Development Blog & News

Posted By Samuel | 62 views

Social Network (Facebook, Twitter) Sign In Support

One of our main focuses for version 4 is tighter integrations with popular Social Networks like Facebook, Google+, and Twitter. In addition to the "Like", "Share" and "1+" buttons available on messages, it is even more important to streamline the Registration / Login process with these Social Networks.

The Growing Problems with online community

Most forums are set up so that visitors (non-registered users) can only access public forums with limited access privilege (read-only, e.g.) The main incentives for visitors to join are having access to private content and being able to interact with others (posting / private messaging).
 
However, these incentives can sometimes become more like hindrances and can cost forum owners new signups in the long run:

1. Hassle of registration: The process of registration often involves filling out a form, making sure email and passwords are filled in correctly, and then checking inbox to verify the email address. So users are being bumped between their browser and email application -> essentially this is a multi-step process involving multiple software people find confusing and become reluctant to joinjust to avoid the hassle.
2. Identity disconnect: Many people already have multiple online accounts with various sites, and potentially several different passwords and different emails to remember. Some people won't even remember their user name after a while let alone passwords (not to mention the pain involved in password recovery)!

The solution is simple and its benefits are obvious

The answer to the above problems is simple: leveraging visitors existing online accounts! Why not let the visitors solve these problems painlessly themselves?
 
People already have established social accounts they regularly use and have gone through the pain to verify their emails. By linking their forum presence to their social network accounts, we solve 2 problems for your visitors:

1. They don't have to go through the pain of registration again;
2. They don't even have to remember their username and password!

The process goes like this:

When you click on the Log In link as a visitor, you will see an inline login form with Facebook and Twitter icons appearing right beside the regular login box. If this is the first time, simply click on the network of your choice and Facebook / Twitter will ask you whether to allow account linking, choose Confirm and your forum presence will be created right away! The whole process takes less than 30 seconds.
 
From now on, when you want to log in, simply click on the social network icon and you will be logged in right away. This takes about 1 second and it is so much easier than typing in user name and passwords!
 
What this means to your visitor is: no more registration, and no more remembering user name and password.
And for you as an owner of an online community: you have just eliminated one of the biggest barriers to entry for your online community.

Of course, we also support a host of other social networks with exactly the same process. See this figure for the additional networks we support.
 
Thanks again for your time today and I will show you some of the exciting UI enhancements for V4 next time!
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Posted By Samuel | 645 views

There are many exciting UI elements we are adding to Version 4 to make browsing more enjoyable and convenient. Today I am going to talk about a couple of core UI elements that are new to the software:

1. New Home page w/ Article Slider and Featured articles
2. Top Navigation bar w/ Search Everywhere

New Home Page with Article Slider and Featured Articles

The most prominent change you will notice immediately in the screen shots is the new forum home page with a big Article Slider at the top and up to 10 featured articles listed beneath it.
Typically when you land on a traditional forum platform you see a gigantic forum list, and it can be very intimidating to new users because they have no idea where interesting contents are located and will have to first browse the forum list, and then browse the message list.
 
People tend not to stick around if they can't spot hot topics or understand what's going on right away.
 
In V4, we solve this problem by giving you the ability to feature popular contents you want people to see right away. And this feature is not limited to the contents on your forum; it can be anything like a short intro to your Facebook page too. When you featured an article, you can add a short description, upload an eye catching photo to make it outstanding, and if this article is to be featured on the top Article Slider (useful when you want to show a big photo), you can even add captions to the photo and style the captions and photos individually (you can rotate the photo, change the opacity, etc.). See the screen shots for example.

With this new layout, you can effectively guide new users and re-familiarize infrequent users, making it easy to engage your members.

Of course, it doesn't mean we have removed the forum list at all. If you prefer, you can still make it the default home page. But I believe you will find it more engaging with the new presentation style.
 

New Top Navigation bar w/ Search Everywhere

Another common issue with forums is that it takes 2 or more clicks ( = page loads) for users to see the important message lists (e.g. subscribed, unread, active, etc.), and once you have read a message, it takes multiple clicks again to locate another message on a different list. Although this is not a major barrier to the using of the forum, it is not very convenient either.
 
Again, in V4 we make everything easier to use. When you click on the top navigation bar, a drop down will show (see screen shots), giving you access to all the lists immediately, and it doesn't take any page refresh at all to switch between lists.

And if you haven't noticed it already, there is a search box on the drop down, too. What this means is that you no longer have to go to the dedicated search page to perform a simple search! Type in a search phrase and you will see the results immediately, WITHOUT a single page refresh.
 
The best thing about this is that since the top navigation bar powers this feature, everything we talked about above is available on all pages of the forum! You don't need any page loads to access the lists anymore.
 

Release is scheduled for Q1, 2012

We will be releasing more exciting info about V4 like what we have done for the past months, and because of the complexity involved in bringing tighter integration with Facebook, we need a bit more time to polish and test. Therefore, we aim to release the beta in Q1 2012 and soon after that the final version.
 
