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

Ok guys and gals. Our next version is slated to have User blogs. The version after that is slated for the UI overhaul where we'll redo the entire layout, skinning, adding updated Javascript libraries, etc. We'll stick with that if everyone wants to go that route, but here's the dilemma.

If we do blogs first and then the UI second, when we redo the UI we'll have to pretty much redo the blogs as well. Since the javascript, layout, etc. will all be changing.

If we were to do the UI first, then when we do the blogs we'll already have the new javascript libraries in place, the layout will be settled upon, etc. So, this would be the quickest overall method since there would be no backtracking.

But, the final decision will be yours. We've promised blogs for awhile now, so if you don't want to wait, then vote that way.

NOTE: Adding this on edit. If we do the UI first it will put off the blogs for awhile. The UI update will be a huge process. It might even be broken down into Control Panel first and front end second. So, if you're dying for blogs, take that into consideration.

NOTE #2: As of Nov, 23rd, blogs won, so this will be the route we'll go

Which comes first single choice

Blogs First! (50%, 67 Votes)

UI First! (50%, 66 Votes)

Total Votes: 133 Voting on this poll ends: 11/10/2008 11:23 AM

You know....

.... I bought a 3rd UBB license as it was said many tines that the blogs were coming shortly. I also bought an upgrade license for another copy as to have two UBB communities running blogs.

Looks like by the time the blogs come out I'm going to have to spend more money for upgrade licenses to get what I really wanted in the first place.

I understand your intent and need to upgrade the CP but hell man I'm loosing money here. Lets get out what you were saying your were coming out with.

I totally understand. We've been promising just as long that we'd have a better UI and new/updated Javascript libraries. Either way, one of these things is going to have to wait.

I've always said that I'll listen to what you guys want, so the only real/fair way I can do this is to leave the decision up to you guys.

Does the UI update mean you will be moving away from table based layouts to a css based approach? Hope so.

I don't really understand what the purpose/desire is to having blogging capability in a forum software.

I'm sure there are valid reasons, I just can't seem to get my head around what they might be.

Been a threads user since the wwwthreads days. I would like to see the blogs first. As far as the layout is concerned, what kind of layout are we talking about? I still prefer the old layout of the 6.x series

The UI overhaul should end up with a flexible layout. Right now, you can fairly easily change the colors, but the overall layout still looks pretty much the same.

What we hope to achieve with the new UI would be a skinning mechanism where skins not only include colors and css settings but template changes as well. So, if you prefer the old 6.x look, it would be possible to create a skin with that look. It will also be possible to create PDA skins that people have been requesting as well.

As for the table-less question. That's what I'm hoping for, but at this point it's up in the air, there still may be some tables, but we definitely hope to cut down and control more with a CSS approach.

I should also note on this. With the UI update, we'll be totally overhauling the user profile as well. Once that is done adding blogs to that functionality will be fairly simple. So, blogs could be included in the actual release that contains the front end overhaul, or will come shortly thereafter, if we were to go with the UI update first.

I do not wish to complain but I would like to personally see some of the hacks that have been around for a long time through many different releases and updated for pretty much every release for a long period of time added into the released general product.

Example:

Multiple Identity Detection

Center Island Option (Left / Right / Center) This would be great for the who is online and other islands.

Ability to set how many users are shown on the Who's online box.

And many more.

The problem is that these type things are popular and every time you update your board then your without certain options that were hacked into the software you have to wait for the new release of the hack or hope that the old one will work in the new release and spend tons of time placing popular hacks into the program.

Most all of this is control panel related.

If a UI overhaul wins out, do you have an estimated time frame?

I try and add a couple each version. We added a few last version, and we'll add a few more next version.

Haven't a clue at this point. It's a pretty big task. All new javascript libraries, scriptalicious or YUI (possibly YUI because I'm more familiar with it working on a few other things). So all the javascript related stuff will be redone, while adding new things, lightbox, WYSIWYG editor, etc.

Then there's the layout itself, moving towards more CSS control, coming up with the new skinning system, etc.

