UBB.threads PHP Forum Software Community Forums General Suggestions and Feedback shout box for each forum

another shout box suggestion -- and i admit there may be practical difficulties with this -- is to have a separate (but optional) shout box for each forum, located at the top of the main centre column where messages are displayed. perhaps as an island.

AS long as they are "optional" with an option to have just one. Honestly my users don't think much of the "Shout Box" in the first place (but my site caters to old farts like me)

Would be excellent to have multiple shoutboxes

Would be even more excellent if it was optional. My users are old gear heads and could care less about "Shout Boxes". They just want a good reliable forum for discussing their stuff. So if it is made available, I hope it is something that can be turned on or off per forum.

Basil

well, presuming that it is even practical/possible, it would be essential that it be optional! not every forum would warrant a shout box.

one side-effect of having the shout box is the great reduction in the number of "chit-chat" posts in the message board. this, i feel, is highly desirable.

the problem is -- on my board at least -- the shout box has become very congested, with too many people carrying on too many unrelated conversations, and this sometimes causes a little frustration.

if we could keep the "general" board-wide shout box on the side, plus have larger shout boxes as islands in selected forums (located in the middle column, above the postings), then this would be very attractive indeed for my users.

I'm setting mine up with the shout box on the right side (along with other stuff I feel is non-essential), then I give members the option to turn off teh right column. The left column is were I keep all the "essential" stuff like cusome boxes with links to other site pages, etc)

It doesn't seem like it'd be impossible, just have it so that theres a new field in the database (forumid) and then have it read the config on if theres a shoutbox available for that forum, then pull the appropraite post from the db; and if that forum dens' thave its own shoutbox that it'd pull from the global one...

However, that could get kind of annoying, cas it'd make it so you'd have more to have to monitor from an admin perspective (I don't even use the shoutbox, we have an IRC server so i just idle around on there .

Surely the moderators for the forum would monitor it

Or so you hope... What about moderated forums where mod's rely on emails to alert them to new messages?

Another vote for separate shout boxes here. I have several sub-forums devoted to clubs that would benefit from their own shout box.

this is where shoutbox logs could be helpful, as an aid to moderation. at the moment, it's sometimes difficult to isolate "offenders" because by time a problem has been brought to the moderator's attention, the shouts have already gone.

Multiple shout boxes options and a log of them emailed to the moderator everyday would be GREAT.

It would definitely differentiate this software form all the others.

i agree multiple shout boxes would be rad. as long as they were switchable on/off so if a person just wanted one for the whole board it would work in all forums

rad??

"rad", a slang term for "cool"... I'm sure that the Urban Dictionary would have a lot more to say...

that's a new one for me

mind you we have rads in our house - and they keep us warm rather than cool

my rad owns your rad :nods: