Hi-- Here is a thread in someone else's forum that suggests two things W3T could do to make it easier for us to grow a community: <a target="_blank" href=http://gethighforums.com/Forum2/HTML/000319.html>http://gethighforums.com/Forum2/HTML/000319.html</a> (See the post by w4an) 1. eliminate the ? in the url on all of the pages (including php version). 2. have a way for people to post and otherwise interact with the board via e-mail. Are these things possible? Apparently somebody is doing them.
I read w4an's post at the URL you gave, and it was a good article. I agreed with everything there. I also agree with you on email participation as well as no ? in the URLs.
I guess the biggest hurdle with email participation is authentication and direction. Authentication meaning is this person who he says he is and direction meaning where in the threads should this email go? In addition, someone replying by email will be much further behind on the conversation than someone who's just visited the site and replied, and for boards who do daily subscriptions (as opposed to hourly) you could really get some late posters and such. If the code were changed so that every post to a forum you were subscribed to would be emailed to you immediately (sort of like the "someone replied to your post at" stuff we get), then I could see this being a viable option. It would definitely need to be a configurable option since a lot of folks have to keep an eye on their bandwidth.
As far as the email stuff goes, responding via email would definitely have its benefits, at least for the user, one major one being convenience. But the code I see accompanying this feature would be quite intense, since we'd have to devise some way of preventing other users from claiming they're you, sticking that one email in the correct thread (sometimes people don't keep the "Re:" in their message), code a receiving engine to parse the email correctly so that we can read everything correctly and disregard what we don't need, and probably some other stuff I'm forgetting.
If we're going to go through the trouble of coding all of that, we might as well build a module to let users receive an email list (majordomo or something similar) and parse the emails into WWWThreads. It would be a great archiving feature (I'm on a few myself).
As far as getting the question marks out of the URL, I'm by no means an expert in perl yet, but I don't see an easy way of doing this currently (that's not to say there isn't an easy way, just personally don't know of one). If it's accurate that search engines ignore URLs after the question mark then it may benefit the software to take a closer look at how to omit it.
Thanks for the URL, too. It was a good read. I might have to visit this site more often. <img border="0" title="" alt="[Smile]" src="images/icons/smile.gif" />
The ? is used to delim the paramters from the form request module. If you wanted to eliminate these ? marks, Scream has to implement a static html generation system. Meaning, that everytime a comment is added, or a post counter is updated, the approrpiate static html files will be updated. Scream, what about this. Keeping the dynamic system in place as is, but giving the admin an option to "export" all messages into another directory. The messages would export as static html files that could be indexed by search engines. The admin could set up a cron job to have their messages exported say once a week. = Jim =
6-- You're welcome. Not being an expert in php, I only got the general drift of what you said, and it looks like a big job. <img border="0" title="" alt="[Roll Eyes]" src="images/icons/rolleyes.gif" /> On the other hand, most threads don't go to 40 or 50 replies (but would they with the ease of replying via e-mail?), only 4 or 6, so the problems might be more theoretical than actual. And if the threading were maintained, then one reading it on the Web could figure out what went where, if there were a real problem. Or the Admin could break the thread into two separate ones. Authentication might be handled by making everybody officially "anonymous" (or "e-mail") if they replied by e-mail, and then they could sign their names, if they wanted attribution. I know that doesn't prevent you from slandering someone using my name, but if that is a risk on someone's board, they could just turn off the e-mail participation feature. What I am saying is that I am in favor of at least a limited way to do e-mail posts as a test.... As to the "?" issue, is it different in php?
