(Note to self on what to vote for if/when a poll arrives): Gerrit's keep sent private messages, Gerrit's preview private message before sending, Eileen's news flash and email notify flash. If I don't surface at the appropriate time to cast a vote, one of you guys can be my proxy ok. []/w3timages/icons/smile.gif[/]
There are so many I can't recall most of them offhand
Isn't that the the truth! I would basically have to go through all my scripts to compare with the original package to see what I would want added besides what is listed here already! How about Eileen's HTML mail option? Admin notification of new members? One suggestion would be also to add a way to get returned mail sent to Admin, to be able to delete users who used a bad e-mail address at signup and are "dead fish" anyway. Sorry this doesn't exist and should be in feature requests, but since we're talking about what to add to the release, that's one I would like to see. Some day maybe we could have the perfect solution - checking incoming mail for such returns and deleting users instantly whose password mail bounces. How about also the improved hack I and Eileen have (not quite identical, by the way, but pretty close) to be able to edit and spell check posts from the preview/spell check screen? No more hitting the browser's return key to find longer posts gone... (Sorry I didn't post this but it is quite a lot of changes!) I still need to get that some day added to the PMs as well, didn't have time yet. Well, if I can think of other hacks that should be in, I'll come back...
Here are the hacks I would like to see added to the main release, I believe most or all of them are from Eileen: - Send2Friend plus - PM Notify & NewsFlash hacks - Help Hack. - Address Book. - Insert Tags with one click. Though this one I would personally have to hack over it since I do not have it exactly as Eileens, my menu is in Flash.
Maybe it would be cool to add to the admin section Sebastien Lahtinen´s "log in as" script. Very useful.
Extending your bad email address idea, I'd like to see the system log the bad usernames and email addresses and have a screen that will show them. This would allow people who sign up to see that their request failed and why. Perhaps they can then select themselves from the list, edit their email address and try again.
One of the biggest wastes of time is when people email me saying that they never recieved their login details.
My personal favorite, and one that hasn't been mentioned in this thread yet is the "Bozo Filter" from the Resource Center. It's very similar to Usenet's "killfile" and will surely be appreciated by anyone who's used a newsgroup reader in the past.
For anyone not familiar, here's the summary listed for the hack:
1) registered users place usernames of folks in a list, and posts from that user will not show up in the thread listings 2) private messages from someone's bozos are blocked 3) when anyone views a bozo's profile they can see how many people have added this person to their bozo list 4) Anonymous posts may be filtered out 5) users can add other users to their bozo list via a link in the profile 6) anonymous users are not given the personal data of registered users.
Last I checked, the hack worked fairly well, but was a bit inefficient in how it was implemented. I'm hoping Scream decides to pick this one up, clean it up a bit, and make it less intensive.
Whadya think this is, a democracy?[]/w3timages/icons/wink.gif[/]
I was going to do a poll, but I've got a good idea on which ones everyone really likes, because everyone requests them over and over kinda like a broken record[]/w3timages/icons/laugh.gif[/].
For starters I just finished adding Gerrit's suite of private messaging hacks, preview, Read receipts, copies of sent messages. I also added Simon Wolf's Address Book code, stripping out a few of the confirmation screen's.
Which leads to something that I will take a poll on. Currently a good majority of the things you do presents you with a confirmation screen and then you get returned somewhere. Does everyone like these screens, or would you prefer to just be sent directly to the next screen without confirmation.
Well, I'm not refering to the confirmation screens, like "Are you sure you want to do this". I'm talking about the ones like after you make a post and it says "Your post has been entered. You will now be returned....". Those types of confirmation screens.
The "Are you sure?" confirmation screens, or the "it is done" confirmation screens? If it's the latter, -definitely- take them out. heh... pains in the arses... Or maybe make it configurable in the w3tvars.pm? I know what I would do, given the choice. heh.. []/w3timages/icons/laugh.gif[/]
Those confirmations are rather reassuring to a new user. Of course, they get old after a while, but the user can always click the "return to forum" link if they don't want to wait for the automatic redirection, so I would prefer to keep them (but I'm not a paying member yet, so my vote should count for 0).
I didn't put these in order, except for maybe the first one. The newsflash option really gives the board a feel of "unity" because all users, no matter why they're visiting the board, sees the same main newsflash. I love that feature. The pm notify that came with it was just an added bonus!
Well, the main reason I was asking about taking them out was just to help get rid of some of the extra code from several of the scripts. Making them configurable would add code, and I don't really want to do that[]/w3timages/icons/smile.gif[/].