Thanks again for your time and this will be the last post from me for 2011. Merry Christmas and Happy holidays!
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Posted By Samuel | 501 views

In the last post, I talked about the importance and the emphasis we placed on the Searching capability in the next version of our software. One of the strengths for our software lies in the ability to filter search results, and I am going to discuss another important filter you will find in V4 of our software: Smart Tags & Plain old tags.

What is a Tag?

A tag is usually one or two keywords attached to the messages and photos in your forum. Tagging allows users to provide keywords that categorize forum content. This in turn helps other users to locate the appropriate content in your site by using the tag cloud available on the sidebar. Tags carry different weights (shown as differences in size), proportional to their usage frequency by the users.

Plain old tags

As the name suggests, it is similar to the oldest form of tagging you find in blogs. In the next version, users will be able to add tags to their messages (admin can decide who can / cannot tag), and anyone who wants to filter messages by tags will be able to do so easily.
 
The problem with this old tagging feature is that users generally tag their messages without a second thought and when they tag, they don't know if there are similar tags (e.g. "bug" v.s. "bug report") already exist in the system. When this occurs repeatedly over time, tags become polluted and no longer offer the desired filtering benefits.
 
We deal with this problem in V4 by

1. only allowing tags that are approved by moderators;
   
2. providing auto suggestion while users type their tags (smart tags are listed above the text box; see below);
   

 
Even with such capabilities in place, forum admins often desire even more control over tagging to ensure that tags do provide relevant results. And in V4, we have a more powerful Smart Tag to help with this.

Smart Tagging

Smart Tags are predefined tags that are reserved by the admins with certain restrictions to prevent overuse, and the forum software automatically finds messages to tag based on these restrictions.
 
With this system in place, users will not be able to abuse the reserved tags and we will be able to ensure that some tags provide only results relevant to your community.
 
In the adminCP, you will be able to supply the following restrictions for each Smart Tag:

1. Only tags messages in certain forums- this is great if you create a forum with a very specific purpose (downloadable contents, e.g.)
2. Only tags messages made by certain users- you can ensure only posts made by your moderators are tagged this way, for example.
3. Only tag messages
   1. marked as FAQ
   2. contain poll
   3. received helpful replies
   4. received an answer
   5. updated within ? days
   6. and only tag x number of messages with this tag

More: Filtering is applied within context

As you can see from the screen shots above, the tag cloud provides users the ability to filter messages on the sidebar. And when users do click on a tag, tag filtering is applied within the page context. For example, when you are viewing a forum and open the sidebar to see the tag cloud, you will only see tags that are used in this specific forum. And when you click on a tag, you will see the filtering effect immediately on the message list, without being redirected to a general tags listing page. This provides smoother user experience with fewer page reloads.
 
Thanks for your time today, and in the next post, I will provide more details on the new Top navigation bar & Sidebar in V4 which together play an important role to ensure great user experience.
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Posted By Samuel | 754 views

One of the most important features that receives a UI + Usability revamp in the upcoming V4 is the Search function.
For a lot of users, instead of the forum and the message lists, the search engine is their entry point into a community forum. Nowadays not many have the desire and time to browse a sea of messages hoping to find what they need.
 
Therefore, it is vitally important that we focus our attention on the usability end of the search engine in order to meet users' expectations.

Simplified Interface

As you can see from the following screen shots, the Search engine in V4 has a simplified and more streamlined interface, compared to what we have in V3. Gone are the Advanced options from the initial screen that confuses many novice users. However, with a single click, advanced users can still find the options to narrow down the scope for their search. Notice that even the advanced options are easier to understand than what we currently have.

Simplified, but actually much more Powerful

In most forum systems, even though the search results are more relevant than message lists, users still have to wade through a sea of results hoping to spot what they look for. And if you didn't narrow down the scope before you hit the search button, you would probably see messages from unwanted forums showing up on the search results, making browsing time-consuming and forces you to repeat the search process with carefully selected filters.
 
The Search feature in V4 takes care of these very problems by allowing users to apply filters and sort order after the results are returned. This is remarkably more flexible as users can customize the way results are presented on-the-fly. In contrast, once the search action is performed, users have no way to customize the results in V3.
 
The following filters are available on the results screen in V4:

1. Content Filter: you can narrow down the search results by showing FAQs only, Messages with Attachments only, Threads that received helpful replies, Threads that are marked as Answered, and any combination of the above;
   
2. Forum Filter: you will see a list of forums and the respective result count within each on the left hand side. And you will be able to select one or more forums to filter the results;
3. Time Filter: you can narrow down the results by date, too. In the current version, you have to specify this filter before you hit the search button, making it inflexible because if you "guessed" the time period wrong beforehand you will see no results returned and have to redo the search.
4. Sorting: We have more sorting criteria in version 4, and again, you apply the sorting criterion on the results, not before you search.
   
5. Filter indicators: Once you apply any filter on the results, you will see indicators at the top of the results list. This allows you to easily see the current filters and remove any unwanted ones with a mouse click.

