Topic: Forum Wish List

[bustin98]

As long as Jon doesn't mind, I thought we could make a thread of things we'd like to see happen with the forum. Maybe they'll happen, maybe not. But it'll be nice to have a place to reference when I'm looking to do something to this place.



Personally, I want to make the signatures dynamic. How do you all feel about that? And I took away the darn '
' when ever a new thread is made and when you preview a message.



There's some other various error messages and things I'd like to clean up. As I said, its if Jon doesn't mind me doing this.

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Cool beans

[Revned]

I want to be able to choose how much of the original message to keep when quoting something. It just shows the entire post above the text box now, but you should be able to edit it too.

[JonLeung]

I don't mind errors that you may find being cleaned up.  I've never really noticed the < br / > thing but it's good that you're seeing things that I'm not and removing them if they are an annoyance.  I also like dynamic sigs and Revned's point about the quotes.



I wanted to ask if Daily EXP and Gold were working properly again, too.



I asked Inty to find a way to stop old topics from being automatically locked/"archived".  He said he fixed it but that doesn't seem to be the case.  I can reopen topics but they don't seem to stay reopened - I'm guessing they close again the next day.  Find a way to fix that, if you could, thanks.



Oh, and this may be a bit more complex but I was hoping the boards could be listed in board number order.  Many of them are listed backwards (within their categories) of how I'd actually like them to appear.  Also, every time I add a new board that I consider a default board, I would like it to be added to everyone's board listing automatically.  That is, only if I consider it a default board at the time that I make it.  Or at least give us admins the power to have a global board manager that affects all users.



That might keep you busy.



Oh, and most importantly, do you have a way to maintain backups?  I can use the "Create Backup" thing in the Control Panel but I wouldn't know what to do with the files that are generated should the site ever go down again.  Unless you know how (I'm guessing you would) but I'm really wondering if you want to be taking care of the backups on your end since you'd probably better know how to do it automatically and regularly.

[DarkWolf]

Could you get rid of the javascript that brings up a textarea when you double click on one of your own messages?  I often use the I-beam to highlight as I read and I'm always triggering the script.

[bustin98]

Wow. I never even tried double clicking on a message. That is interesting. No easy way to cancel it out, either. I guess I'll leave that request to be seconded by Jon though. Or I can just try to take it away from non-admins.



Everything else, cool. This provides some interesting goals.



I'll look into the backups. Normally a database can be stored as a SQL statement spit out by some code. That can then be saved as a text document. That doesn't save things like imported files though. Do you need me to backup the entire website, or just the forum database? What kind of backup does the host provide?

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Cool beans

[bustin98]

Old topics did not become archived. One down. . .

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Cool beans

[DarkWolf]

Oh I know!  This probably isn't the easiest thing, but I know it's not the hardest.  Rather than have your signature just appended to each post, I think your signature should stay seperate and be appended when the posts are displayed.  I've wanted to put my current project status in my signature, but since changing the signature will only effect new posts, it's kind of pointless.

[bustin98]

Thanks but thats what I meant by dynamic signatures. It'll happen soon.

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Cool beans

[DarkWolf]

I should have re-read the first post, didn't even see that.

[Revned]

I actually prefer static signatures. It seems like messages should stay as they were when they were first posted. It can be annoying to look back at posts from two years ago, but see signatures referring to current happenings.

[TerraEsperZ]

I have to side with the 'statis signature' camp.



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"With the first link, the chain is forged. The first speech censored, the first thought forbidden, the first freedom denied, chains us all irrevocably." [...] The first time any man's freedom is trodden on, we're all damaged. - Captain Jean-Luc Picard



B*tch, meet reality. Reality, meet b*tch. - Me

[bustin98]

I think it comes down to what you see the point of a signature is. I've always considered it to be a 'current' thing. Kinda like your avatars. If you follow that line of thinking then your avatars would remain the same on all of your old posts. So if a particular image or sig represents a point in your life that you have moved on from, then why keep a reminder of it?



I'd say if you want to have something in your post that doesn't change, then just write it in at the end of each post. I've seen lots of people write in the same closing message on every post while also having a dynamic signature.



I've been looking a poll. I guess I found it.

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Cool beans

[Revned]

I'd actually prefer static avatars too, but I'm sure it would waste bandwidth and disk space on a larger forum.

[JonLeung]

Oops, should've responded earlier.  No, bustin98, don't backup the whole site.  I already do that in triplicate, and I would prefer if you only involved yourself in the forums.  I've never really looked at what the site's cPanel's backup feature can do, but there is one for the forums built into it in its control panel.



Here're another two things I'd like - something saying which admin made the current poll, and the ability for admins to edit the post times of posts.  I'd like to tweak the times for the Maps Of The Month topics, mostly, but if it's difficult to do then you can forget about setting that up just for my "amusal and abusal".



Oh, yeah, smileys.  The smileys that are available really are crappy.  Inty was going to code in some more common and less stupid smileys, but he never got around to that.

[Revned]

Editing post times seems a little too Orwellian to me....