That's why we might brake it down into 2 chunks. Control Panel first, and then front end second.

Once we find out for sure which way we're going, then we'll get a better plan of attack.

This one is now in v7.4 under "portal settings"

I vote for the new UI. As I said in a previous thread, any UI redesign should be named UBB.threads 8.0. Blogs can then be added in 8.1.

I voted UI first, because of the simple fact I see no usage of blogging yet for our site.

I voted for UI as it would logical to do it right the first time, this way there will be less of a chance for bugs on the blogs

I voted for UI because I'm very skeptical about the need for blogs in UBB.

I feel if blogs are not going to give our users a compelling reason to use them over competing free blog platforms then there is no point in offering them.

They got to be at least as functional as Blogger and wordpress.com in terms of customization. We're not just talking about colors, layout, etc. Users demand the ability to add widgets to their blogs that use flash and JavaScript and unfortunately that could present a security headache for us admins. So I think there will also need to be some type of moderation or approval process so that our users could add their own js/flash widgets to the blog.

Lets start thinking about this problem and how it can be overcome. Otherwise, frankly, I don't feel its worth doing. Why would they use it? They'll just continue using Blogger, Wordpress, MySpace, and the hundreds of other free blogging platforms.

I agree completely, it'd be a major change in need of a major version update.

Oh and for note Riok, I still recommend scriptalicious over YUI; all yahoo would have to do is impliment api keys and we'd have a huge headache with forum admin's and non functioning forums until they went and signed up for a key lol...

I think IanSpence and SD concourr

Oh, and for note, I was the first vote for Blogs ... I figured, sure it may be more work, but it'd be in place to get started

If we were to use their CDN, which is an option, then I could see that being an issue. But, we'd be including the libraries with the software since they are released under a BSD license. So nobody's forum is just going to stop functioning.

In most cases it's going to be faster to reference their CDN for the framework, but we'll put in an option so it can either be grabbed from them or from the UBB install. So, even if you're using their CDN and they put in an extra hurdle to jump through, then it would just be a matter of switching to grabbing it locally.

Also, I've already done several projects with YUI and 0 with scriptalicious. So the learning curve has already been hurdled

<snicker> sd has a bunch of mods in script; wonder what he has in yui :x

I voted UI....not that have a clue "how" you guys go about doing the things you do to make this stuff work. I simply voted on the fact that Rick said the blogs would be much simpler and easier to "plug in" if he did the UI first....so....imagining how time consuming and mind boggling some of this may be, I suggest doing the major overhaul first then doing the "add ons"....my .02

I would like to see the daily digest feature restored.

Hi there,

I voted to UI , I am very sorry to go far from the main aim of this topic which is choosing between two options ,

But for me, I it will be good thinking if you give a third options which is improving the speed/response of UBB script like:

- Overall Tunning, DB normalization , Code normalization.

Please see my suggestions here :

Click here

Hope that redoing the UI is not meaning of Template and Designs only, we need to see our UBB faster than now.

Thank you
AlNadabi

I don't see why you want to implement blogs in UBB unless they're an import of Wordpress or Blogger blogs which are the market leaders.
Why re-invent the wheel?

I still can't believe that LDAP Authentication has not been implemented. Large organizations hate having separate databases of users which is a reason they choose not to buy UBB.

According to Rick from '07
https://www.ubbcentral.com/forums/ubbthreads.php/topics/182907/Rick.html#Post182907
"At this time, we do not [support ldap]. It's something we've had on our todo list for quite some time, but always gets pushed back because the demand for it has been fairly minimal."


Now's an ideal time!

Well I may see your point in some ways but not all ways here with your comment about blogs. This is all fine and dandy and if you do not wish to use blogs that is your choice.

A while back I was totally satisfied with UBB.Classic and have watched Gizmo post down in the Classic area boasting to get Threads. I fired a few comments at him as I Love threads. I had been looking for blogs in my Beagle community for some time back then as well. I had seen the conversations by Rick telling that blogs were coming very soon. I was so happy I bought yet a third UBB license. Yippie.

