hi all,

i have always loved ips and all the great products they offer.
i have used the board, blog and gallery for long time noe, and i found no other company that provide as rich a package as this.
but there is always some-thing missing with ips softwares that would make them even better than they are now. it's the complete tangable integration on the surface area that a user of a certian community would feel.

i had first the forums, then i added the gallery and then the blogs, this is when members got confused.
i run an arts community in general. the members did not participate much in the forums since they got a separate blog of their own, they say why shoul i publish a poem in the forums in it's specified category if i can have it in my personal blog, and then some would publish it again in the forum and get afterwards tierd of replying to other members who participated in their topic.
on the other hand a similar thing happened in the gallery were members started moving to post artworks and photographs in their blogs instead of the specified category in the gallery which they are supposed to post in, and for the same reason i mentioned above.

so where is the real integration?! i mean ips did do a great job of having the same database and internal linking (i am not a technincal person) but what about the surface, i am afraid this is very weak. i mean what did stop you guys from putting a link under the users post in the 3 producs to his artworks page in the gallery and another link to his blog. and what is the idea of a random image of albums any way?! it is random and it is therefor useless. why wouldn't you guys take it a step further and make our life easier.

i will try to list some of what i think is a super integration.
1. tabs in the blog of the member (one that would show his topics in the forums exactly as it would show his blogs with the forum name as the category like in the blog entry) and the same applies for the gallery, meaning another tab for it.
2. extra blocks, we need it, and it's so easy for you programers and would boost productivity in every community. (e.g. block for the members latest three art works in the gallerys not his personal gallery - a block listing the titles of the blogs of his favorite - a block showing his avatar with the rest of the information as in his post ...etc)
3. lets have a universal material adding page, meaning one single button on top where it would take a member to a posting page with one difference, it would have a drop-down menu with his permitted forums to post in, and his permitted gallery categorys to post in and a special button if he ticks it would allow him to have this topic or gallery entry to appear in his blog.
4. in addition to the tabs the gallery art works or topics would also appear with the blog entrys of his but with a different icon, and when clicked it would show the same replys as in the forums or gallery.
5. what is it with the gallery and it's one image upload?! why one image ?! i could have a portrait and i want to post other variations of it, and we have already a powerful attachment system in ipb, then why do we limit our selves to one image?! we could have one blox behind each uploaded image which when ticked would define this image as the major iage and have it's thumbnailo appear in front page.
6. why there is no option to have the gallery categorys appear under neath the forums?! or have the and the latest images appear in the top page?! in addition to the current separate page. and why don't wehave another option to have the bloglist in the same page as the forums and limit them to the latest 10 blogs updated, and then the blogs would be called using ajax which is already used otherwhere when clicking page 2 or 3.
7. what is the idea of having only the latest images in the whol gallery, this really does not serve any one good.
i think the thumbnails should be limited to 5-10 images (or what ever a member specifies) and have each list of latest images appear on top of each category in the gallery where it is related to it. and then we would have categorys separated with subcategorys just like the forums.
8. is it really hard to giv the owner the ability to list more that one latest news link?! why one why why why >_<
9. and have the option to show an excerpt or full news at header.
10. please gus don't tell me this is why we have a portal page, a portal page is just a confusion tool like the gallery main page and the blog list page.
11. some of the language text is still in the header and so parts of the template bit like the "please click and drag"or some thing similar for the my assistanct and some of the pop-new-menu elements (members new menu, i thing in the blog software, i found many alt text still in the template.

we are not talking about different programs linked in a bad way, we are talking about a one whole suit, one package.
i a have the 3 products and when and i bought them twice for the same site, and i didn't mind because i like ips.
why should my members dwell in four different pages each time the login, and end up confused because of the 3 products way of woeking as a whol suit.

some one whould say but a blog is a blog and a gallery is not a forum, well my friends first of all i would not have bought the gallery if there was an option in the forums to have a certian forum act as a gellery were topic titles would also have the thumnail of the artwork, because honistly the forum topics hase all the features of the gallery artwork + rating and in the same place as the other non gallery forums would be, and second yes a blog is a blog etc. but in our case in the case of 3products running together a step further would make the lives of non technical much easier, it will provide the complete tools for communitys productivitys.

finally i would like to note that ips software is anti RTL. really, where there is not option to tell the software that this is a right to left language forum?! instead i have to dwell in the css file and the template bits to spend endless hours trying to figuer out where are the left or right alignment or float that needs to be changed. i know other products have this feature.

and the blog drag and drop and paging pop-menu is corrupted when the page is rtl.

sorry for the messy language, english is not my first language.
this is not a hate post. i don't know what you would call it, but i have seend and worked with the producvts for few years now, and i think their is no richer package in all aspects as this one.

if ips will not consider these features i would welcome and one who is willing to tweak them for me, paid of course.
thank you.

all the best.
ahmed

I agree in the member section we should have some profile options such as custom content blocks, like in the blogs and stuff. That would be really nice to share information about ourselves since its a profile.

Just a suggestion, between your lists, add a line break so its easier to read. ^_^