IPB 2.2 Suggestions - Long List

[Luke]

- Multiple Choice & Public Poll's

A multiple choice and public poll option would be nice to have... This was done in the modification linked below. The only limitation to this mod was when a poll is edited and public poll is turned on, the list of who voted for what gets cleared. The member list needs to be displayed and preserved, and at the same time not allowing the person editing to change who voted for what.

Links:
http://forums.invisionpower.com/index.php?showtopic=189252 (has pics)
http://mods.invisionize.com/db/index.php/f/5339

- Members Online Today

This is an important resource for communities starting out. Many mods out there list the members "online today" on the fly, but by experience that is not a good idea because it increases overhead... It's a better idea to have the "members online today" list cache in the board's default time zone and then provide a link to a window displaying the members "online today" for the members time zone. There should be 4 options for this:

1) Display list, but hidden. (have a Show List, Hide List link toggle using javascript)
2) Display list, but shown. (have a Show List, Hide List link toggle using javascript)
3) Hide list - Only shows numbered results and link to external window for list (user's time zone thing). This option is important because when the site gets busy you want to reduce the size of the page, especially if you're getting over 1000 members online per day).
4) On/Off - Be able to turn it off completely.

Why is this important? For communities starting out it's hard to capture interest because new members see the form is dead and that no one visits. If you show who's been on that day, you get the new member thinking "it's not that popular, but it still gets traffic".

- Invisible Topics/Posts (aka mod preview) Visible to Author

The mod preview is pretty much a global ignore. The only thing about it right now is the member who created the topic or post under preview cannot see that its there. Thus, they'll try posting again and again. Trust me, it's happened to my community to other admin's as well. This mod simply enables forum users to see their own topics and posts:

http://forums.invisionpower.com/index.php?showtopic=189111

However, it may be important to give a forum-by-forum option. Have a global option and then have these options for single forums:

1) Use Global
2) Not Visible
3) Visible to Author, see shaded
4) Visible to Author, cant see shaded

This way the mod preview feature can be used for multiple needs. Where it may be making a form a help desk, censoring a member (with or without them knowing), or providing a download form (or similar).

- Make Year Optional for Birthday

This is quite easy and important, especially for those that want to sensor ages but not remove the ability for one to celebrate their birthday. Should have the option to disable the year field all together.

- Forum Title (# viewing)

This is pretty handy since it lets you know how many members and/or guests are inside a forum on a global basis. It is best to cache this with a task every minute, or every other minute. Is not wise to do this on the fly, especially with a busy form.

- Cache the "who's visiting" results for topics and forums

This is for the people viewing a form or topic and seeing who's viewing it, etc. Most Admins end up turning this off after a forum gets a lot of traffic, like Neowin. Where it may be nice to have by the second results of who's viewing the forum, its better to cache the results for the whole forum every minute or every other minute. This may seem over-kill, but when you have a busy form its better that the server cache's it every minute rather than request results a hundred times a second.

- Reason for Editing

This seems to make more sense then the "Add edit line" option. It's important for moderators who like to make a note to a topic when editing it.

http://forums.invisionpower.com/index.php?showtopic=188748

- Restrict PM Abilities Via Warn Panel

This feature basically restricts the ability for a member to send a PM to other members accept for super moderators and administrators. This may not effect who they can receive from, but preventing them from sending pm's to other members when they've abused it, while keeping the lines of communication, is important.

http://forums.invisionpower.com/index.php?showtopic=188724

- Restrict Chat Abilities via Warn Panel

Just like PM, but for the chat. Gives the moderators more control over the chat room, if they have one, when someone abuses it.

- Restrict Signature Editing Ability via Warn Panel

Could be useful. Tell a member to reduce their signature size and they refuse... Take their signature and signature editing ability away for x amount of time. If there is a way to do this in AdminCP already (on a permanent basis) it's might be on a group-by-group basis, and only available to Admins. Would be great for the super moderators.

- List Moderators on Forum

Some people don

[Logan]

That's an excellent list, no I didn't read all of your suggestions mainly skimmed through a lot of them. I also vouch for just about all of them.

You really have some great suggestions, just hope they are implemented, for IPB 2.2 not IPB 3.0 since it's quite far away.

[bfarber]

I couldn't see implementing this large a change (entirely) with 2.2 unfortunately. But that doesn't mean they won't be taken into consideration, and that doesn't mean they won't be useful when we begin 3.0.