Why do I need blogs with my UBB? Well now that is a great question in it self. My communities are designed to discuss them selves and their Beagles. I have a new community about racing, same thing but Cars not beagles.

My community is designed that each person has a story and would like to show off their beagle. What would be a great way to have a short little space to do this incorporated with their registration? Why a BLOG.

I understand most of YOUR communities are not oriented like my communities however perhaps you my wish to understand how OTHER communities are structured and run before making statements like, "I don't really understand what the purpose/desire is to having blogging capability in a forum software.", "I'm very skeptical about the need for blogs in UBB.", or "I don't see why you want to implement blogs in UBB unless they're an import of Wordpress or Blogger blogs which are the market leaders."

Well. I'm not a market leader so perhaps I shouldn't have a community online right?

Anyway here is my statement from the other side of the fence, "If you actually had a totally family oriented interactive site I can't see why you would be running without blogs in your community."

Yes that was quite harsh and it was meant to be in a way however you really shouldn't speak for others as I shouldn't speak for your community.


Blogs have been a long time coming. It wouldn't be very nice to keep delaying them to those users who have wanted them for a long time. To go to a third party blog software and then hack it to use the current UBB member database and such would be a real pain in the rear and totally unnecessary as blogs were discussed as far back as 2006, it is almost 2009.



Well, thats my rant for today, LOL.

If you are looking at new script libraries for the UI overhaul then jQuery is a great option. Just moved to using it instead of Mootools and some of the plugins are really swish.

I chose "blogs" because the UI overhaul is gonna take a while...

While the need for blogs might not seem like a big issue, we cater to all sizes of communities. It's true, our blog implementation is going to be basic at best, especially compared to true blogging systems, even more so in our initial release. But it will still be useful on many sites.

It's somewhat like our photo galleries. Software that is strictly dedicated to photo galleries is always going to be better, but ours serves a purpose and is quite useful for many sites.

Our initial implementation is really just going to be an extended profile page. It's not actually going to take a long time to complete. Just the ability for certain groups to create blogs that will show in their profile, where other users can comment on them. Like I said, quite basic for our initial release, but we'll go from there.

Allen is also right in the fact that the UI overhaul is a big project. Not quite as daunting as when we worked on 7.0, but still a pretty big task, so it's going to take quite a while. Pretty sure we'll split it into two releases, with the first one covering the control panel.

I plan to use the blogs feature as a 'mobblog' for all users on the site who've reached a certain number of posts - really, not much more than setting a particular forum to post to the portal and allowing trusted users to start new topics in that forum. Update a few things in profiles to highlight recent new topics and voila!

Because a couple forums have moved to table-less design we have an idea of where to go, but the re-design of the front end is gonna be a huge project - what browsers do we support would be the first question

I hope this doesn't take the years of 7.0

No no no That's why we'll split it into 2 steps. I think splitting it, we should still be able to follow a normal release cycle.

I donno what is concerned a small or large community but we do a few hundred posts a day. We also have many many users surfing our site that do not register. The traffic is pretty much 10% registered and the other 90% just surfing the site never registered.

We serve like a million and a half pages a month from that site. I guess this is considered a small community as were just a non corporate entity on the internet. I'm also sure if we were a corporation then we, with the same stats, would be considered a large community.

Just an FYI, my comment about having customers with different size communities, wasn't meant as a dig on smaller ones. Doesn't matter to me if you get 1 post a day or a thousand. Everyone has an equal voice in this.

Rick what is the time duration of a normal release cycle anyway?

The goal is a feature release to be about every 3-4 months. We've gotten off that cycle a couple times by trying to cram too much into a release, but that's the timeframe we try and shoot for anyways.

I voted for UI before reading through this topic. It really doesn't matter to me either way. My users aren't interested in blogs since my main forum is just a small personal site with a few friends logging in. They are interested in having an integrated chat page as am I. I also want to echo Allen's request for moblogging being integrated, that's one of my favorite features at the Groupee.com mothership.

Personally, I think we we should go with the blogging for those of us owners that want to better monetize their forums with that feature. And maybe throw in a moblog system and chat to round it out before tackling a major UI overhaul.

I voted blogs, since I want to offer blog service already for some time to my users. I can work out a partnership or buy yet another software, but them I'm stuck with two member databases. Not very user friendly neither. It's easy for them if they can jump from forum to blog and vice versa.
Why offering blog service? To create loyalty, make sure they always come back, to generate inbound links (SEO) and MONETIZE my forum. My site and forum is focused to women. They want easy tools, they don't want to setup complicated software.
Another example is a website in our country with a mix between regular site, forum AND blog. It drives traffic like hell, and advertisers!

femistyle you are exactly correct. For me it is all about the money. The more traffic the more money I make from my communities.

Now this does not sound like a community oriented type thing but in the near future I will post a photo in the gallery to show that I have a few bucks tied up not only in software but hardware.

I see very few people in here that actually run their own servers and or have the ability to do so. My foremost community is not only a way to generate traffic to gain exposure for my advertising to generate income but demonstrate what my systems can do for those who wish to park their sites in my home, yes I meant all this is in my home.

I vote for Blogs although i can clearly see the appeal/need for a UI overhaul.

For me having integrated bloggs would do away with the need of having multiple sites catering for both needs.

I've experimented with some other software integration to merge ubb with cms / blogging software, but i could never get around the multiple login issues (php is not my native language).

I wont be disappointed if UI gets the nod over Blogs, but Blogs gets my vote.

Well, I do want to offer blogs myself; WordPressMU has such a fickle settings that annoy the crap out of me (forcing users to the "anti-www initiative" for starters)...

I'd like to offer at least something "small" (and with any luck, some "group based blog" options, where you can have a "blog group" (where a group of users can post to a blog) vs just "every user has their own blog that only they can post to")

Actually i like the group blog idea even better than individual blogs :thumbs_up:

I don't think you'll see a group based blog in our initial release of blogs. Like I said, the first release is going to be fairly basic, extending their user profile page, and you'll be able to turn the ability on/off for certain groups of users.

Then versions following that will extend on the features.

Like group blogs :x...

Well I voted UI and it was way ahead of blogs at first but today I see Blogs is ahead by 1 vote.

To me the Blogs would take advantage of a UI update. Being a basic blog in the first place, then the UI is way behind just makes it less attractive to me. I'm just a bit tired of seeing BBS sites that look like they came from the Dark Ages. Would like to see a bit more modern look to the site without having to be a dedicated Web Developer.

As for comments about Bulletin Boards for Corporations please provide some links to such sites that are using off the shelf BBS software with LDAP. I'm not saying they're not there but I don't recall ever being to such a site and I don't recall seeing any of the main BBS software offering LDAP. Unless I'm mistaken few if any users (except those owning their own sever) would be able to implement LDAP anyways. It is not a USER profile type installation.

Just yesterday the founder of my largest community and my self were just discussing going that route. He still has plenty of activity in the community and even though I actually own it I still include him in all my decisions and new things. Sometimes he likes the ideas and we do it or sometimes he don't and tells me why, I rarely don't do it anyways, lol.

I mean if you're talking BIG like a Hotmail type big then okay, but it has its pros and cons as with most technology.

Again though I'd still be interested in seeing a site that is using Off The Shelf "Internet forum software" that supports LDAP Lightweight Directory Access Protocol

This is a list of Internet Forum software for most of the known applications and none of them list LDAP (though this list may not be up to date and may not include such details for all applications)

Comparison of Internet forum software written in (ASP)

Comparison of Internet forum software written in (PHP)

Comparison of internet forum software written in (other languages)

.

Losing ground on the UI Poll I guess
My thinking is I would forgo the blogs to move forward so Rick does not have to backtrack on code changes.
Potential for more bug fixes which means more delays to move forward on other items

IMO, updating the UI before adding blogs is the most efficient/productive development path for advancing UBBThreads in it's core competency(excellent community forum software solution).
There are many blog/cms solutions out there with integrated forums. One problem with these solutions, forums are feature deficient in comparison to UBBThreads. Unfortunately, member management integration does not easily exist between popular CMS packages and UBBThreads. It makes more sense to start with an open source CMS like Wordpress and create a module to integrate member management between WP and Ubbthreads.