The space on the server would more than likely at least triple, ifwe start exporting meta tags, or any other html formatting. So that the user doesn't have to choose, what could be done is within the export process, adjust all links on the exported page to *point* back to their corresponding dynamic page. So that say a user reads a message in a thread that is that of a static html page, when they click *next* to see the next message in the thread, they will actually be using the php version and not the exported html version. You want the users to use the php version because that is the system that is *always* up to date (especially if the static html files only get generated say once a week), and second, when they use the php version, they get to experience all of the dynamic features of the system (updated news, new mail messages, etc). So the objective should be, generate static html files for the sake of search engine indexing, once the user has accessed a static html file, get them back to the php version as quickly as possible, and make the transition seemless. = Jim =
Eileen-- Oh, so once I register, the major search engines will index all the messages and articles, wherever they are, despite the "?"s? So the post on the Jim Forum is a little out of date? Thanks. Any thoughts on e-mailing stuff to the board?
Well I am sure somebody already said this but I am too lazy to read what everybody typed right now.
#1.. What is the point of removing the query string? (stuff after the ? in the url).. That would be nearly impossible (not with out pretty much a complete re-write of how the pages interact with each other)...... also it would mean you can't link to specific forums or posts.... so WHAT would be the point again? remove the query string to make the forum LESS of a community?!?! (sorry to be harsh, but I just can't figure out why somebody thought this was a good idea?!?!)
#2. So basically turn the forum into a mailing list with an archive & web interface?! well.. decent idea, but I dunno. It's already possible to an extent.. You cant send emails and then have them appear on the site, but if you had that then what would be the point of the forum again? Neat feature, but not really a must if you ask me. Just get some good mailing list software. There is plenty of it out there with addons to do exactly this..
What would I like to see? How about a rewrite of the forum... Create an API in Perl AND PHP that allows *anybody* to write their own front end using that API (no, not HTML front end.. I mean real code + html etc..).. The software could come with a default front end (that looks like this existing one) but anybody else could write their own if they wanted..
This way people could write their own interfaces and COOL plugins for the forum easily by using the API AND give their interfaces away over the internet with out actually giving away the forum.. People who download the new interface still require to have the API(set of classes) for the forum (that they paid for) in order to use it.
This way the back end work can stay in screams hands while the front end junk like HTML templates, cool new layouts, plugins etc can be focused on more by other people..
It would also make it easier to write more community like features into the forum... Or even make it easier to embed it into your existing site (since everything is laid out how you want)
I dunno maybe I am living in a dream world. hehehe
------------------------------------------------ Jeremy 'PeelBoy' Amberg
Create an API in Perl AND PHP that allows *anybody* to write their own front end using that API
[/quote]
You mean an api that can read templates, similar to stylesheets? I don't get what you're envisioning (I get the idea, but how does the API make it easier for the user?).
You can already alter the front-end if you know perl or php, so I'm assuming you're talking about anyone who knew html and such could easily make their own front-end?
i am all for the use of email to the board, but most people don't have access to that. only dedicated servers and people like me who have a good web host that allows that type of stuff. i think the people above are talking about how search engines can't index wwwthreads. but google and other search engines can now search thought ? , = & . the only reason for archiving old posts is that there is no need for a user to post or reply to the post and the post won't get much use. so why not take it out of the database and put it in html. i was reading my creatonline, probably the greatest design magazine around. if you are near a magazine stand i recomend that you go buy this magazine. anyways, they were talking about how cool it would be if a user upploaded his/her own template. this would be cool, but kinda far fetched. templates, templates, templates.....w3t is only lacking on that.
Jeremy-- Well, it looks to me that each of these two things would increase community: 1. Making the threads themselves visible on search engines and directories will attract more people, some of whom will want to stay around and become part. If you make it hard to find the community, you make it hard to grow the community. No? 2. Making the forums accessible by e-mail is also bound to increase the sense of community. Why does anyone have to "come" anyplace for there to be community in cyberspace? None of us leave our desks either way. And if we can make it easier for the person who uses primarily e-mail, then we increase the universe of those who can be part of our community. That said, it is not my point to argue whether it would or not. Simply to say let's have at least a rudimentary tool available for the e-mail access (I have been pretty well convinced I don't need or want the removal of the "?"s), so those who want to try it can do so and let the rest of us know if it works or not.... <img border="0" title="" alt="[Smile]" src="images/icons/smile.gif" />
I always come up with links, haha! <img border="0" title="" alt="[Smile]" src="images/icons/smile.gif" />
So here are the ones on this subject:
<a target="_blank" href=http://www.wwwthreads.com/php/showthreaded.php?Cat=&Board=wishlist&Number=22848&Search=true&Forum=All_Forums&Words=search%20engine%20friendly&Match=And&Searchpage=0&Limit=25&O ld=6months&Main=22848>Thread where this was once debated</a>, some links to scripts that claim to do it.
<a target="_blank" href=http://www.wwwthreads.com/php/showflat.php?Cat=&Board=wishlist&Number=28523&page=&view=&sb=&vc=1>More on it...</a> -another script link in there.
Here is a very interesting one..: I think <a target="_blank" href=http://gossamer-threads.com/perl/forum/>Gossamer Threads wwwthreads forum</a> has come up with a partial solution to this... If you go for example to <a target="_blank" href=http://www.gossamer-threads.com/scripts/forum/resources/Forum9/HTML/000334.html>this link</a> (before clicking notice in the bottom bar that the link has no "?" sign in it) you then find yourself <a target="_blank" href=http://gossamer-threads.com/perl/forum/showflat.pl?ubb=000334:Forum9>here</a> (notice it now has the "?" sign). Their wwwthreads results are therefore found in search engines. And as for the "better search engines" now indexing the "?" sign not everyone uses them. Not only that, but though I know Google claims to do so (I have even seen results), I am quite doubtful about to what extent. There are results with the "?" but though I would have to investigate it some more, it seems to me like they dont go very far in indexing these, maybe just four or five pages deep... I dont see enough results with the "?" as to really believe they are fully indexing them.
Hum... <a target="_blank" href=http://searchengineforums.com/bin/forumdisplay.cgi?action=topics&forum=Dynamic+Pages,+Frames+and+Stuff&number=21&DaysPrune=20&LastLogin=>Here is a forum</a> dealing with dynamic pages... specially <a target="_blank" href=http://searchengineforums.com/Forum21/HTML/000246.html>this specific thread</a>. You might notice this second url is "search engine friendly" as well even though it is a from a vBulletin (and Infopop) generated page.
We shouldn't take 2 steps backwards just because of search engines.
I've writen a tool in Perl using LWP that can spider and index database driven websites that use query strings in the URL.. If I can do it I'm pretty sure Yahoo can do it. :-\
------------------------------------------------ Jeremy 'PeelBoy' Amberg
When I say API I mean a set of classes that provide forum funtionality with out actually having the forum? (of course a default one would also be provided)
It's hard to explain.
In other words it would be a set of pre-written code that helps assist you in writing your OWN forum. Kinda like a set of libs.. It's all of the backend code needed in order to write a forum. Add posts, remove posts, add users, etc etc except that it's up to you to put it all together in a working script.
So in other words you could create your OWN perl script and put something like this in it:
use w3t::Forum;
my $forum = new w3t::Forum;
$forum->connect();
$forum->addpost( name => $name, date => $date, title => $title, body => $body);
$forum->displaypost(post_num => 12345);
$forum->disconnect();
------------------------------------------------ Jeremy 'PeelBoy' Amberg
This is something that I have thought about for a very long time. Pretty much everything else on the net has some standards to build upon, email, html, etc. Forums don't follow this at all. There are hundreds of different forums available and every one of them has their own set of routines and form/scheme of data storage. This type of API is something that I had originally imagined when first writing the w3tapi module for the PERL version, but it hasn't been realized yet. So, this is something I would like to see if it can actually work given the time.
I was just playing around with the idea. I don't expect it to happen or anything, but it sure would be cool <img border="0" title="" alt="[Smile]" src="images/icons/smile.gif" />
Because then anybody could provide their own forum that used your set of API's.. That would be so cool.
------------------------------------------------ Jeremy 'PeelBoy' Amberg
But, aside from that, historically the reason search engines didn't spider across dynamic content was just that -- it's dynamic. There's no guarantee that the string you found on Jan 1 ('widgets' for example) will be there March 15, or even Jan 2.