That said...

I cant tell you how important this is. In the past some accounts get hacked and where the user logged into the person's account, its impossible to track because they didn

[elj]

There's a few really needed features in that list. :thumbsup:

[Luke]

I couldn't see implementing this large a change (entirely) with 2.2 unfortunately. But that doesn't mean they won't be taken into consideration, and that doesn't mean they won't be useful when we begin 3.0.

That said...

I understand the logic, but this would be a HUGE table for large sites.

When a row is parsed from topics.php, the member is stored in an array and if he comes up again (i.e. multiple posts in one topic), the value cached in the array is used rather than parsing his entire account a second time.

This would kind of defeat the purpose of caching CSS to flat file if you use that feature..

I might not be understanding the suggestion, however you can control what caches you load on your component pages with the components_init/file.php file.

In CPU Savings you set a load limit (must be on Linux, use something like 100 if you don't actually want to shut down your site when it starts spiking).

Already fixed.

The storing IP thing: This is just when they login. Not if they are already logged in through cookie. Besides, you could possibly log the IP on failed attempts. The idea is to find out who hacked into who's account.

I'm pretty sure that 2.1 does not cache signatures html in member_cache. And I hope you dont. If you do, this ruins the effects of a Dynamic BBCode feature, which allows me to have a certain bbcode query a database for player stats. If there was a expiration time, that would be more resonable. Like after X amount of time redo the cache for a certain member (reasonable isnt it?). That way the Dynamic Codes I have will remain somewhat dynamic, otherwise it screws me and other people over. --- Currently what im doing now is caching signatures in a variable so if the same user comes up twice it isnt done more than once.

The cache thing I've tried to explain many times before. You have cache's that load for the component only, then you have cache's that load on every page of IPB. Example? Let's pop open Index.php to show you what I mean.

$choice = array(

"idx" => [b]array( "boards" , 'boards' , array('chatting','birthdays', 'calendar', 'online_today') )[/b],

"sc" => [b]array( "boards" , 'boards' , array('chatting','birthdays', 'calendar') )[/b],

"sf" => [b]array( "forums" , 'forums' , array('announcements', 'multimod') )[/b],

"sr" => [b]array( "forums" , 'forums' , array() )[/b],

"st" => [b]array( "topics" , 'topics' , array('attachtypes','bbcode', 'multimod','ranks','profilefields' ) )[/b],

The bolded above are called local cachies. They load only for the specific choice, or "actions". Simarly, you would load cache's in your component with it's initialization.

Then, you have this:

$ipsclass->cache_array = array_merge( $choice[ $ipsclass->input['_low_act'] ][2], array([b]'rss_calendar', 'rss_export','components','banfilters', 'settings', 'group_cache', 'systemvars', 'skin_id_cache', 'forum_cache', 'moderators', 'stats', 'languages'[/b]) );

These are called global caches. They load on every page. For a component author that needs to have a global cache, they need to modify index.php. For one that wants to avoid modifications at all costs, this is not good. Why would you need this? An alert feature like My Assistant poping up to give you a message. Or maybe a number listed in the member_bar. If you used a local cache and you had "# New Reports" (like mod center) it would result in the # of New reports on the mod center's page, but always 0 New Reports on every other page.

Thankyou for pointing out the server load thing. I wasnt sure where that was. Looked for it, but didnt find it.

Many of these suggestions are relatively simple to do. Some would take me, efficiently (looks like a built in feature), 15 minutes each. Some are even simpler and take less time. Then there are a few that are relatively complex and take a lot of time, but in the end worth it.

I know you guys have this plan for 2.2 and then 3.0. But these are major updates here. Minor upgrades, 0.01 difference, take me 2 hours to upgrade on my site. The 2.0 to 2.1 upgrade took me 2 months. Many features I had to code in myself because I needed them. Every time there is a major upgrade, I end up having to redo everything. That's expected. But I hope you understand that a lot of these features should already be there, and every time I do a major upgrade I have to add them in again and again. Sure you guys come up with some great features I would have never thought of, and I'll give you props for that. But for once Id like you to focus on improving existing features, which really doesnt take very much time. Then there would be less for me to modify, less mods for admins to install. I mean, things like a note for each IP address being banned. That's one of the easiest things to add, and should be there. Right? And if most of these things dont make it, I wouldnt bother upgrading to 2.2. I'll wait for 3.0. I dont like major upgrades, and avoid it as long as I can. You'd be better off jumping strait to 3.0, even if it takes longer.