I voted for UI overhaul. The way I see it a more flexible UI will make UBB.threads much easier to integrate into other scripts such as blogging engines and whatnot.

I can only speak for myself of course, but I run an automotive discussion forum and use subscriptions to provide different "benefits" for my users. Since most of my users are car enthusiasts, I offer blogs for a certain level of membership (Gold) so they can chronicle their car-related activities, for example). The blogs allow my members an easy way to have their own web space on my site and they are very popular. The problem is, I have to use a third party blog software. For me, it would be far better to have an integrated blog capability that has the look and feel of the rest of my forum.

My 2 cents.

I vote for Blogs first because - it is something I have wanted for a long time! Currently, I use a third party blog software for my member's blogs, but I would much prefer (and so would my users) a blog system that is part of the UBB system and that has the same look and feel of the rest of the forum. I suppose the need for blogs depends on the type of community you have. My members are British car enthusiasts and would like to have a way to show off and chronicle their restorations, racing exploits, etc, as part of the overall threads community.

Thanks Basil for your perspective on the blog feature.

Like I said in my post, I just couldn't wrap my head around how they would be used in a forum system.

Now I can see where a expanded user profile in a "miniblog" form could be a useful thing to build interest in the community members, and by extension the community itself.

I never said they were a bad idea. Although from a development perspective if revamping the UI helped ease the integration of features such as, blogs, classified ads and whatever else Rick may have in mind, I think it makes sense from a project/resource efficiency perspective to lay the groundwork first.

Which ever gets done first is fine by me!

BTW, someone mentioned a WP plugin; have you actually went and looked at WPMU? It's dirty, hard to work with, and worse of all, it forces you to use the "anti www initiative" with no way to disable it short of diving into code... So consider my vote a huge "no way" on that route...

Blogs First!

I did vote for Blogs Before the Topic increased in size.
Its a Tough one.

Ive gone for Blogs for the simple reason its been on the "Road Map" for so long. Ive posted its coming for god knows how long.

But what puts a downer on it for me, its that the "New"
features always seem to come on line in there "Basic" form.
And its a for ever wait for it to get to a "Normal" Level.

IMO there is still work to be done on the structure its self
before any more new features need fixing.
7.4.1 has come out and there are Bugs out the Box so to speak,
I would love to see a STABLE release we can have confidence in.
I did have confidence back in 7.2.2 but the permissions i knew was a hell of a job, and it seems to be done and working fine.

I want to see the ability to store Gallery Pictures to a
directory of my choice like the upload files.
I currently have via upload files 7,000 images.
With the Gallery possibly 2,000 and there all being saved to
the Root of my Forums. Which are mx 2mb each.
Ive no way to archive or manage the Gallery Files.

I have space to play with but does everyone have that luxury?
And while your there lest get them watermarked as there nicking our bandwidth so we may as well stamp on the images where there coming from

--------------
Its a great product rick but the upgrades just are not exciting anymore. I think of it from the user not the Admin side of it.

I read a web survey recently and it pointed out that many members of a online forum will leave if its too difficult or complicated to understand. I think were at that level now.
Were not the easiest forum to get to grips with.
Yes if you stick at it, but it can be difficult for new members.

Great work Rick.
Its all feedback as long as we can move forward with new features more frequently with less bugs you will keep most of us happy

I agree Mark. I'm a very technical type dude. I'm like Scotty on the original Star Trek. I would rather read a technical manual over watch TV, LOL.

This is getting very complicated to use for this software.

I have to agree with that statement.

There are so many products coming out now that are clones of the MySpace, FaceBook, YouTube, Flickr, Twitter, MyBlogLog, and other very popular user community destinations, that mimic the look and feel of those apps and are written in PHP. Most of them now include the feature of allowing a user to manage a web page of some sort, and have limited control over it, and blog with it, and upload multimedia, control a contact or 'buddy' list, etc. Many of these products includes availability of the Single Sign-Ons (e.g. OpenID) that permits users registered on a large service provider such as Yahoo to have instant registered access to your site. The ability to change not only the colors and background images of a style, but the entire layout as well, with just one click. The ability to have "plug-ins" of all sorts, such as a product like Moodle, for instance.

All of THAT would be "exciting".

Users want more now that they are accustomed to the features on MySpace and FaceBook. They've been trained to think that it's normal to have such features available on a website, and when they come across sites that don't offer them, those sites look primitive. Old-fashioned. Out of touch.

I know the UI is important. But monetizing our sites, and drawing traffic to them is pretty important too. Why should you add Blogs now? Because you've been promising to do it for a very long time, and there's no compelling reason not to keep your promise.

The broad availability of many, many white-label user community products with forums, chats, blogs, photo and video upload galleries, interactive games that keep score, etc has made me think seriously about moving my community over to one of them, just to thrill and excite my existing user base, and to attract a crowd of new users used to "tags", and "tweets", and automatically getting free widgets when they join a user community. The only thing that's held me back, really, is the backlog of 10 years worth of posts, all indexed in search engines, that can't be imported to any new software.

I know you make a solid product, and kudos to you for the care you take to produce a stable, bug-free piece of code. But please, please, can't you take a look around at, if not the wave of the future, at least the splash of the present, and help us webmasters give users what they want?

For me, it's all about retaining memebrs and attracting new ones. And it's getting harder and harder to do withoutsoftware that's getting to be considered "standard".

I know coding is painful and difficult. I know things have to come one baby step at a time. But starting by adding blogs as a feature would be a little thing we could throw to users who are increasingly distracted by larger community sites with nicer features.

Thanks.

I agree completely! One consistent complaint I've had over the years is from the members, who just want to discuss cars; often times they have difficulty navigating and grasping the vast array of "features." I have found more than one occassion where I installed a new version with new bells and whistles and found that my members were not nearly as enthralled with the new features as I was. Threads is a great piece of forum software (the best), but the sad truth is, in its current form, much is lost on the average member (at least on my site). It seems there has been a lot of focus on stuff that the true forum-geeks, like us, appreciate, but not necessarily the average user.

I'm not proposing that any features be eliminated, but when the new UI is developed, I would suggest that the primary focus should be on making the forum less cluttered and easier to navigate/understand. As it happens, I am an analyst who conducts Operational Testing of complex (mostly military) systems, and I can tell you that the #1 thing that gets looked at in any Operational Test is the man-machine interface. The simpler and cleaner you can make it, the better.

Just 2 more cents.

I'm with you both. I to would like to compete with the "Big Boys" by having my communities giving things that the big guys give included. I have not only my time but a good deal of money invested in my communities not only with the software but also equipment to be able to be self efficient and totally in house from the site to all the equipment that makes it possible.

Some of you have seen my photo in the gallery of some of my equipment and not trying to brag or anything but I have been working on having everything self efficient for some time. Recently this year I took the plunge and built my rack and added a few nice toys as well. Took the time to make it not only functional but eye pleasant as well just in case the buddies happen to stumble into the server room.

Besides, you wouldn't believe how many women tell me I have a nice rack, lol.

I want all the nice things that those big corporations have for my communities. I like to play around building better servers and running great software on them. I love the UBB product as I have been with it since 1998 and now have 3 runtime licenses for the product. In the future I hope to have many more and more communities going and be very popular too.

hmmm... blogs moved into the lead.

Lead or not, imho UI should win by a real major vote (2/3?) to break the promise of blogs first.

Rick
We / I appreciate the Massive Permissions Upgrade you have done and i'm sure down the line it will prove to be the best way forward. But its got to be balanced with what the "New Member See's".

It was Great to see the New Addon's 30 Day posters and More custom islands, but there wasn't really anything added to the existing features which is part of your General Road Map.

As Much as we need Blogs and a UI we still need some features ironing out / enhancing. Lets not forget them as we move forward as its the attention to detail we like.

