UBB.threads PHP Forum Software Community Forums General Suggestions and Feedback Your vote counts!

Those would be covered (eventually) in a UI update.

I've been promising blogs to my community for an awful long time and have had to endure some grief over it.

Because we LOST a place to post a biography, when you upgraded to the new software, it kind of put us in a bind.

We demand that people identify themselves to use our site, but we let people put their names in the bio area if they did not want to post with their real name. As long as they divulged their identity somewhere.

Now we have people upset because we aren't enforcing our own rules. We can't without having an area to do so, and right now, we just don't seem to have it.

Blogs are more important. The UI is just a way to manipulate how the forums look and work. It's still the forum. Blogs are a concrete item that adds unique functionality to the site and one that has been promised for a couple years or so.

I'm getting a little bummed out with it.

Even though Rick closed this poll I guess people can still vote.
The decision was made that Blogs win but the poll as of today shows UI wins. HA

BTW, UI will also cover a Profile overhaul; which I keep whining for the photo field and bio fields back

I wanted Blogs on the basis that they were part of the "Road Map"
and would be coming soon and i guess like a good few members
they were pleased to pass on that information to there own Members.

If possible in the Future i would love to see the "Road Map"
Just so we know what Rick is actually Doing, as it always seemed
to be a bit of a secret. I'm fine with Locking a topic with whats
coming next. But it would at least let us adjust to what's coming.

I love the idea of the "Make Over" its just a shame the "Bloggs"
as a new feature have once again the word "Basic" Attached to them,
but who knows they may have more to them that what we think.

Time will tell,
I'm sure Rick has it all in hand and wont put a vote out into
the public domain again, but i guess its feedback too.

I'm sure Ricks path is a winning path, and something we will all enjoy,
just let us know where your going with things.

Well done adding those few dev features ( Day Top posters etc )
you see the little things can keep many of us happy too.

I'm planning to upgrade my live forum Christmas Week,
and then i will be back on the ball with feed back

What can we expect as Bloggs as Basic as they will be ??

Well, everything has to be basic at one point; i mean, we are a forum afterall ... Look at the huge competitors we're nosing in on with adding a blog, or photo gallery; theres no way we can offer everything they can with just a version1...

There would have to be adding the basic stuff in, and checking user input on what users would like to see added at a later point, etc.

Myself, i can't wait to see blogs added in, why you ask? WPMU sucks (Multi User WordPress); they force you to be a part of the "AntiWWW initiative" which strips "www" from your url in the script... Well, I force all "non www" requests to www on my site as I WANT to use it... Well, this results in a "permanent redirect error" (where apache forwards to www and the script forwards to the non www, over and over and over).

Yes it does have to start at version 1
But IMO should continue to develop too.

I'm picking on the Gallery.
Its been in for over a year i guess now, and all that has
changed is you can now see the url under the post.

Water marking and the choice of a upload directory (Simular to Files) would be
improvements that haven't been made.

I have 3,000 Gallery images uploaded (2mb Max size)
And 11,000 file uploads which are all images anyway.

Bandwidth can / does cost money.

The file uploads is fine as i can choose the location,
but having the Gallery in a default location sucks for
bandwidth monitoring if they go over (In theory) then
the whole forum goes off line.

(I have my File uploads to a subdomain, which will go off line
after x GB per month, but my Main Domain will stay online)

I would have liked to see that addressed before we have
visible links to the gallery posts, now you can be assured
more bandwidth can be taken from you having the choice for
sml med large. .

Having the URL's under the Gallery Images isn't as important
as managing the upload space and looking after your bandwidth.
Then you can decide if its a good idea to have the links on show.

I know its was probably just as easy to throw those in as extras as that bit of
code was being worked on, but i'm trying to say is that the Gallery has been basic since it began,
its not what i would call version 2.

So when we read it will start off Basic the Question i think
of almost straight away is for how long? And seems like the
next release isn't a enhancement or tweak.

Version 7.2 Released - July 16, 2007
7.2 Feature: Finished the basic design of the gallery listing page. When you go to a forum that is designated as a gallery, instead of getting a list of topics, you'll get a list of thumbnails along with some basic information, poster, caption, views, etc.

7.2.1 Bug Fix: Fixed a permission problem with gallery/file attachments on some servers.

7.3.1 BugFix: Fixed a potential issue where a blank file attachment would lead to the directory permissions being changed on gallery folders.

Version 7.4 Released - Oct 16, 2008

Feature: Modified all gallery posts, so when viewing a picture it will give you the ubbcode for the thumbnail, medium and full sized images in the Post Description area. Also now displaying the size and dimensions of the full sized image.

Feature: When editing forum permissions, you will now be able to see what the max attachment size is set to in php.ini and you will not be able to set a value higher than this for File or Gallery attachments.

Change: Modified the gallery code to allow for the .jpeg extension in addition to just .jpg

Change: Added the gallery directory and sub-directories to the Permission Check screen in the Control Panel.