Some sites made this determination of "scan/not-scan" based on the URL containing a ? in it or not. Others, however, were much smarter, and realized that people were using mod_rewrite, et al, to get around that, and starting looking for Content-Length headers. Dynamic content can't give a content-length header because by the time the script runs to completion, the headers are already long-since-sent. (I say "can't", but there are workarounds for it, which involve sending NO data to the user until the entire page is generated in the server's memory first, but that's cumbersome, slow, and bad user-experience).
Nowadays, though, some sites (google, IIRC, comes to mind) do spider dynamic content. I don't think AV does though. Dunno.
I don't think it's worth the server resources, forum speed or anything else JUST for html files that can be indexed by search engines. A feature like that will not really benefit many people even though they will all swear otherwise. (Which is usually the people who just don't know what they are talking about. It'll bring what? 1 hit a month to your website.. WOOHOO!!!!).. When it comes down to it something like this really isn't worth it.
If HTML files are that important to anybody here then they can go get UBB or wwwboard instead and life will be good for all of us.
There are many reasons why I like having a database driven forum and the ability to generate HTML files dynamicaly from the database is NOT one of them!!!!!!
Oh btw I bet I could write a Perl/PHP script in 1 afternoon that will extract all of your posts in the forum and dump it into a set of HTML files which can then be spidered by search engines (and the html file could privide links to the REAL posts in the forum). It would be pretty easy to do. This doens't need to be a major addition to the forum or anything.
------------------------------------------------ Jeremy 'PeelBoy' Amberg
I know a site that did that, generated an "HTML mirror" of the site, and if requests came from a search engine, they rewrote all the URL's to the "html-ized" versions. Then, when humans clicked on the search engine links, since THEY weren't search engines, they got the "live" data.
Not that I would recommend that, especially on a larger site. <img border="0" title="" alt="[Smile]" src="images/icons/smile.gif" />
or you could copy the code in viewflat and instead of displaying it to the screen write it to /html/post#.html .. and then have a cron that runs and it'll update all of the html files nightly.. blah blah blah.. it would be fairly easy to do.. I just don't see a point in it.
------------------------------------------------ Jeremy 'PeelBoy' Amberg
Dredd-- If here today gone tomorrow is a good way to guage what should appear on a search engine, no web site should be indexed. Take a look in your own favorites file--bet most of them don't exist or the content has changed drastically. Not arguing with you, just with the nonthinking way some search engine decisions are apparently made. <img border="0" title="" alt="[Frown]" src="images/icons/frown.gif" /> In any event, I think I can remember getting forum messages (or were they newsgroup posts?) on search engines for years.
Hi all-- We've just about beat to death the idea of getting rid of the "?s," but that still leaves finding a way to increase community by allowing an easier way to post. Just this afternoon I had a user send me a post by e-mail because she did not have time to start up her browser and log on, find the forum and the particular thread she wanted. It would be easier for a large chunk of the population to post by e-mail than directly. Wouldn't making it easier increase numbers as well as community?
Scream-- Don't know if this is a bug or not, but tonight when I came to this thread, 5.2b2php took me to the last new post in the thread, not the first. Is that how it is working for others? The way it should be?
Not really you can create CGI scripts that parse this. I've done it for a client that didn't want query strings. But it's impossible in PHP. The CGI I wrote was in C and I can't even remember what it was but the syntax on the site was www.theirsite.com/mycgiprog/var1name/var1value/var2name/var2value But I think doing this with w3t would be the worst thing.
My opinion on this post by email issue: If people want to discuss using their mail, there are several mailing lists (and packages) that allow them to do that. If they want to go to a forum, well, this is waht they will find here.
now if someone doesn't have the time, resources (has email but no www access, not very common as far as I know) then he won't be able to use this forum. I don't see this as a big problem. there are many people that don't have access to a computer at all, and my opinion is that we should concentrate on adding features for those who have what's required to use a forum (we won't we able to really solve the problem for others anyway).