---------------
But all said and Done IT IS a great product.
It is moving forward, and improving.

We as Site Admin are important to you and the Product.
Our Members are important to us and our communities.

( Did Barack Obama say that lol )

Ive so got to get me a Rack lol

One thing is for sure we have all invested a lot of time
and money in the software and want it to succeed.
keep up the Great Work Rick. ( Just a bit quicker lol (Joke))

For those wanting stuff for the average user to get excited about, the blogs will be a small bit of that (like I said, it's not going to be very full featured to start). The UI overhaul will be a bigger chunk of that.

Complexity should be handled a bit better as well. When I mentioned inline help for the admin area, that will probably be available to the general user as well. Most everything, we plan to have a little ? or some other small link that will be clickable to explain a feature in some type of popup/lightbox, without cluttering the page.

In the end however, we'll always be a forum first. We'll never be a facebook/myspace/flavor-of-the-month-social-networking-site mimic

Since 7.0 has come out, we've spent the time getting the main features we need put in, at least in a basic capacity. Once we get blogs done, then we'll have all of the real main features that we need in place, galleries, new permission system, blogs, payment system.

Then we can start to extend on those after the UI is in. The user's profile page is going to become their little hub that will have blogs, user photo galleries, ability for others to leave comments, reciprocal buddies/friends. All permission based.

I remember way back in classic we had the ability to have a user picture. When we moved to Threads many of my users had asked why they can not have that anymore.

Blogs

I've been bugging Rick about this and the user bio since .t7 was in "what features do we need now" stage

I don't really remember a true picture feature in classic.
I remember that you could edit your custom title and add html code to show a picture which displayed the same as today when you allow uploads of custom avatars. The only problem with it now is you don't have a way to manage the file you uploaded.Just upload another.(Wonder what happens to the old avatar)

It is over written by the new one if the same file format. If you upload a .gif then your next avatar is a .jpg then the .gif remains and is abandon by the software but remains in your upload directory.

We are probably getting a little off topic here but that is my point.
As a user I upload ruben.jpg as a avatar. Then I decide I don't want a avatar. So I select no avatar. Tomorrow I want to turn it back on. I have to upload a file again to enable it.
WHY?
It should already be visible to select again or delete it.

The program abandons the file even if it is all ready in the upload directory. It will not remember it unless you upload it again then it is placed in the data base. If you could grab it again from the upload folder then you might be able to grab anyone's personalized avatar.

OTAY
And I guess we are tied for UI/BLOGS now.
Blogs UI Blogs UI

I haven't had a chance to read everyone's comment, I plan on doing that later, but here are my thoughts after using this software for 8 years.

My vote is for UI, because it benefits ALL customers and ALL users. The blog will only benefit some. I really feel like we are stuck in the 2001 with this UI, and with as cheap and fast as hosting is now, there is no reason to not incorporate more AJAX type stuff that really takes the user experience to the next level. As my forum approaches 1 million posts having features that benefit all users, not just some that want to blog, is really my highest priority. Better search is a must.

As far as blogs, it's a good idea, but think more of a Facebook type of application is more appropriate. Even just having a large customizable post-like field would be great, and not hard to do. I would really encourage the ubbdev community to work on this feature themselves. We have already started on doing this type of customization to our member profile pages ourselves.

http://cascadeclimbers.com/forum/ubbthreads.php/users/3694/off_the_hook

We have a custom trip report application that is integrated into Threads, as well as better integration with PhotoPost. In the profile page we've added total number of trips and photos, as well as links to recent trips, and I'm working on a photo plugin using a scriptaculous script. Features in the works include a large customizable field for "manifestos" as well as "who I climb with". Each customers site is different, and each has different requirements, which I think should be met by the ubbdev community.

Lastly, and I know this is a bit off topic, and I've expressed this view before, I think this software should cost more with the hopes of adding more features per development cycle. As someone who runs a highly customized board, the amount of time we spend in the testing and upgrading of our board is fairly significant, and sometimes hard to justify. We just upgraded to 7.3 a month ago, and we aren't even thinking of 7.4 at this point. If we could get the features of two .x in one, in the same development cycle, that is something I would gladly pay for.

