UBB.Developers Forums General Discussion Suggestions and Feedback What's next?

Since 5.4.3 is pretty close to being out I figured I would ask everyone what they think the focus for the next major release should be. A couple things have been batted around, templates and site integration being the 2 major ones. What's your opinion on the matter? What would everyone like to see most?

Site intregation would be very much appreciated Scream.
Most site offers many features which require some registration, it would be very nice to have an easy configuration for W3T to be intregrated to other database.

Hi,
Ooh This is great news []/testimages/icons/smile.gif[/]

I have some suggestion :

In send email to users could you add replacement variables?
Eg, %Username% , %Password%
So If I includ this replacement it will automatic replace with a username .. etc
I hope that you understand me []/testimages/icons/smile.gif[/]

2- Polls, if you can add bars to it

3- If you can add online users status (Board name, Post name)

4- Just that

Anyhow .. WWWThreads always great and the best without this suggestions []/testimages/icons/smile.gif[/]

Regards,
eDeveloper

SITE INTEGRATION !!!!!!!!!!!!!!Would be groovy []/testimages/icons/tongue.gif[/]
maybe a 3rd title (Moderator,Administrator,VIP) something like that

Good News ....


and i have some thing to tell :

1. for Admin Area and FAQ ( Add to them a language file ) because it's on english only

2. a feature to allow Admin or Moderator to post threads and the user can reply only not post new thread

3. it will be a great idea if we can send email to all users but in HTML type .... as advertisment of any service we provide in our site .. so we can use this service as email list serivce .

4. the 2 files (header.include & footer.include ) ... I hope if we can move this 2 file in different dir not under cgi-bin ... and will be ssi files ( header.shtml & footer.shtml ) .. it will be too useful .


any way ...... the w3t with out this suggestion is perfect .... and hope we can do any thing (even small ) to improve this greate script ....


we are waiting for this version .... and i will dream of it every day []/testimages/icons/wink.gif[/]

Regards
BMH

I would suggest adding a link with a function of the avantgo channel. (http://avantgo.com) For users like me who have a palm, I want to download the whole category to my palm for later browsing. Can it be done?

The one feature that I'm jealous of (from vBulletin) is a calendar.I'd like to be able to configure it so that either admins only, moderators only or all registered users can post an event.It could accentuate the community feel to wwwThreads.Just my 2¢.[]/testimages/icons/cool.gif[/]

Site integration would be top of my list ... With more and more people creating site-wide communities I think that this area has to be addressed fairly quickly. In addition to any code changes I think that this needs to be accompanied by good documentation.

On the site integration issue, in addition to being able to use the WWWThreads users' database it would be great if we could use the message system. For example, I would like (registered) visitors to be able to post comments about articles, news items, site links, etc. but I would like to be able to do this via threaded discussion. Since WWWThreads provides this I would like to be able to create a new thread for each article and link to that thread from the bottom of each article (maybe including the discussion itself at the bottom of the page). The thread would be in the w3t_Posts table but it would not be visible (or searchable) via the main discussion forum. Effectively I want to create a hidden category containing hidden boards that contain threads relating to web pages linked by some sort of ID number. The threads would only be visible via the 'source' web pages.

One other small thing ... Can we have a configuration setting for where email notifications come from? I would like to be able to set message notification as coming from the defined Webmaster (as currently happens), coming from the recipient (if they reply it goes back to them!) or from the poster (if they reply it goes to the poster). I always forget to hack this bit when I upgrade! It would also be good if this could be set for subscriptions, private message notifications and reply notifications.

Hello!

I would suggest the following:

1-Custom table names. This could be either during installation or through a pm or a dat file.

2-A sub board facility under a board. This hack was given somewhere here but not integrated in the routines of wwwthreads. Would be beautiful to integrate in the admin optional.

3-Ability to display Categories in different ways i.e. in two columns table and such layout flexibility. Now it is extremely hard to change anything out there.

4-File permissions correctly done when the scripts saves changes. On a shared server it is stupid that the scripts creates 644 and later the provider gets headaches to make then 755.

5-Different possibility for layouts of the threads. It is extremely difficult to change even any of the fonts while not using the css.

6-Ability to use dynamic codes while showing threads within the subjects and messages.

7-Ability to send mass emails in steps of 25 emails batch or 50 per batch with clickable links to whom to and also searchable which users to.

8-Backup the database

9-Kind of a possibility to integrate other programs for authentication for e.g. e-classifieds

But some of the above could be already in the script or discussed in the forum, I do not know.