Okay so you can see that it was basic for 15 months.
Before other updates were made. And i see no reason why blogs
would be any different. We will have to wait a long time before
they move from being "Basic". Basic Meaning as a new Feature.

I just think giving us the option to manage our files
before offering "open" URLS would have been a more logical choice.

I hope i'm wrong a really do

Well, if I recall properly, Rick had previously stated that he wanted a base set of features in place before beginning to extend functionality... And a part of what we're waiting on is the UI overhaul...

Come on someone... we need 1 more VOTE to make it 50/50

I strongly agree with DMOL on the topic of being able to combine our membership registration with message board registration. Right now I have 52K members on my email list but have only gotten 17K of them to register to use the boards. And it causes constant confusion when they sign up for one but really wanted the other. It's a daily thing I have to deal with and no matter how much I explain it to new members/users it still causes confusion. I want our members to go 1 place to both join our organization and get on our email list AND become registered to post on the message boards.

And my vote (though it''s already too late) would have been for the UI first. Why duplicate work?

Brian

So this was almost a month ago, on 11.21. When can we expect the blog at least in beta? when in production? Would be a nice Christmas present!

Did you ever specify what the ubb-blog software is supposed to do? A spec list of the blog features? Please do so or refer us to the appropriate spec list.


What I would want and expect is that I myself as the main poster can have blog pages, where my contribution is in larger, more prominent fonts then the replies, or other people's remarks. Or, I wonder, maybe that can already be done somehow, by having the first post in a thread automatically in bigger fonts, or by having admin posts be in bigger fonts, and by restricting maximum font size by other posters. If it can be done somehow, please someone enlighten me how to do that.


Oh yes, it is too late already, but my vote is for blog!


And, off topic, Rick, you might pursue this:
123flashchat.com, a commercial chat provider with flash and ajax chat clients made a very nice chat integration for me, with database integration, neat security features, etc. I pestered them until they nicely integrated features like

• admin rights: board admins become chat admins
• banned members are banned in chat too
• visible differentiation of registered members vs unregistered guests

Well, from what Rick said previously is that the blogs will pretty much be a extension of the users profile.

My translation to this is he is going to add back in the ability to have a photo in the user bio, UBB.Classic feature killed in UBB.Threds but asked for many times, and make a new field allowing for a brief comment from the user.

Anyway that was my translation to it all.

This is not really a blog but hey, Rick stated many times he is ONLY interested in "message boards" and not community software for other uses, or pretty much but not those exact words.

Since the poll is about 50-50%, why don't they implement both at the same time . Never heard of multi-tasking or making a good design beforehand ?

Nope. Never had hear of that there type thing.

Features will probably be an updated profile page including a UBB buddy list, visitor comments to the profile itself, and blogs. List of recent blogs on the main profile page, linking to the full blog post with user comments beneath. Some type of user control for the profile owner to edit/delete comments, with the forum admin being able to do so as well.

As for not working on both at the same time. Couple reasons for this. As mentioned we've been promising blogs for a long time now. At this point I'm not sure if we'll be doing the UI update in one swoop. We may be splitting it into a Control Panel update first and then the front end second. If that were the case it would be 2 versions until blogs would get put in.

It's not totally doubling the work. The database work and interaction between scripts and DB won't have to be redone, just the design. When we do the UI update you can expect the blog to expand in features a bit. Probably giving the owner the option to what columns are displayed on the right/left side, etc.

Perhaps when you do the "UI" stuff you can expand from the right/left to right/left/bottom.

So, here is the version numbering I am guessing.

Blogs = 7.5
CP UI update = 7.6
User UI update = 8.0

Rick,

Did you take a look at the template method that b2evolution uses?
http://skins.b2evolution.net/
and more developers stuff on this:
http://forums.b2evolution.net/viewforum.php?f=6
and details http://forums.b2evolution.net/viewtopic.php?t=17115

Because this open source framework is a real good implementation of UI completely removed from app-functionality, and using a plugin structure to install widgets that can be flexible configured on the page. In my opinion this should be the way template design should be implemented everywhere .

BTW, just because something is "open source" doesn't mean it can be added to just any old script; its license has to allow it (such as the Apache2 license)...

The route I've been trying to get Rick to use is much like what PostNuke/PHPNuke use, which already utilize Smarty (which we're already using)

hmmm... maybe they could be the moderator of their own blog with inline editing of the comments like we do for the mods in the main forums.

Your vote DOES NOT count! ANYMORE

LOL - The dead line for this posting has come and gone

The license used for b2evo is GNU GPL. I don't know if you can use this then, but I am hoping he would seriously take a look at the b2evo skin/widget implementation since it is so easy to use and configure.

That was a pretty close vote

so whats the eta on blogs? i would have voted BLOGS had i seen this i KNOW my vote doesn't count!

Once 7.4.2 is out,
were told not long, that's all we know.

Dont expect too much apparently is an addition to a users profile page, and will be BASIC. (At First)