So i don't consider email posting important at all. This is just my opinion and I may be wrong, it seems that a lot of people want this. I guess it would be interesting to know if this is a large % of users or just a very vocal group. I have no problem with features being added (as long as I have a way of turning them off) but of course making something means that some other feature will came after that....
Patagon-- While it may be true that most people who have e-mail also have access to the Web, that does not mean they use it, or are comfortable with it. Add to the additional skills (over e-mail) required to use a browser the level of effort to understand words on a forum like "index" and "submit" and "continue" and figuring out where to click to even read a message (not difficult for you and me, but it is for a person new to it), and you put some barriers up for people. The easier you can make it for some, the easier it will be for most. It is our job to encourage people to take part, and figure a way to do that which allows them the most choices, even if it makes the work harder for us. Or so I think today. <img border="0" title="" alt="[Smile]" src="images/icons/smile.gif" />
I see your point...However I guess I have a different opinion. This is where I would like to hear other people's opinion as well, because I agree basically with you (trying to make the forum more popular, easier to use, etc) and how to achieve that is probably an important discussion, where I'm open to other points of view.
I agree that there are some skills to learn to use a forum (many skills actually; because most people here are experienced users, it's easy to overlook the problems of non-skilled users). However I believe email posting may be more confussing than helpful :
The new users (at least the one that I know) are more skilled on the web and know very little about their mail programs. They also seem to be willing to learn (and therefore more succesful at) how to use a website. I guess there is some logic behind this, most people will use that skills all over the web, not only at your site. The truth is, if they want to use the forum they will have to learn how. While we can, and should, do as much as possible to make that as easy as possible, they wont have a pleasnt experience with it unless they learn these skills.
My other concern is that these people posting by mail will not be able to really follow the discussions, and therefore wont be able to really interact with the community (but I may be missing how this thing would work). I also would like to encourage people to come to the forum (learning the skills) and use the other community building features (PM for example or something entirely differnent at my site). That's what I always thought <img border="0" title="" alt="[Smile]" src="images/icons/smile.gif" /> but I am open to other arguments proving em wrong...
I like the idea and all.. But seriously.. If it's that big of a problem then you should get a mailing list and have the forum on the side for now.
I've never seen a community where people were too lazy to even open their browser, but I suppose they do exist. You should consider setting up a mailing list.
I do think it would be a neat feature to post by sending an email, but then how would that work? You would have to have a seperate email address to send messages to so that you can post to specific forums?! Otherwise how do you make a post to 1 forum when you have 30 of them? etc etc..
I personally think screams time would be better spent writing other features. This one seems like it could be way too complex. He could pump out a lot of cool features in the time it would take him to do this one.
------------------------------------------------ Jeremy 'PeelBoy' Amberg
Besides adding a feature like this would turn this forum into it's 'own' crap mailing list software with NEAT archive/back end instead of the other way around lol..
------------------------------------------------ Jeremy 'PeelBoy' Amberg
Right, but there is a very small percentage of people like this. Even my GF who owns a Web TV for only the past month or two (and has never used a computer or the internet otherwise) was able to figure out my forum on her own..
If a large percentage of your users don't understand how to use the forum or they are too lazy or too busy then ditch it and get a mailing list. A good one will archive all of the messages sent and make it searchable etc.. That is probably all you need.
------------------------------------------------ Jeremy 'PeelBoy' Amberg
Making the forum easier by changing the user interface is one thing.
Making the forum easier by saying "screw it let's just use an email interface" is the wrong way to do it.
When you first look at it you'll think it's an easy out, but start thinking about it from a code stand point? It's NOT an easy task to do it properly at all!!!!
Scream's time will be better spent finding somebody to make new, better GFX and designing an easier to use interface for the forum (although it would be hard to get too much easier)
The new version of VBulletin just passed us up in the features catagory. It's easier to use, looks nicer, more features etc.. But it's slow and not threaded so I still like this software better.