Even without any of those above, its a great script.

1. site integration
2. different email addresses for "contact" and for automatic mails from the program (e.g. [email protected])
3. moderators should only "carry the M-flag" within the forum they're moderating. I'm running a lot of forums,meanwhile the main forum sometimes looks like a moderator chat, even if no one has any priviliges on the main board.

I'd like an easy way to cross reference existing posts.

When making a reply I could say...

"This has already been discussed, please see [easy way to insert a cross reference]"

Hello!

Also I forgot.

In the moderator section, if there are lest say fifteen boards the one moderates and if there are three new posts, then one has to go through all the boards manually to be able to dig out where are the new posts which is tiresome. Hence if the moderator is given an option to display how he wants, i.e. if he wants to see the new posts by boards or in a bulk of each 25 or 10 per page, that would be grreat!!!

Further, if by clicking on each link to view if the target = _Blank thats great instead of manually opening.

This is very important for moderators.

Thanks

1. Site integration

2. Ability to display Categories in different ways

3. Different possibility for layouts of the threads.

4. Allow Admin or Moderator to post threads and the user can reply only not post new thread

and for become the BEST of BEST !!!
the following features:


5. Any format of multimedia can be added to content pages without knowing HTML including PDF, Flash, Shockwave, and streaming audio/video

6. Synchronous sharing like:
Chat;
Voice chat;
Whiteboard;
Application sharing;
Virtual space;
Teleconferencing & Videoconferencing

7.Upload tool for users, moderators & administrator, supports uploading of files: text, graphics,
video, audio.

Here's my suggestions:

* Multi-choice signatures (up to 3)
* Multi-nickname choice (1 username as login name only, but use 3 selectable nickname for displaying in the post)
* The registered user can decide to post anonymousely by selecting one of his nickname and did not allow the others querying their profiles.
* Switches to grant groups/users/boards/categories privileges.
* Forum boards can be applied as an article/news/download center, etc.
* More features for users & sub-communities, such as calendar, event manager, voting center, board master's page/news/notes.. blah, blah, etc.

Can you insert a field in admin so that we can alter the message received by new users after registration.

I had someone install my board for me but the message people get is far from what I want it to be and it would be nice to be able to add to or subtract from it as and when necessary.

Scream: what's the matter with the layout of the previous post?

Sorry to be the one dissenting voice, but Site Integration means nothing to me.
I want Templates!

I saw that the moderators can Ban users in all the forums without the Administrator decide
I suggest the Moderator ONLY can ban user in his forum , so the user who banned him the moderator can't send posts in the moderator's(who banned the user) forums

Regards,
eDeveloper

I would like to be able to search the users info. This has been discussed many times, but basically it would mean being able to search the "hobbies" field (for example) to find other users that share my interests...

1) Templates! (site integration, too. But maybe afterwards)

and

2) Cross-Language Forums []/testimages/icons/smile.gif[/]
I want to be able to have a different language for each category. For example Cat1 is in English, Cat2 in German. For me it makes no sense to let the user define his language in his profile. The discussion in the forum is done in one fixed language anyway. Move the language selection out of the user-profile. Let's have it as an option for the admin, when he creates/changes a category.

storking just the markup code and smilies takes up much less space. I have don't this already with my copy of www and it was very, very simple. Now each simile only takes 2 or 3 rather than 30 or 40 bytes, someone could have several in the subject line and not exceed the the size limit.
Rob in Houston

Aha! Once more the CrashMaster™ lives up to his name ;)

Since I've edited it after posting I thought at first that the edit script has "hard" wrapping but that is not the case. From the page source it looks like it has (br) tags embedded in the post. Moreover, the textarea I'm using is much wider than that and the showflat.php script is displaying the post just fine. I guess this is related to the php wrapping feature: in 5.4.1 showflat has the line that is supposed to do the wrapping at 75 characters commented out, while showthreaded has it uncommented. An explanation could be that Scream was using a php version prior to 4.0.2 and he updated to a newer one and the code in showthreaded kicked in?

PS. This _definitely_ looks like wrapping done at 75 characters so it must be the php wrapping feature.

But templates are so last year![]/testimages/icons/wink.gif[/]

Three things:
1- The ability to collect more info when new user register, like first and last name.
2- The option to ask users in the registration process to sign up for newsletters.
3- Easy customization "Templates" and all email messages.

Thank you

How about form boxes in the post listing that allows you to open, close, delete, move, etc a number of threads at one time... plus this way I would not have to edit the individual thread to make changes. This function is just like ezboards admin or mod interface.

