UBB.threads PHP Forum Software Community Forums General Suggestions and Feedback Paid Subscriptions - Needs More Incentive

I really believe that, because ubb supports paid subscriptions,
admins should be able to offer more incentive to users who decide to subscribe to more than what regular users have privileges to.
This is the main reason why I chose and invested in ubb to begin with, because a lot of open source forum scripts don't support paid subscriptions.

Such as:

- Personalizing their author content colors (That everyone can see, not only their "theme") (remember MySpace, OpenYearBook, Nexopia, etc? Pre-Facebook era)
- Changing their username color (that or an admin is able to do this, so that the user is distinguished in some group, at this time, I can only change the admin and mod colors)
- Can lock their own thread (not anyone else's)

...I just imagined all those up, but I can tell you, other forum scripts allow for some of these things and a whole lot more.
I don't see why ubb has less than what others are offering.
Including, the idea that got shot down recently, of adding permission to set a minimum character count to a new post.
There are loop holes - that's a major no brainer, but it is a feature that discourages posts that aren't constructive with 2 letters.
It is up to the moderators to maintain the policies and guidelines in the end, that's a no brainer, butthe feature does help to
mitigate and encourage certain behaviors.

You are welcome to change the functionality of your personal forum install to suit your needs (note that we only provide support for the stock product [the files out of the release archive only]).

Making these little features takes significant time, especially to integrate into the permission system; on our current road map we're currently working towards standardization, clean coding, and cleaning old PHP4/5 and MySQL coding to PHP7... Niche features aren't something that we've got planned for quite some time.

"Personalizing their author content colors"
All users can already do this. They create a post with some content, then highlight all of the content and choose a color from the color-picker. Thats all. Nothing complex.
DEMO: purple text
This can be done to an entire post.


"Changing their username color"
Beyond letting the forum admin/staff manually configure this using the Member Editor, member name color is configured within each forum style. This is done for security and site aesthetics reasons. If a member manually edited their own user name to match the background color of your default forum style, then no one would be able to see their name. This gets even more tricky when a user decides to customize their name color to one that matches an admin or moderator, and then pretends to be a user of that membership level because of their name color. (see the CSS settings for .adminname, .modname, and .globalmodname in your custom styles).

An additional example, if your site has a dark style and a light style (theme) and a user decided they wanted a BLUE user name, and then chose to revert it by then choosing a WHITE one, then everyone who has the light display style selected for the forum would no longer (or barely) be able to see that "WHITE font on white background" user name.

For these reasons, it is best to allow the forum admin and his staff update the member name colors on a per-request basis. Its really not dificult to do if you have moderators with member-editor privileges who are on your forums for most of the day. Post the instructions in your forum rules or forum help (faq) page, or even a sticky post to your "welcome and introduce yourself" type of forum.

"Can lock their own thread"
I believe you brought up this one before.
The answer given was:
For obvious reasons, users must be moderators to lock or delete threads. You can also give an entire group permission to delete their own posts within a time limit.

This is is in the FORUM Permission setting per-user group:
Control Panel / Forum:
• Delete post time limit

If you have a user who wants to post something but doesnt want anyone to reply:
Again, this is a FORUM Permission setting.
1) create a forum with the following settings for the groups with access:
• Can create new threads: 1 = Enable (Allow)
• Can reply to existing threads: 0 = Disable



These are just some of the items available to configure per each user group:
* Can see forum
* Can read threads
* Can create new threads
* Can reply to existing threads
* Min time between posts
* Posts require CAPTCHA
* Can download attachments
* All new posts are moderated
* Max file attachments
* Max file attachment size
* Max gallery images
* Max gallery image size
* Can create polls in topics
* Can create polls in replies
* Can post using HTML
* Can post using Markup/UBBCode
* Delete post time limit
* Edit post time limit
* Must view Ad Island
* Can lock threads
* Can move threads
* Delete any thread
* Delete any thread reply
* Edit any post
* Can create sticky threads
* Can approve moderated posts
* Can create portal news
* Can view the user list
* Can create global announcements
* Can view member profiles
* Can see extra user info
* Can email posts to others
* Can use img tag in signatures
* Max length of signatures
* Can vote in polls
* Max private topics
* Max posts in a private topic
* Max private topic participants
* Can create calendar events
* Can specify a remote avatar
* Can choose a stock avatar
* Can upload an avatar
* Can see the ShoutChat box
* Can use the ShoutChat box
* Can use the search engine
* Min time between searches
* Can set a custom title

As an example for giving paid/subscribing/special users more privileges, would be to allow more than 2 attachments per post, or allowing attachments at all. or reducing the time limit between posts and search. Allowing images in signatures, or giving users access to posting topics in a gallery forum, where others can only reply. Increasing the size of their Private Message box. Allowing users to create polls. Giving access to a member-only forum. Not having to view an ad island between posts. Allowing users to see the shoutchat, or giving them access to post/reply to it. Giving a special badge to users of a certain group (See UBBCentral's "10 Year" badge which a few of our members already display).

There are many individual permissions and combinations you can grant. The first place to start would be to set a very tight limit on what basic members can do. Then provide more permissions per each user group level.

There is even a feature where members are given forum "Member Titles" based upon how many posts they've created.

Adding to this, there is another feature where members are automatically added to a new group based upon how many posts they've created.
Example: A "Lurker" would be one with 0 posts. But as soon as they make 1 post, they become a "Noob." And after 10 posts, they can become a "Member"...etc.


Your suggestion was not shot-down. It was explained to you why its flawed, and there were several solutions provided. In addition, another forum user replied to your topic with a real life example of why the idea was flawed.

https://www.ubbcentral.com/forums/ubbthreads.php/topics/263101/minimum-post-character-count

You could create a special features group (VIP) and award it to users for exemplary activity (posts, support, etc) which would give them any number of the permissions that Isaac posted above; you could even stress that its only temporary and will expire after two weeks and have them re-earn their way in... It could be a great way to have your community understand that good users are noticed, and will be rewarded.