One of the only reasons why I wanted 2.1 bad enough was because the AdminCP for 2.0 was horrible. I had a growing community, and I was the only admin. I was considering adding on more admins, but I wasnt about to get them confused over it. The 2.1 adminCP was a hudge improvement. It was more layout than anything else. Sure 2.2/3.0 has an ever nicer adminCP, but 2.1 already established the clean layout and death of framesets :D

I can wait for 2.2. If there was no 2.2, I would wait for 3.0. There is an expression: If it aint broke dont fix it. So what I'm asking is, if you're going to come out with another major upgrade, make the upgrade more worth it to me, and coutless others.

EDIT:

About the CSS thing... I kind of thought of that. I just know that the CSS does need to be down-sized. There has to be a way to cut-down on the css without removing the effect. It is quite large. Just needs to be broken up like the javascript files and loaded when needed.

[Coastie]

my votes:

Multiple Choice polls (not Public Poll's)
Members Online Today (also in the ACP Stat page for history)
Invisible Topics/Posts (aka mod preview) Visible to Author
Cache Signatures
IP Banning Notes
What PM did you reply to
Reply to PM :: Additional Option :: Delete PM (delete on reply)
"Brute Force" or "Account Locking" feature

a few of my own:
Reported Posts go to admin forum, not PM or email
Limit registrations to A-z 0-9 (ACP setting)
Warn Meter, display only if >0
Subscription Manager, ability to take unspecified donation amount. User option.

[bfarber]

The css will get an overhaul when the skin is redone (for 3.0).

Please keep in mind that the focus right now for 2.2 has been to improve existing features. However, it requires a balance of the most requested changes vs some that might help a few people. There are certain requests we get day in and out, which of course would weigh higher on the "must do" scale.

The expected changes have not been finalized yet.

Regarding the signature - sorry about that, for some reason I got "avatar" stuck in my head. The signature is parsed on each row, yes.

[elj]

I'd really like (what I guess will be really simple) an option to make the 'year' optional. It helps privacy of forum users...

[Angus]

I agree with few suggestion in this topic, especially this one:
- Invisible Topics/Posts (aka mod preview) Visible to Author

It really annoying, because I agree that many members would think that their topic didn't created, and keep posting again

[Logan]

Yeah, that happens constantly.

I think it should still be visible to the user, and still shaded just saying "Under moderator preview, only visible to you (the author) and moderators" somewhere on the post.

[WilliamTM]

I like that list. Very good ideas in there! :)

[Millar]

I agree with most of the ideas on that list, good job.

[DAN21]

Some great ideas yes, but you sould also keep in mind that 2.2 upgrade is mainly for improving the exsiting stuff and the ACP skin improvment (as far as i read).
so i guess that 3.0 will consist most of the suggestions mentiond here.

[Myr]

That is a really good list. The Members Online Today and Sigmachat stuff would be especially useful. But most of it would ve nice.

Multiple Choice Polls! (Select the top x answers, where x is definable)

I would prefer to see PMs as a private topic. Kind of like how Gmail combines everything. That way you can follow the whole conversation without miles of quoted text. As an admin, I often exchange lengthy PMs with new members, and find myself lost when they reply a week later without quoting.

[ellawella]

I would prefer to see PMs as a private topic. Kind of like how Gmail combines everything. That way you can follow the whole conversation without miles of quoted text. As an admin, I often exchange lengthy PMs with new members, and find myself lost when they reply a week later without quoting.

That's a good idea. :thumbsup:

[backdream]

I agree with most of the ideas on that list too, especially File Cache. good job.

[Mesmer]

I only would like to see 'multiple answer polls'

[lOgOl]

I only would like to see 'multiple answer polls'

I would like to see multiple answer polls with (numeric)values.

01 question: [10] Points
02 question: [09] Points
03 question: [08] Points
....
10 question: [01] Points

as an example...

[Brandon C]

I'd like to add my idea to that excellent long list of suggestions as well. :thumbsup:

[Badchannels]

I'd like to see an option that hides the subforums listings under each forum on the index page.