Some of the main things I'd like to see are:

1. Voting - If a person has already voted, automatically show them the results in bar graph form.

2. New User Message - It'd be nice to have an easy way to edit the message that goes out to new users.

3. An easy way to include the addons using Windows NT or AsP (top posters, news threads..etc).

4. A Community Calendar of Events would be a great addition!

I think I've mentioned this before, but allowing the moderation of the user registration process is a big one for us. we have several private BBS's that have no public viewable data. currently we have group permisions setup so that new users are allow access, and the moderators/admins have to add them to a viable group.

there was one other thing, but it escapes me..

Your not the only voice about site integration. I can see where it is useful and wanted by many but I have absolutely no need for site integration nor any plans in the future for such.

But what is driving us crazy is the hacks. For example the smileys. It is a pain to add everything everytime there is an incremental release, so therefore we skip releases or worse yet we start on one then there are multiple increments and we have to start all over again. So some sort of module system would be helpful. That way maybe some of the features we add would not have to be rewritten everytime there is a minor change to the main code for security, etc. We don't have html allowed so a fix for html and a couple of minor tweaks still mean that we have to rewrite many things.

I don't really have an answer on how it would work, but that would cut down on the work that we have to do. We have started hacking a version recently only to have another release before we get 1/2 finished. As a result we are still with 5.0.9 and now we are looking at 5.4.2 with 5.4.3 being about ready to be released.

Site Integration

Just a couple of small things:

1) When you delete a PM and/or reply to a PM, I would like to see the default action to return you back to the Control Panel.

2) The ability to search users by their IP address.

3) I concur with another poster re: this matter of upgrading and having to redo all and any hacks that have been added. It might be an impossible task, but it sure would be great. I can't imagine upgrading with a board like Eileen's!! []/testimages/icons/wink.gif[/]

Jeff

Change the example email address in the FAQ. Have you been to blow.com looking for Joe? []/testimages/icons/smile.gif[/]

It would be nice to have a complex archive system, so that posts could be rolled to a backup board instead of removed.

It would be useful to have a browsable history that was separate enough to not affect performance, but that users could still mine/search for past posts of interest.

This would be useful when trying to determine if someone has been a problem poster in the past. We currently use the "Move this Thread" feature to move questionable posts to Admin only boards, but it still moves all replies to the post as well.

I would need the following features:

1. Possibility to subscribe to a board so that each message is sent by email as soon as it is sent to the board AND that the user could reply to it by email.

2. Much more extensive logging with statistics script:
- How many different registered users have visited each board and all boards during each day/month/year
- How many new messages have been sent to each board at a given time
- How many different registered users have written messages to each board at a given time

3. Easy way to include hacks to a new version, perhaps more use of subroutines in a library, not duplicating the same routines in different scripts

4. Easy archiving of old messages as suggested before in another message

That's it for the moment.

LPa

I am having trouble deciding among what should go first, site integration or templates.

- If wwwthreads is to move into Templates, it might as well be done as soon as possible, so as to save time in redoing new features (new features converted into templates). I do want templates to change the layout, the design, and so on... have more control of the design and emails sent (yes, not just page templates, email templates as well).

- Then there is Site Integration. I guess each one of us might think of something different, as we have different web pages using different programs. I think it would be nice to choose free open source programs and integrate with them, for example, there is that calendar thing... I dont see Scream working on all types of plug-ins, developing calendars, pop email checkers, and so on... its too much work, Scream specializes in board forums, if he moves into developing more areas then he wont be able to spend as much time with the forum software itself, of the best to be found. Meanwhile, for example, there are others who develop open source calendars, specializing in them, tons of features. Why not work integration with them? It makes more sense to me, I think it would be more productive and bring better results. So my idea on this would be to choose free open source programs to integrate with, sharing the same database of users, I hate it when my users have to log into different areas of my site with different nicknames and passwords.

Another integration aspect is that one I suggested time ago, and that Simon Wolf and others have brought up as well. I would love to have articles, outside of the forum, but that could have a threaded replies to it on the bottom of the page, all this, using the same database of users... Here again, if working on this from scratch is too hard, there are open source programs that do this and what could be used if you share the same database of users so they dont have to relog in.

The main advantage of this kind of integration is that they could almost be seen as plug-ins to wwwthreads, meaning that Scream could concentrate on the development of the forums, while there are others that continue concentrating on the other scripts.

What do I want first? Templates or site integration? Templates are very welcome, and site integration can help our sites grow... I would probably lean towards site integration, though both are very very welcome.

Great feedback from everyone on this so far. A couple things to note about the templates/site integration stuff.

Templates would first be introduced on a small scale, probably like showflat/showthreaded. This way everyone can see the direction they are going and make suggestions and give feedback before doing a bunch of the scripts.

Site integration will lean on using WWWThreads within other parts of the site. Like a couple of the posts suggested being able to have articles on pages within your site that have feedback forms that go with them. Calendars would be a possibility as I have some code from a personal script I use that would work well for this. Polls. Emailing replies to forums. These would come a little at a time as I don't want to spend the next 6 months just working on site integration because then other areas start to lag behind.

No matter which comes first it won't affect the other. Site integration won't require much modification of existing scripts as it would me a bunch of addon type scripts so it won't make templates any harder to do when it's time to do that. Working on templates first wouldn't make it any harder to do site integration later.

We really NEED an email<->WWWThreads gateway mechanism. This would be immensely useful for a variety of applications.

I have another suggestion..[]/testimages/icons/smile.gif[/]
Attach a file in send email to the users groups []/testimages/icons/smile.gif[/]

Another 5.0.9er!!! I have the very same problem, my board is way too much customized and hacked... with features I don't want to miss, here are some of them:

- newsletter (preformatted) to a "subscriber" user group, users can edit their group profile any time to (un)subscribe.

- site integration with two .htaccess protected "members only" areas, again users can edit their group profile to join, but I set an expiration date after they pay and only then they get access with their w3t username/password

- site integration with a CGI chat script, w3t user names can be password protected when entering the chat (again, this is selectable via the usergroup edit)

- auto URL, email and image markup

- several added markups: my email
[ul] and [list=decimal] (plus [li]) for lists

---

for a separator line

- HTML formatted mail (Eileen's hack), I set up the moderator notification to be fully formatted with colors etc. to make the email look just like the post on the forum

- inline images (Eileen's hack)

- inline poll results instead of poll form when logged in user has already voted

- enhanced search with number of hits and page numbers

- PMs to multiple users

- in preview of PMs keep the original below for reference

- optional read receipt be email, PM or both

- PM search function, including for deleted (but not yet purged) PMs

- PM preference settings/edit form

- enhanced "who's online" to show board, thread title, or the username when viewing a profile

- clickable titles with pop-up explanation for new users

- Main Index login form

- orange icons for ALL new posts in a thread, here the main post does not show up as orange/new, also proper icon color when coming from an email link (took a while to fix it, but it can be done, since I did)

- URL checker to verify userpics

- view profile and who's online only available to logged in users

- :-) to []/testimages/icons/smile.gif[/] etc. conversion

- one click approve button on each unapproved post (for qualifying moderators only) when in showflat/showthreaded

- delete and edit buttons for the post owner, only when the post is editable (edit time not expired), and for the qualifying moderators

- show unapproved posts to the user who posted it, to avoid double posting because they can't see it and think their post is gone

- automatic reminder emails to users who have not logged in for X number of days, and remove them Y number of days later from the database (added a total user field to keep track of the total ever users for stats)

there's more... but this list should do for now... upgrading is a nightmare that I have been avoiding, instead I try to implement the new features or "work them in" from the release version... so, getting as many hacks as possible into the release version would be on top of my wish list!!! Many could be done as an option to turn on/of via w3tvars to fit everyone's needs.

Creating a wwwthreads<->email gateway would enable wwwthreads to be utlized in many other scenarios, such as Mailman lists, internal customer support feedback, and a generalized gatewaying mechanism to archive messages.

As for sending files to groups of users, well... perhaps that might be tunable in the administrative options (to prevent abuse). :-)

Scream,

Remember this request? []/testimages/icons/wink.gif[/] Or this, or this, or this, or this, or this??? []/testimages/icons/laugh.gif[/] Sorry for all the links, but it's the same request I've been suggesting since January of 2000. You mentioned a couple times about how to actually to it and present it. The end result needs to be a way for users to easily get a listing of all messages since their last login, without going into each forum/board. It should be organized, not like a search result by date, but rather by a thread-by-thread listing.

With over 200 posts per day now, my users have been complaining once again that since they have to go into each different forum to check all new messages, it just takes too long to follow everything.

I know that this feature isn't found on many forums, but it would really give W3T an advantage for forums with over 20 or 30 posts per day.

