Custom forum selections

samuel,

just wondering if you considered the concept of custom user selectable forums for viewing, search and new posts?

A user would be able to:

A) Select among all available forums which ones would appear on "their homepage". Sort of a "MyASPG" page.

B) When clicking new posts they would ONLY see new posts from their selected forums (customizing their results and reducing posts from particular forums for which they have no interest)

C) Optionally contain the regular advanced search results to ONLY the forums in their "MYForum" list


I think this feature would be welcomed strongly by users. Even when rcuniverse was a small board and I coded it into our forum it was VERY well received. It really makes a forum into "exactly" what the user wants it to be.

Implementing it is not extremely difficult. Each user would have their list of forums that are selected. The selection tool would not be unlike what you already have for the subscription to forum page now. They choose their forums and a list for each memberid is contained either in comma separated list or individual rows in the db. When the user hits the homepage, clicks new posts, or does a myforum search the db call limits the results set to only those forums or posts that are part of the users "MyForum" set.

Some things to think about. If a user sets their myforums you need to add all new forums created to their list otherwise they would never know they exist if always viewing in the MyForum mode. They would need to opt-out of any forum they did not want.

I don't see a huge list for the next version you have slated so maybe this is one enhancement to consider time permitting. Thank you.

marc

We will have a "My Forum" type of portal page for version 2.3. Thanks for your suggestion!

Samuel,

You rule!

thanks,

marc

ORIGINAL: Samuel

We will have a "My Forum" type of portal page for version 2.3. Thanks for your suggestion!

Slick.

In 2.3 when clicking "new posts" does it narrow down the results to just the forums selected for "MyForums"?

Also when subscribing to a forum does it then send email for those subscribed forums? If so is there a way to turn off email notifies so you don't get an email everytime a new thread is started in your subscribed forums?

To narrow down the search, use this link http://www.aspplayground.net/forum/searchpro.asp?searchfor=lastvisit&forumid=SUB (not available in 2.3, but in 2.4)

Yes, subscribing to a forum will cause emails to be sent.

Is subscribing to a forum the same as choosing the "Myforums"? In other words does one choose the subscribed forums separately from Myforums?

"MyForums" is a interface for display only, and you will need to make your forum selection in the subscription interface.

samuel,

that is what I thought. It is not the ideal implementation because a user cannot select to have a forum included in their forum list which would allow them to search or view new posts ONLY within their chosen forums while NOT receiving email notifies. Because many forums can spawn 100's of emails daily a switch to turn off email notifies for the forums would be helpful or perhaps a separate selector. I know from how users interact with out site that the shared system would not fly due to our 4000 posts per day.