Suggestions after a week

Here are some suggestions after the board went live and users started banging on it.

They are VERY impressed with the design and speed. :)


1. My moderators want to be able to edit locked threads. Also, they want to see a checkbox, or have a display option to see a checkbox for thread management on the forum subviews. They want to be able to click say 10 topics, like NEED ACCESS LOLZ and click delete, or move, or lock. Should be simple to implement. :)

2. Different CSS style sheets that users can select in their profile, with a admin panel for add new style, edit style etc.

3. Want to from the User panel where it lists users to see what groups a member is in. too hard to just check every group when there is a lot, and we have a LOT of groups and boards. Maybe a button in the user popup for editing their stuff, or a new col with a groups icon.

4. It would be nice if we could attach more than one picture/file per post, but this could be some work into changing how it works, as it' d have to be admin configurable. Also, keeping the file name the same would be a bonus option. Or, do you have some sample asp that uses your pgdupload script that i can let users upload a bunch to their user folder, then use those in their posts? I think that would be cool as i' d like to keep control of file sizes, etc.

That' s the main thing we' ve seen so far. very nice board though :)

Thanks for the suggestions. I am going to release a final version in about 2 weeks and hopefully I will incoporate them into the final version. If not, they will appear in our .NET version (2.0).

Got a few more suggestions...

Most important thing first, i think. After using a board with message read tracking by user, I really miss going to the forum homepage and at a glance knowing that this forum had 30 unread messages, and then when i clicked on the forum, that this thread had 5 unread, this one 10, etc, and when i read the messages, instantly updated that i had read them, so that when i browse around the forums for 20 minutes, and come back to the thread, it doesn' t still say new messages when there are none.

I understand this is pretty hard to implement, however maybe this would work as an option. Each message has an ID, thread starters and replies, and those are tied to the forum ID. If you made a new table called PGD_UserReadStatus and PGD_UserReadStatusDate, and in the date one kept a list of Member ID and the date they last clicked Mark all forums read. Then in the status one, keep for each User ID (will be many multiples) the MessageIDs read, and datestamp when read.

Then, the icon for new/notnew for each message can check the table for the current user, if there is match, then show notnew, if not when displayed write it in after display of new icon, and then on refresh it should not be new anymore. Also should show not new if date of message before date of userstatus tracking table. (mark all read datestamp)

Then that can be extended with queries to a count on forum pages for 5 new, etc and on homepage for all forums.

Since this would take up a nice space of database, and the query would take some performance away from the current login datestamp system, it should be optional.

It would be cool to see as a mod/admin which users read what message so you can tell if anyone is listening when no one posts back

or, keep it cleaner by having the datestamp updated when the user clicks mark all forums read and then a proceedure clears the tracking table for before that date. Will lose definitive read status, but could still report for the message id a Read by date assumption thing.


also in regards to messages, if i get 4 new PMs, it still says 1 new PM in the popup.
Either change to New Private Message(s) in Inbox or have it say 4 New Messages...


When a user posts a very wide picture, it should not stretch out all the other posts, just their post. I don' t have an example, but i know vBulletin does this somehow, must be an html thing.

It would be nice to have say 1 custom above username thing like the ICQ aim, that would be configured in admin panel as optional, and 5 custom profile fields. Some boards would want certain things like a place for your computer stats, or just short things. I know people on our board have a telephone list for private members, so it would be cool to have a phone field and only show for one group, but that' s probably a very custom need. Or, if we can have a tutorial on how to add such things to the code, i' m just a little scared of going in there and changing adding stuff like this :)

A smiley management that allows admins to add more smiles and the pgd code for the smile linked to the picture, and maybe a _more_ link under smiles for another popup or inline Iframe page change for the rest of them etc... Not very important IMHO, but hey some people really like the smileys.

It would also be cool to have a SuperAdmin group instead of just admins. I' d like to have some admins who can edit all posts in all forums but say one, and do everything but the DB maintenance, and of course adding to said SuperAdmin group. although i think we should just have admins that follow the honor system about going where they shouldn' t :)


Thanks for your time and great work,
Russell

Another suggestion, it would be nice to be able to import a list of ips from text file to the banned IP section, also how many ips can this store? I' d like to load a public proxy list in there.

Most important thing first, i think. After using a board with message read tracking by user, I really miss going to the forum homepage and at a glance knowing that this forum had 30 unread messages, and then when i clicked on the forum, that this thread had 5 unread, this one 10, etc, and when i

I have to absolutely second this one. I think it is a great feature that dramatically improves the " everyday life" on a forum, expecially in communities with ppl on line all day long, refreshing the homepage periodically to find out how many new posts are there.

I also like your other ideas.