In addition to this, an archiving feature would be welcomed, but is not urgent since the forum is performing very well with about 60,000 posts in the db.

It's not that I've been ignoring you[]/testimages/icons/wink.gif[/], I just don't know how to pull this one off. In order to do this properly the current showflat/showthreaded scripts couldn't be used as they would need be grabbing different posts then the standard sort options and from different boards. The current show recent messages 24/48/7 is useful to see what posts are new but not to get from one to the other because of this reason.

All I can think of at this point would be to have 3 new scripts newpostlist,shownewflat,shownewthreaded which would kind of be a pain in the butt when adding new features so I've been trying to figure out if there is some better way to do this.

Would it be possible for the showflat/showthreaded scripts to display all posts from all categories/forums, instead of just for one forum? Not to replace the current scripts, but to use them just for the new messages, since they already do display which are new since last login and/or last view of the forum.

Wouldn't it make it easier if you had showflat and showthreaded be using a show.pm module that had the routines for showing a post in the two modes (header on top or side)? Then it would be easier to implement changes and we wouldn't have some of the code four times in the scripts... or even more if we added Muhammad's ideas which I really like... I know the feeling too well... my forum has picked up so much traffic that I'm worrying about my host, since I'm not on a dedicated server (don't have that kind of money). Have even been thinking about setting up a server at home for W3T... would be a tiny bit slower but no problems with too much bandwidth or resources!

1- Why you don't make the Markup Codes in the database
so the Admin can change add/edit/delete codes
It's good to edit your Markup Codes in the Admin section

2- Another suggestion, It is good to edit or add Questions in the FAQ page, so the questions will be in the database and the FAQ page will get them from the database then print them
and the Administrator can add/edit/delete questions in in the Admin Section

I hope from you to do this suggestions []/testimages/icons/smile.gif[/]

Regards,
eDeveloper

Scream,
Is there any changes in the database for version 5.4.3 ?
Because I'll develope an Importer Tool to Import Users/Posts/Forums from vBulletin 2

I think if you put Importer Tool in the orginal version it will make W3T more popular

Anyhow, this is not important suggestion []/testimages/icons/smile.gif[/]

Regards,
eDeveloper

for what it's worth, my users would adore this feature too, as I switched over from WebBBS, and they were used to such a thing in the old forum (the only real complaint anyone's had

Would love to see an easier way to add new post icons. Right now you have to manually edit a few files which is a bummer if you suck at editing perl.

Could you explain how you do that? I'd find it very useful.

Exactly! We should have had them last year - so let's hurry up and get them in now before moving on to something new.

>>Site integration won't require much modification of existing scripts as it would be a bunch of addon type scripts

Thank god for that. That means those of us who don't want it can safely ignore it.

Big things on my wish list:

-User selectable HTML or ASCI e-mail alert/subscription options with ASCI as the default. I tend to like to include lots of tags in some of my posts as the forum manager and they make the e-mail's look awful. Thanks to Garrit for the tag stripping hack.
-Easier to edit e-mail confirmation messages for newly registered members. Perhaps make the form fields like the random password, username, forum name, etc. markup tags on a simple form page where you could create the e-mail. While it might seem minor, that first message you get from a community you sign up for is critical and often has some bearing on whether the person ever comes back and participates. The more it can be customized, the better.
-Better help documentation. The current FAQ is not enough for forum novices. Eileen's context help hack is a great step in the right direction, but it needs to get updated for the new version and kept up to date as new features are added.
-More control over the 'user list' feature -- like being able to pick which fields are included. ICQ is not a big thing for my forum, but listing of location or company is... having more control over that would beat the heck out of trying to modify the perl on my own.. If anybody knows a good hack, let me know.
-Integration of the 'attachment icon' hack that Eileen came up with. Several of my users have not noticed that anything is attached to a post in the current approach.

Templates and site integration sound nice, but I'd take the above tweaks first.

And thanks for asking!!

Oh.. and one other thing:
-Better pointers to registration for guests who are browsing a forum. Right now, disabling the 'post' icon(and changing it's appearance) and generic error messages are not enough to let them know what they need to do to participate. I'm thinking something in the header area that would prompt you to register/sign in; and a different type of header is the forum is restricted to 'read only'. I'm probably doing a lousy job of explaining this, but I want more indications to help people understand why they can't post, or why they can't enter an area of the forum and easy paths to get them to registration.

I've updated my Help system considerably for Woody's Lounge. Unfortunately I'm so busy doing it all these days that I haven't had time to write any of them up...

