UBB.threads PHP Forum Software Community Forums General Suggestions and Feedback Revised wish list for 7.2

Now that 7.1 final is about out of the gate, I thought I'd re-post my "revised" wish list for 7.2, for what its worth:

Being a 6 year user of UBB.C and UBBT, I thought I would post my "wish list" for Threads 7.2 based on my experience, for what that's worth (you may already be planning some of this):

1. Hide Email from bots.
Rationale: When members post their email address (or someone elses) in a post, it is almost guaranteed that the spambots will pick it up. In my Threads 6.5 I had a hack (don't remember where I got it) that I put in showflat.php and showthreaded.php that would cause a guest or a bot to only see [Login to View Email] unless the guest logged in, in which case they could see the email addy. The code (hack) for 6.5 looks like this:

if(!$user['U_Username'] || $user['U_Username']==""){
$Body = preg_replace("/<a href=(\"|")mailto:(.*?)(\"|")>(.*?)<\/a>/i","<B>[Login to view email]</B>",$Body);
}

I know a similar "hack" might be possible, but this would be a really nice great feature to have in the "official" install and I'm sure that members of threads communities all around the globe would be greatful for this little protection from the bots.

2. Alternate colored rows in the CSS
Rationale: Its just one of those things that is missing when going from 6.X to 7 and would be nice to have that capability to color alternate rows in forum lists and threads lists.

3. Member-selectable forums.
Rational: My members really like the "favorite forum" feature in 6.5 that allows them to only see forums they are interested in. I know T7 has the Watched Forums thing, but thats not the same and is much less user friendly. I'd really like to see in a future version, the capability for members to just easily "toggle on or off" those forums they are not interested in. The Admin should however have the ability to set some forums so they can't be turned off (like announcements, etc).

4. Easier toggle for side bars.
Rationale: The current system is "good" when a member can go into their preferences and toggle the right or left side (depending on admin setup). I think it would be even better if there were little triangles or arrows just above the left and/or right side (maybe in the Nav menu) that a member could just click to turn on and off the side bars.

5. Admin-controled max number of attachments
As it is now, I can limit the max file size for an individual attachment, but I can't limit a user from attaching 100 files if they wanted to. I have heard there is some php limitation that makes implementing this difficult, so how about someting like this: Say the max allowed attachments in a post is 4. A user comes along to make a post and attaches 5 files to the post. When the submit button is pushed, a simple check is made to count the number or attached files and if it is more than allowed, the post is not submitted, but instead, they are given an error message that says they have exceeded the max allowed attachments.


Just a few ideas for a great product,

Basil

All good ideas & fairly essential

I have 3 feature requests:

1. Ability to put custom islands/other islands in the center column of the portal - would make the portal *much* more customizable/admin-friendly

2. Categories that can be set to 'collapsed' by default, individually. If you have lots of forums you have to scroll for ages to get to the bottom of the page. Would be nice to be able to collapse a few so they were still available, but not so freaking long to the newbie to the site.

3. 'Teaser' forum setting available - setting for forum so that users could see the forum, see there are new posts/activity/etc but not be able to click into it without having the permissions to do so. Josh posted this as a mod at ubbdev.com

Yes and Yes... lol

Heres another. Currently, when viewing a list of topics in a forum, there is a "Display Options" section at the very bottom of the list! I have been running 7.1B5 for a while now and only the other day did I discover this was there. It allows you to sort the threads by different criteria. THIS NEEDS TO BE AT THE TOP! Maybe have it as another pull-down called "Display Options" like we currently have "Forum Options" or "Topic Options". Most of my users had no idea that you could sort the posts in different ways, and neither did I!

Basil

LOL - I had never noticed that either!

100% agree.

sounds good to me lol

Helloooo, Rick?

You know, he doesn't reply to everything; whereas chances are he READS everything... Would you rather have him code like a good little monkey, or respond to every thread

The helloooo was rhetorical

Maybe y'all need to pay attention to the software better!
(Okay, I didn't notice it either! )

uh huh, suuuuuuure

It would be pretty hard to move these options up to the top, as it isn't really possible to do all of them with just links. You have all of the options for what to sort by, what order to sort them, and how far back you want to view. So these pretty much have to stay as dropdown select boxes.

Here is one that I would REALLY like..

I signed into a Forum yesterday that did this for one of the webdate software..

It told me if the login name was take right away.

One of the complaints that I have had, is it is difficult to log in, often they have not ticked the rules approval, would be appreciated if that would 'glow in the dark' attention.

If they miss that they have to put their password in again, and their email address..

It seems hard for new people.. If you have not created a membership in a while try logging in to your own forum, or my beta one at www.adventistcafe.com

Thoughts?

Yeh I've made this request, an ajax lookup of the username table upon signup... I love the idea

I just thought of another feature I'd like to seee some day - the ability to set an auto expire time for PMs. I just looked in my tables and have hundreds of pages of PMs in my messages tables. I would like to see a setting where you can delete PMs after X- days because many users will spam up teh PM section and NEVER delete their PMs. So, if you had a setting that you could set so that PMs would delet after an admn-specified time, then have a cron run to do teh job each day.

Basil