground.net/purchase.asp

There is actually no need to wait until the sub forum features to come out, because we do anything else better than anyone already. As you can see, we upgrade fast and our software almost has no bugs, you can be sure that our forum software will be an excellent investment for your valuable online business.

Thanks


_____________________________

Samuel Chou
Forum Administrator
ASPPlayground.NET Developer

The E-02 means " X10^-2" , so the whole thing means the forum took 0.04003906 seconds to generate the page.

Hi Samuel,

I recognized the scientific notation, was just wondering what bit of code you used to convert it to seconds on your own forum?

We are strongly considering a purchse, the database guy liked the SQL stuff he looked at and I' m playing with the look and feel end.

-Scott

ORIGINAL: HeavyBombers

Hi Samuel,

I recognized the scientific notation, was just wondering what bit of code you used to convert it to seconds on your own forum?

We are strongly considering a purchse, the database guy liked the SQL stuff he looked at and I' m playing with the look and feel end.

-Scott

Hi Scott,

I don' t quite understand what you meant by converting it to seconds..it is already in seconds?

The SQL code was developed to be load independent, which we believe you will definately see the benefit once your forum traffic gets huge. And thanks for your consideration. If there is anything we can do to help you get the most out of our forum, please let us know. We are looking forward to serving you.

Thanks again for your time


_____________________________

Samuel Chou
Forum Administrator
ASPPlayground.NET Developer

Samuel,

Appreciate you taking the time to answer all these questions. I do like the package and believe will probably purchase one (we' re not a commercial venture so would go with the individual package). Was burned pretty badly with our last forum purchase so am being more cautious.

My database guy wants me to get it now, but I' m probably going to wait until sub categories. Couldn' t really launch it live without them, but on the other hand could give us several weeks to tinker with the visuals. The two of us will argue about it later

Some features I thought of while playing with the demo - take them for that' s worth:

1. Move/merge thread ability for moderators?
2. Perhaps a template or version that uses no pop-ups? They' re abused so much that a lot of people are running pop-up killers.
3. Seperate color statement for page background not tied to ' tablealt' .
4. Might be interesting in the admin color scheme section to actually display those colors within the scheme listing.
5. Login - why bother popping up a window? Could have the login as a footer or header element?

No need to reply to these, just some observations.

-Scott

Hi Scott,

thanks for your feedback.

We use popup for good reasons. See, if you are replying to a certain posts, don' t u want to track what others have written? Using pop-ups makes the tracking a lot easier. pop-up login is there for cleaner interface, because there is no better way to do so (on top of the page, or another special page for login are redundant, because it wastes bandwidth)

Who is your last forum provider? Please don' t worry about support issues if they are the reason to keep you from ordering. We even provide free installation, if you have any problems. We don' t support any third party mod' s because there is no way to keep the mod up to date and keep the quality of some mod' s to be as good as our software. All features are officially supported here.

Thanks again for your time

We use popup for good reasons. See, if you are replying to a certain posts, don' t u want to track what others have written?

Valid points Samuel; however, I think a little research may show that there is significant, and growing, consumer dislike of pop-ups. I' m not so concerned with bandwidth to put it over user comfort.

The pop-ups would be the first code modification I would make and I' ll play around with the demo to see how best we might be able to do that. Regarding seeing what others have written, I would just include those posts below the reply post section.

I' ll decline to mention my previous forum by name, they make some fine products but their support of MSSQL is lacking compared to mySQL.

The only thing I' m waiting for is sub categories. I' ll check back over the next couple of weeks.

Like I said, it looks like a really good product.

Cheers,