The w3threads code is robust and it has everything we need to create new features (weblog, for example) but it needs modularity for doing that.

I wish to see a new code structure of w3threads such that it becomes as modular as possible (separate modules for authentification, database management and queries, posting, displaying posts, ...).

The idea is to have a flexible system that permits plugins and integration with other packages or our own modules without the need to hack the w3t code.

<p>Things I would like to see for my board ( http://www.honorableplayers.org are:</p>
<ul>
<li>Second what Flint said about changing so moderators only sho wup as moderators in their own forum</li>
<li>For site integration, IMHO it is pretty good right now for users, but the ability to link the forums to new sitems etc is lacking. Because you cannot know what exactly will be done in other areas, rather than hardcoding some functionality for say news items, or whatnot, just create clean API to allow people to integrate it as they will. Don't reinvent the wheel by making yet another weblog, just make it easy for people to tie functionality in from the tools fo their choice.</li>
<li>Add support for AIM like you have ICQ support. I know AIM isn't as easy to do, but AIM is very popular as well. This might require some active polling of an AIM server, but go ahead and tie it to a cron job.</li>
<li>The ability to have private messages forwarded to an email account would be very nice.</li>
<li>Allow HTML in signatures</li>
<li>Mark All Read Functionality easily accesable</li>
</ul>
<p>Thanks for the great softare (though I guess we paid for it, but still, thanks!)</p>
<p>Brian McCallister</p>

Scream--Your idea (and forrie's) of e-mailing to the forum is one that I would dearly love to have. Right now I am getting people sending replies to the forum (when they have e-mail me all replies on), and all these come to me. So I need to respond to them, and also usually post them myself for them, when I find time.

Razvan--Your editing of Moderator's privileges is high on my list.

Flint--I would like to have your Moderator's don't carry the Mod flag into other forums--as an option.

Avolia--The newsletter sign up, if customizable, would be grand.

Yes, please. Everything Modular - and Templates to pull them all together.

Here's my 2 pennies......

1) Templates. This would include the ability to have each board act different from each other. So one board coulld be a straight flat view...another be a threaded view and yet another would be a new view which would be strictly linear chronological. The reason linear chronological is good is for conversation stlye boards where you wouldn't want threads......Each post and reply is put to the top of the listing in a chronological order. It would be good to have the ability to force these views so they either could or could not be changed by the end user in the Control Panel on a per-board basis. I am affraid I may loose my visitors without the incorporation of a linear chronological view (For that one board they are using)....it's what my visitors are used to and they're getting flustered with the current setup.

2) Site integration. The only thing I can think of in this regard is so I can put a line of text on the front page, or other pages, that would say how many people are on the site or that particular web page. Also to be able to have the flashing envelop in pages to tell someone they have a private message waiting for them in the forum.

3) Existing hacks. As I've said many times here....I would like to see the inclusion of the existing hacks successfully incorporated into w3t. Like that Bozo hack that I've yet to get to work for me with ver 5.4.2 []/testimages/icons/frown.gif[/]

To add to the mix:

- Intergration of searching in the user listing, esp. searching on different criteria.

-I haven't had much of a chance to really fiddle with ezboard, but I think how they handle their board to email gateway, and board to NNTP gateway is worth taking note of. I'm not sure how valuable a NNTP gateway would be, but I can vouch for an email gateway. Much of the community that I am developing internet infrastructure for really enjoys the ease of mailing lists. While mailing lists leave much to want, and w3t really fills in alot of the gaps, exclusive web based discussion forums still are not as conveinent as the average mailing list for the end user in many regards.

- Intergration is a big issue for me. Creating hooks so I could intergrate w3t with other membership based components of my web site would really help alot. Templates as well plays into my understanding of intergration, on an aesthetic level.

- more flexibility with the user profile fields (make all the possible fields alterable, and expandable beyond the 5 empty slots) with the ability of users to deside who gets read access to different fields of there profile (perhaps based upon groups).

- archiving of old threads. Perhaps such an archive would commit old threads to static files, taking them out of the db.

- w3t is already very fast, but with templates on the horizon, perhaps caching is a worthwhile persuit.

- declutter the button bars. Don't show buttons that aren't avaliable (or at least code in an option that alows admins to choose to have dead buttons visible or not).

- intergrate spell in the php version

- make it more clear to new users (first time visitors particularly) that they must loggin if they wish to post.