All these hacks seem great, and anyone would probably love to have them included in the main version. Personally, the only hack I would not like to have, though I think it is a great hack, is the language one with all the flags on top, my reason is mainly simply because I want only one language in the forum, I have even deleted the ability to choose language, so I would not go for that one on a future version unless you may choose to use it or not. For the rest, they all would be welcome, if you dont need one, you simply do not use it though you have it. My number one would maybe be the Send2Friend by Eileen.
how many people do you think will learn markup?? Be realistic!! it is extremely easy to put in a regular expression to catch urls and test if they are gif or jpg.
Yes also the language switcher is a feature which I have asked for long time before. But whe I understand it right Scream cannot include it in the standard because it dosn't work with mod perl. So I have to change the installation after each update. This I will do because it's absoluteley important for me.
The "Insert tags with a click" is a "very nice" "nice to have" (click smile) and I would love it - but because it seems me easy to include it in the standard (even as an optional feature which can be activated by the admin) I wouldn't change the installation at each update for this feature.
So please, please Scream (twice click scream) insert it as quick as possible.
Now that you and I have completed our collaboration on this I always feel incredibly limited when visiting other boards where it isn't in use. []/w3timages/icons/wink.gif[/]
Anybody who wants to see what we mean should try posting and editing a message (both public and private) on our boards to appreciate the difference.
It is good to have (some people experience the text disappearing from the textbox when they go back) but can be a little confusing (not for us because we know where everything is / what everything does).
User-intuitive is the biggest goal for me.
As an example, on your post screen Gerrit you have a tickbox: "Email a notification when someone replies to my real email address." I know what this means and what will happen if I tick it. I imagine many people who are unfamiliar with w3t or even web boards in general would find this option confusing, at least in part due to the wording.
We have to remember we know wwwthreads inside out. Whilst I haven't mentioned this before, as customisings are great, I feel about half of the hacks floating around out there add features + confusion.
However I always look forward to new releases and their added features because Scream has done a great job picking the necessary ones so far.
I hope this slight criticism is taken as constructive.
Hi Darran, Thanks for pointing out the "Email a notification when someone replies to my real email address." - I have no idea how that ever got in there with such confusing wording. I have changed that, and added a "Edit Post" header to make things a bit clearer.
Ok, this is not a hack but, since you seem to be building here the wwwthreads of the future (an amazing one) I think it's a good time to bbring back something a lot of people suggested some time ago: Different trheads should have the trhead title as the "html title" instead of the same title in all the pages. Then you wont overwrite your bookmarks (or be prompted not to) and the bookmarks will be more useful.
As for the hacks... Mi opinion is that all of them should be included. The only one I wouldnt want to have is the language related (that of course should be included as well IMO but that brings the issue of having them "optional". Not much of an issue for me, as I would use all but one, but maybe for other people).
The reason I wouldnt use this hack (or the language feature actually) is that I dont see any "real" use for it...I think someone gave the example of going to an arabic board and being able to post (by using the languages feature). I believe you wont be able to post in that board anyways, but not because you dont understand the menus but because the actual content of the board is in arabic (so you would not see any reason for posting, and even if you do, it's unlikely they will understand you...).
Of course there may be an example of a board targeted to multiple cultures/languages where this would be more useful but I have not seen that yet...
regards (I wish I already had that cool one-touch smiles here...)
The language hack can be very useful even if you only use one language. It can check what language the visitor is using and so has even more possibilities you even realise. Today somebody emailed me to ask if there was some way all the buttons could be made language specific and I realised that using the language switcher makes this a piece of cake.
All I need is a bit of cooperation from you 'foreign' guys here and I'll do the hack. I know Mateo is using a set of Spanish buttons at http://crucedecaminos.com/ - if he (Mateo, are you listening?) could provide me with that set and anybody who has sets converted to other languages could give me a copy of theirs then I'll set to work and give you the means to show the appropriate buttons for whatever language is in use.
--- The Language Hack: I would not want it unless it is optional. If it wasnt optional I would probably not upgrade. The reason is simple: My forum is Spanish ONLY. I dont want people who cant understand my Spanish buttons and instructions to post anything because they will not even know what they are replying to, posts are in Spanish. So buttons make sense to ONLY be in Spanish. In my case I have even disabled (deleted) the option to choose language. This is a great hack, impressive, but it does not make sense for forums that are only one language oriented and want to remain that way.
--- As for my Spanish buttons at http://crucedecaminos.com/cgibin/entretodos/, they are very, very personalized, but I could make some new ones for WWWThreads, probably with the new default design, great job whoever did them! []/w3timages/icons/smile.gif[/]
--- As for the Title thing, I agree, that hack is an almost must. There is a hack for it as Eileen just pointed out, but I think it should be in the main release.
Spaking about Spanish Translations... Eileen, a while back I promised you a translation to Spanish of the Help Hack (my vote for being included in main version!) and I forgot about it. Just remembered, so I will get down to it. It is translated but very personalized... I have to de-personalize it. []/w3timages/icons/laugh.gif[/]
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