I'd also like to see an option to turn off the ability to long in as invisible ( if there isn't an option already for that )

Also, I'm tired of paying for skin design upgrades with each Invision upgrade. It gets quite expensive when you have an extensive skin selection. Could the skins be compatible with 2.1.X and up for a change?

Another thing would be the ability to hide the minutes on the user list.

:thumbsup:

[bfarber]

Also, I'm tired of paying for skin design upgrades with each Invision upgrade. It gets quite expensive when you have an extensive skin selection. Could the skins be compatible with 2.1.X and up for a change?

Unfortunately, this is much more difficult than you would think. ;) To change the software, 99% of the time you have to change the skin files as well. There's just no way around it.

[Chortos-2 (aka Astiob)]

I'll post my wishes and a few of the ones listed in this topic (not including the first post, of course :D) that I simply liked.

Absolute Ban System

Absolute Ban system, as I call it. When you absoultely ban a user, it stores the user's data (possible: username, display name, email, password, _ALL_ of the IP addresses used) in a special table and bans all of the stored data. Later on it keeps checking the other users' data if it's equal to the stored copy (must think out when to do these checks). When it finds a user/guest with something equal, absolutely bans that user too.

Topic Moderators

Allow the users moderate their topics just like the normal moderators do.

More Field Masks

Option to allow only usernames/display_names/passwords/etc. that go under a specified mask.

BBCode in My Assistant

My Assistant parsing BBCode in the PM previews.

Specifying the Amount of Warnings

For admins and possibly supermoderators: change the warn level of a member for more than 1 unit at once.

Integrated ACP Skins & Languages

ACP skins and languages integrated into the standard skin and language system.

Valid & Optimized Output

Output valid & optimized XHTML 1.0 (version taken from <!DOCTYPE>).

Choice Management in Polls

Allow the topic author or moderators to neatly insert, move and delete choices in polls. Insert = shift all the following choices (_WITH_ the corresponding vote numbers and authors) to the bottom. Move = change the order (and the numbers, of course) of the poll choices. Delete = remove the option and shift all the following choices to the top.

Changing Votes

Option to allow the users change their votes in polls (may be integrated with the following suggestion).

Who Voted How?

Allow somebody (everyone/topic_author/moderator/supermoderator/admin) to see who voted for which choice in a poll and, possibly, move votes that are associated with specific user from one choice to another (may be integrated with the previous suggestion).

Auto-Answer Poll Topic

Option to auto-answer to the topic when voting in the poll. Options: disable normal answers; disable deleting the auto-answers by the members even if they normally have this ability.

No Answers in Poll Topic

Please return this option!

Moderation Center

Make 'Report to Moderator' link add an issue to the Moderation Center. It is united for all moderators, and thus there's no need to send PMs or emails. The moderators can also change the state of the issues, e.g., when moderator A sees that a new issue has arrived, he reads it and, using the issue states, lets other moderators know that he is going to take care of the issue. Then moderator B logs in, goes to the Moderation Center and sees, that moderator A is already read the issue. Thus, the same issue will not be worked out by several moderators at once.

Re-Order Poll Options

Re-order poll options. I personally like the 'Poll Choice Management' suggestion much more, but this still seems to be one of the 'poll wishes' of many admins. :)

PM Threads

Already discussed.

Rating Separated from the Warn System

Normal rating/reputation system, or at least separated from the warn system.

Auto-Ban in the Warn System

Option to auto-ban when the member's warn level reaches N points or percents.

Subforum List Options

Option the show the complete subforum list (<select>), to just list the top-level ones or to hide the subforum list at all.

Complete BBCode Management

Complete BBCode management with the abilities to use many arguments (like

) or parameters (like

[Dlf]

The sub forum thingy, isn't a good idea. I think it was in a version ForumFlash was using (before it changed). That would get probably get WAY TO hecktic. Think of the forums that are LARGE and have large amounts of sub forums and sub sub forums (and lower), would you want to scroll past all of them (on the main index) to get to another?

[Chortos-2 (aka Astiob)]

Oh sorry, I meant 'Option to show the complete list of subforums'. :P

P.S. Edited the 'Subforum List Options' suggestion.

I've just added 'Multi-Lingual Board' suggestion. One of my dream features... o:)

[Chortos-2 (aka Astiob)]

Added a bit to the Multi-Lingual Board suggestion.

P.S. Sorry for double post. :(