Yeah, we went dedicated a few months ago... our traffic instantly doubled thanks to the faster server. Our old host just couldn't handle the W3T traffic, even on their most advanced hosting plan.

my requests arn't for new features but things that should be added/deleted.
I believe that cleanup of the html should be first. there are alot of empty or non existant </td></td></table> code that should be cleaned up.
registration page needs to be upgraded so people can add certain info. homepage bleh blah bleh.
i think the are you over the age of 13 should be upgraded so that the user puts in his birthday and checks to see if he/she is over the age of 13 automatically?
the ability to edit the logged in and not logged in menu above.
the ability to edit the Welcom pm screen, Welcome email, a new user has replied to your post, Everything that gets sent out.
site integration and that stuff should be included as an addon by soneome else, i don't think that you should be working on that. it is not for everyone.
user customizable markup tage for posting code/html/pl/php
search by username search by certain fields search posts by username search for users that match p search users who have a www in there homepage field
SPELLCHECK FOR PHP
instead of form buttons how about a nice drop down menu for admins and mods to do admin mod things
the ability to have a mod do so and so duties. allowed to delete users, but not allowed to delete a thread. user customizable features per moderator.

Not sure if this has been covered or not, but I just started offering a pay membership, I would love to see a easy way to add people to this group, kind of like the admin or moderators with small icon and a way to automaticly send them an email when their membership is about to expire. Right now I am going to manually change their title and user name color which is going to be a pain. Hell, you could even offer some kind of membership add-on package for an extra fee, I know I would pay for it, more and more sites are going to some kind of membership to help pay for the site/bandwidth so it could generate a little more coin for you, of course free is always good too. []/testimages/icons/wink.gif[/]

I know this one is probably not something a lot of people need but if you have the time it would be nice:

At registration, the ability to assign the registrating person automatic membership of a group using a list if IP-ranges. Of course, using wildcards (*) would be the normal choice but I would rather have the file with the ranges using the format:

213.237.152-4 NormalMember

or

213.237.152.0-255 AnotherNormalMember

As written above there isn't that many sites needing this kind of feature but I could use it... []/testimages/icons/smile.gif[/] Anyway, I'm probably going to implement it myself but it would be a lot easier to upgrade to new versions if this were included.

kdp

My another ideas comes as the followings:

* Like the Post icon, let users select what the type of post belongs to. Such as 'Question', 'Answer', 'Request'...etc. and these types could be defined by moderators on a board based basis. (Of course the administrators defines the priviliege to grant to the moderator or not)

Thus, we can easy find the types of posts we want. It can be used to narrow down the search engine loading.

* Add a user behaviors based credits system. To accumulate the user's behaviors and usages of the forum into a special credit system on a site basis. So each of you can define how many credits to grant on what behaviors the user had done. (The current user management is so simple as it has only counted the number of posts the user had posted.)

* Add a 'List posts replied to me' to show all posts replied to the thread you have joined. This is like the Email all replies to my real email address features but only activated when users request to list on their login time.

Ok, Old dead horse but somebody has to beat it.

Intergrate the spellchecker routines, and or put together a spellchecker standalone that corrects spelling.

I would love if you would add an option for the Admin to create Markup tags.

For example. (NOTE THIS IS JUST AN EXAMPLE COULD BE OTHER MARKUP ITEMS)

The admin can add a markup of [WINMEDIA]. W3threads would send the marked text to an html include file winmedia.markup

[WINMEDIA]http://forums.torbeckfamily.com/mashthemeMovie.mp3[WINMEDIA]

<object classid="clsid:22D6F312-B0F6-11D0-94AB-0080C74C7E95" id="MediaPlayer1" width="200" height="225">
<param name="AudioStream" value="-1">
<param name="AutoSize" value="-1">
<param name="AutoStart" value="0">
<param name="Filename" value=[MARKUPDATA]>
.
. LINES REMOVE TO SAVE SPACE
.
</object>

ktorbeck, look at my newest hacks []/testimages/icons/smile.gif[/]

http://www.wwwthreads.com/perl/showflat.pl?Cat=&Board=custom&Number=39970&page=0&view=collapsed&sb=5&o=&fpart=

Don't I wish! CIHost has been going through hell since the 1st - being bombarded by the Code Red worm trying to get in. Of course it can't because they use Unix machines but it is still effectively slowing everything to a trickle because it means all their ports are 'occupied' when legitimate rquests are made to them.

I look forward to seeing that code when things are getting through again.

And here's a demostration of a great community style:

www.104cafe.com.tw

They have a feature to allow users to apply to took a part in each board which is like a private club. That should be a better direction for w3t development which is what a community are for.

