Feature Request: Forum Thumbnails

[William Warby]

When I implemented Invision Powerboard for our Intranet a lot of people complained that the interface was too busy and it wasn't at all easy to see what was what at a glance, which I tend to agree with. One idea I had, and have implemented, was forum thumbnails. When you have a lot of forums, especially in an arena where your implementation covers a lot of different areas of interest, a picture makes it significantly easier to understand what you're looking at at a glance.



I implemented this functionality by editing the template code to add an extra column for the forum thumbnail in the forum index page. The trouble is, it assumes you have an image named [forumid].jpg in a particular folder. and inserts that image. I could write some code that searches for the image and inserts it if present or substitutes a placeholder otherwise, but what would be really nice if is this were part of the product, and you could upload a thumbnail through the admin interface rather than having to have access to the server installation (currently I have to do the thumbnails even though 3 other people are allowed to create forums).

-William

[bfarber]

Hmmm.. while it looks great (in your setup at least), I don't know how useful this would be as a stock feature.

[Mark]

Sometimes this looks great (like in this example) - other times it's horrid.

I think a 'per forum' forum icon could be a nice idea, I'd prefer that over forum icon + thumbnail

[evgen]

Its very useful for art-communities.
I preferred 'per forum' forum icon too.