------------------------------------------------ Jeremy 'PeelBoy' Amberg
by making it easier for users to post on your forum is the absolute goal. saying if they can't post they shouldnt post in the first place, is the wrong way to think about it. email is a valuable tool to use in a board. it won't turn your board into a mailing list, it will just give an option to the user/users to post/reply by email. this option in my eyes is soo really cool. i heard some of my friends complaining that when there users post gets replied to they just push reply on the email and send the message that way. if you could just push reply in yoru email and press send, the message gets posted and you don't have to open up your netscape. that rocks. again , most people won't be able to use this option cause you would have to forward your mail to a script, and not many hosts allow that. i would love to do something like this to work with phpnuke, to post articles by mail.
If we take a look at the many things that could improve this software, I guess making the interface more user friendly and other features would be on top of the list. This feature (and also many of the features I suggested and really would like to see) will be IMO near the bottom. Of course how many people think it's useful has an influence on that list too, I guess.
For making it easier to non-skilled users, I agree...but the bottom line IMO is that if you can't get them to really involve in teh forum (and therefore learn) you won't really get them...they may post by email (for example) sometimes, but only those users willing to learn to use the software will stay, so focusing on those other users is a waste of time (when you can use that time to make everything easier and better for those really important users that will stay with you).
Maybe someone should consider making this feature as a plugin, some people seem to be really interested on this one, and maybe the others are converted once we see it....
My 2 cents, While I think linking W3T to an email system that would allow users to post to forums via email would be a nice addition, I don't think it is a priority. I agree that making it easier for users to participate in discussion forums is very important. I think that a good step forward with regards to email intergration that would make forum use easier for the user and also encourage users to return could focus on the email subscriptions tool. I think this is a great tool, as it really incourages users to come back and visit the forum and participate. I would like to see this polished up a bit, making it a bit more fool proof. Some suggestions: -the option to subscribe to a forum could be listed as a button on each individual forum for registered users. As it stnds now, I find the subscriptions option hidden, not as accessible as I think it should be. -The generated emails for each forum could list emails in a more readable sequence. As opposed to posts to the forum by date, have them displayed in accordance to threads on the forum. As it stands now, I find it a bit confusing when I get the daily posts for a forum, not 100% sure how the conversation threads come together. Perhaps forum posts could be organized under seperate headers of the thread title. -Each individual forum post pulled together in an email daily posts could include a reference to what post it is in reply to. Also a link to that specific post could be included on top of the general link to to forum that is included at the top of the email. eg: Subject: Re: Make it easier to build community, please
In Reply to:Subject by Poster
Poster: patagon
Posted on: 03/15/01 11:44 AM
Link:http://www.whatever.org/wwwthreads.php?to=specificpost.... Perhaps the daily emails should also include a line mentioning that in order to reply to a particular post, s/he has to click on the link that corresponds to the post. One other thing that I think could use some polishing with the email subscriptions is tags. One can turn tags (markup or HTML) on and off in generated emails. This is great. I personlly think that the emails are much more legible with the tags turned off, but some important information gets lost. Links to other documents are junked when the tags are removed. Ideally I would like to see links remain intact, but the surrounding tags nuked. 1 up from this would translate the daily emails into HTML legible emails (my email reader reads them as plain text), that also includes a plain text version that defaults to this for plain text email clients (pine). I am confident that a more polished email subscription system will lend greatly to the building of online community -e
Personally, I'd rather we see more concrete features added to the script long before this "post by mail" option be seriously considered. While I believe it would be a useful option in a workgroup environment, it alone would not add much in the way of "community building". Mailing lists are great for some people because it is true, you can send/receive messages very easily, it does help people communicate and come together – to a certain extent. But we're talking about forums here. Not a mailing list.
There are a great number of much more useful features that have been requested in this forum that I’d rather see added to the script than this option. I’ll not debate the usefulness of this particular feature in detail only because I do not have the time to give the argument the time it would deserve. I’m just voicing my vote for a “wait and see†approach to this while other key features take precedence. <img border="0" title="" alt="[Smile]" src="images/icons/smile.gif" />