BTW, it's a Chinese BIG5 site.

I thought I need a feature like this:

* I can edit and define the required field on user profile. So that the required fields should be filled out by the user and would indicated with a * sign.

* I can define which field should be filled out even if it is not a required field. If the user did not fill out these field, w3t would informed the user by a POPUP private message when these fields were unfinished.

Thanks, but this is really not what I am looking for.

Maybe, I should explain what I need do.

Many of our users will be using adaptive equipment. Screen Readers, Braile Readers, etc. I would like to be able to add markup commands for the special functions of adaptive equipment.

I came up with the idea of using an .markup include file because this would make it more easy to upgrade.

I think a markup.pm should do the trick. Then we could pull all the domarkup/undomarkup stuff out of w3t.pm, put it in markup.pm and add to it easily.

I like the markup.pm idea... maybe overall it would be better to use more .pm files to make upgrading easier!?

This is something that I've been wanting to do for some time, since alot of people add custom markup it would make upgrading much easier.

Just remembered another hack I did that others might like if it was in the main distro... how about user select time format (choose in the preferences)? Check out my boards with username test and password test, and go to Edit Preferences > Display Preferences.

That's clever but it would play havoc with my board layout!

Well... I'm sure it could be made to fit the layout, I mean remove the extra long date/time versions from the options. However, users from various countries would appreciate a date format they can adjust to what they are used to.

I use "04-Aug-01 20:45" which means everybody can understand it, no matter which format they are used to or which side of the date-line they're on..

Please do it would REALLY HELP!!!

I do think that would work.

You'd have to remember also to require it in all the files that needed it

1. Site Integration.
2. Templates.
3. Modularity.
4. Module system for hacks.

I was away since that post, here is my vote:

1. Membership integration (+++)
2. Templates
3. Modular architecture
4. Contents integration (example here)
5. Email mirroring (here and here)
5. Usenet gateway/integration (see here)

Hi Scream,

what kind of timeframe are you looking at for this?

I'm looking at getting this done in the next 1-2 weeks but I don't imagine your stuff will be ready that soon.

thanks,

Kurt

Don't really have a timeframe on this yet. I expected 5.3 to be the stable version so I could start working on new features, but there were a few more bugs found so I've needed to do another minor update. Still working on the PHP version of 5.4.4 although I didn't get much done this past week with everything going on.

I'm late to this, but I have a completely different suggestion.

How 'bout: hire someone to write really, really, REALLY good documentation. Complete, with hand-holding and tutorials and tips and everything.

To pay for this, SELL it. You'd surely get enough users (not the regulars here, most of whom don't need it, of course) to shell out, say, $25 per that you could afford to hire a really good technical writer. And even if it doesn't break even, it's worth subsidizing, since it will open up your market to less tech-oriented people.

another bonus: you could plunder some of the language to better explain functions in help files and on this site.

You could even use print-on-demand to do a bound version.

[Scream, if you want, feel free to email me and I'll help you brainstorm....and explain about print-on-demand].

I have read a great many wonderful suggestions in this thread - great responses from everyone. I'm not going to try and repeat them. Any others I have were already been posted in the feedback forum.

I would like to request one thing before you move on to these wonderful new concepts Scream. You know I've been using your product for a very long time now and I want to see it continue to be successful. I really seriously believe at this stage you need to stop worrying about what comes next for a short period and focus on the existing code. Go back through and clean it up, clean up all of the small oddities and bugs that are found in even 5.4.4. Each time you come out with a new release, I am forced to go back and fix issues that go back several versions, re-introducing hacks, modifications, etc. There are a number of odd behaviors that the product now has and I think it’d be a good idea to get them all cleaned up before adding anything new.

I think you should start another thread like this and ask, “What can we do/change to improve the behavior, functionality and quality of the current features?” Then collect that information and go to town solidifying an already great product. Then once you have that code 100% bug free and working as designed, move on to new features. You know me, I’ve been asking for templates since I first started using W3T - along with site integration. But I’ve waited this long; I can wait a couple more months. []/testimages/icons/wink.gif[/] I’d much rather see the current system refined and cleaned up before introducing more issues into the mix.

Hear. Hear.

I agree... haven't been using it as long as you but... I did have the joys of upgrading my system from 5.4.3 to 5.4.4 and thank goodness for Araxis Merge I would still be sitting here today working on it trying to merge all the mods I have done into the new system... Lets just clean it up... There is alot of wasted code I am noticing...