Well I'll be honest and say that I don't visit these places like Facebook, MySpace very often. Yeah there are links upon links to follow and view things but as for following and searching a discussion it is not an easy thing to do on those sites. If people are lost using UBB for an actual discussion then how do they use these other sites? Sure they have cool looking pages and maybe I'm just old fashioned but there just doesn't seem to be much real structure to these sites and maybe one day the BBS as it is will die off but there are sites like IGN that have millions of users and for the most part they're still using BBS software much like UBB only really UGLY and not as easy to use.
Here is an example BLOG IGN Blog which I'm not knocking as it has it's own crowd and what they're looking for but actual trackable discussion doesn't seem to be one of them.
Not sure if non members can get here, but here is an example of their board software which just plain sucks compared to UBB boards.ign.com




So maybe it was not the best thing for Rick to openly ask opinions on this subject

Whichever path you take Rick I'm okay with.

The problem with UBBDev is that every time you upgrade, once again, you have to re add all those modifications back into the UBB and hope they will still work.

I for one would stop using UBB if the only way to get blogs in the site is to have to keep adding in the modifications every upgrade and hope it will still work. The first time it wouldn't work is the last time I would ever upgrade and would be looking into a new system pay or free the next day.

I'm referring to hacks such as Blogs or something very complicated in that matter. Some communities need certain thing and others do not, It would be nice to at least have the option to use something or turn it off rather then not have that ability at all and have to keep hacking the software to have the site features your site would require.

Looks like the poll is going Blogs UI tied. Then UI blogs tied.
At what point is the decision made. Is the Poll set to expire at some date?

We'll give it another week or so probably before we really start going on the next version, probably til around Sunday.

Rick

I have been using the forum software your team produced since 1998 (Classic) and the biggest issue I see moving forward is integration. Yes you are a forum first however many of us are trying to build and retain a community. Forums were the base of the community back in the late 1990's (before they coined the team social networking) but that has changed. Blogs and other social network tools are now important in building a community. I do not think you/your team need to "re-invent the wheel" and try to create these new features (blogs, social networks, alumni directories, trip reports etc) in UBB. You will have to keep up with new features if you do. A light version of these features will not keep a community satisfied. This is why I voted for the UI. I am hoping that you build a new back end that will facilitate PLUG-IN for easier integration. I am tried of having to update the custom software that I have around the the UBB DB. I am tired of watching other forum software seamlessly integrate with the best of the best tools. Apart from Photopost/Classifieds (which I use) there is really nothing else that integrates with UBB. I may get chastised for this but there seems to be minimal effort to reach out and provide ways to integrate what has not become standard community software that is out there. I don't know if there is a "rift" but I strongly believe that UBBDEV and UBB should be working closer together. There should be a standard for Plug-in that integrate seamlessly...UBBDEV should be the place to get those standard plug-ins.

I know for many of you a UI will not bring more page views or maximize ad dollars (CPM)in the short term. However if it is done with the goal of seamless integration for plug-ins it will help in the long term.

I cannot agree with you any more

I voted Blogs , But I think this is not so important.

As to integration , I think UBBThreads as an OpenID provider is the most important of all.
No database schema changes (well , maybe some logging needed) , just some php coding can make UBBThreads become an OpenID provider.

I can build my custom webapps that utilizing UBB's identity . OpenID is growing , there will be more and more webapps that consumes OpenID identity . I think blog function is very good , but there are myriads of OpenSource blog system out there , and they are accepting OpenID ! Wordpress has an OpenID plugin , I can setup a Wordpress environment and let my UBBThreads users to create their blogs with UBBThreads' identity (and thus preserve reputation).

Again , Blog is good , but , it doesn't need to be implemented by UBBThreads team!

so .... Please... OpenID ... Please.....

I say API, but i think that is covered by the UI overhaul (and an API would give you integration options)

OpenID sounds like a good idea, unless it screws up the millions of current members of ubb forums.