More: Search is available everywhere

When people search, they generally want to see the results right where they are quickly. What I am saying is they prefer not to leave the current page just to find out if there is anything relevant. In the next post, I will show you what we have in version 4 that allows users to get what they want even more easily than what we see here. This "Search Everywhere" feature is going to be the ultimate usability and convenience booster for your community.
 
Thanks for your time today, and I hope you have enjoyed what you have seen so far about version 4!
 
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Posted By Samuel | 653 views

In addition to the Auto Save / Crash Recovery editor feature we talked about last time, we also revamped the WYSIWYG editor UI to streamline the user experience (UX).
 
WYSIWYG editor improvement is one of the main focuses for this upcoming V4 release. In addition to browsing the forums and the gallery, the editor is the main tool users have to interact with the message board, and therefore, it is vitally important that we make the editor easier to use and more intuitive in its presentation:
 

Editor UI Style Changes

You will notice the following immediately when bringing up the editor in V4:

1. all notices are now shown using tooltip bubbles, making info easily noticeable and not distracting;
2. toolbar buttons that show a popup interface are now styled with a consistent, light-weight window look;
3. a set of large buttons are shown on the right hand side for easier access to important functions;

The above style changes are aimed to provide a more consistent and intuitive UX. In contrast to the current version, for example, the current Upload button is small and harder to spot, while the Insert Image window currently has a different style than the rest of the software.
 

Important Feature Changes

Other than the immediately noticeable differences in style, the editor also receives several major feature upgrades:

File Attachment:

The upload aspect is improved greatly usability-wise:

1. Multiple attachments can now be selected and uploaded at once; no more multiple mouse clicks to select files;
2. Uploaded Attachments are now listed above the editor with image preview for easier access;
3. When an attachment is inserted into the message, it shows an identifiable visual aid (as opposed to an [attachment] code in the current version), and a preview for image will pop up when clicked on;
4. Attachment links can now appear in message quotes. They are removed when quoted in the current version due to certain limitations.

 

Image Attachment:

1. Users not only have the ability to insert images from the internet, they can now attach photos directly from the gallery by selecting images from a popup window;
2. Users now have access to the upload feature from the image management window; This is to address a common misunderstanding in the current version that users click on the image URL tool when they actually want to "upload" an image from their computer.

 

Smiley Insertion

Although not a "feature" per se, smileys in V4 are now directly inserted into the editor. In the current version, smileys are inserted with their respective codes, like [:)], and then translated into actual images when viewed.
 

Other under the hood features

The software can now validate image URL before an image is inserted into the editor. Valid image pattern is made configurable too. In addition, the WYSIWYG editor core is upgraded to the latest version making it more compatible with the new browsers on the market.

Thanks for your attention today and I will post again soon about other exciting new features for Version 4!
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Posted By Samuel | 1024 views

In addition to some of the architectural / behind the scene features we discussed in previous articles, we also came up with very interesting ideas that aim to improve users experience for the next version of our forum software.
 
One feature that stands out which everyone will benefit immediately is the Auto Save / Crash Recovery capability we build into the Rich Text Editor.
 
At this moment, as a rule of thumb to prevent loss of effort, it has always been a good idea to keep a copy of your post locally (notepad, e.g.) before submitting. It is because anything can happen during the HTTP POST process (browser crash especially common with multiple tabs open, network problem, etc.), and you can potentially lose a good half hour of your typing if you are not being cautious.
 
Actually, all web apps that promote user communication are plagued with this problem, but it is especially true for forum software because users usually compose longer messages here compared to say a comment box for photos or someone's profile.
 
In light of this common issue, we have created an Auto Save / Crash Recovery feature for the Rich Text editor in version 4. This feature is integrated into the toolbar for the editor, making it easily accessible and is also fully automatic.
 

Features and Benefits

The Auto Save (draft) / Crash Recovery feature has the following benefits:

1. The editor automatically saves your message at a preset interval(admin configurable);
2. You can also manually click on the editor Save button to perform a manual save without waiting for the auto feature to kick in;
3. You can keep multiple drafts for a period of time (admin configurable, i.e. deleted after x days);
4. It works on regular message posting, quick reply as well as PM;
5. You can browse your saved drafts and quickly recover any one of them with a mouse click;
6. The data is saved on the server, so you can close the browser at will and get back to your message any time you wish;
7. Draft is automatically deleted when the message is safely posted to the database;
8. Optional: Admins and Moderators can Keep a draft for future use by making it permanent (not affected by automatic clean up and remain intact after the message is posted)

With this feature, users will enjoy a peace of mind without any fear that the effort going into a message may be lost because of some computer glitches. It is also very convenient without the need to engage in some cumbersome and inefficient tools (e.g. Notepad with possibility to lose all formatting) to save messages as a precaution.
 
Thanks for your time, and feel free to browse the following screenshots for a sneak peak into this handy feature you will find in Version 4.
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