[quote name='nzeroesc' post='1762635' date='Oct 9 2008, 10:43 AM']Go take a look at TAZ (The Admin Zone)

Most of the groups don't give you access to any additional forums, they just show your interest in a specific topic (in their case different forum software) in your member profile (eg: My profile there and also as a tag under your username in posts.

This is all done by the user, save for a select few groups that need a group leader approval to join, and requires no interaction from the admin.


+1 from me as well.

Aside from the Launch Team, Exchange, and Big-Boards groups they're all just aesthetic, while that idea works for TAZ, most forums wouldn't have a use for groups that are solely aesthetic.



[quote name='bfarber' post='1762669' date='Oct 9 2008, 01:11 PM']That's social groups, which is different. The OP is specifically stating they aren't looking for this sort of thing.

Actually TAZ uses joinable groups for what nzeroesc mentioned, each has it's own color and represents a forum software, IPB is blue, phpBB is yellow, vBulletin is a dark purple/blue and so on, they serve no functions other than allowing users to show what software they use, there's no real social aspect about it, it just says that this member uses this software.



[quote name='bfarber' post='1762669' date='Oct 9 2008, 01:11 PM']Let me just state right now that while we have discussed internally group enhancements (along the lines of both joinable and social groups) it takes a lot of effort to "get it right". There have to be proper administrator controls, proper front-end moderation controls for group managers, ability to make new users group managers, and then there has to be functionality useful enough for this sort of thing.

This functionality will not be in 3.0, however it is something on drawing board that we come back to and are still discussing. That is to say, it may make it into a future release, it just won't be in the next release.

Yeah, I actually agree, it's better to add a thought out feature than just tack crap on like some software does. :rolleyes:

Good to hear it may be added eventually.

How does IPB 3 handle secondary groups? I remember trying to write a modification for this a while back and the implementation was, in my opinion rather clunky. Secondary groups are stored in a comma-delimited string in the members table in IPB 2.x, if I remember correctly.

They'd probably still be in a comma-delimited string :)

+1

In my forum this could be useful with my site being related to a band groups could be created to show people who are attending a certain concert on x date.

Hopefully v 3 will have no comma separated strings in the database.

[quote name='henke37' post='1763003' date='Oct 10 2008, 08:43 AM']Hopefully v 3 will have no comma separated strings in the database.

Err... I think that maybe a long shot. How else do you propose handling secondary groups?

With a linking table.

+1 from me also on the social and joinable groups. You can't get more sociable than a community, and a message board is a community.
This was recognised when Invision realised the social importance of the member profiles and improved them accordingly, member groups is a natural step in the same direction.
I really think improved 'social' options and functionality are a must and natural progression for IPB3.0.

The trend is increasingly in the direction of social networking. It is a characteristic of all known products. IPB 3.0 may be only the beginning like this, there is in this area needs to be done.

[quote name='henke37' post='1763003' date='Oct 10 2008, 02:43 PM']Hopefully v 3 will have no comma separated strings in the database.

What's so bad about comma separated strings?
If they used linking tables for everything that is comma-separated or serialised, the database would be a mess.

No, it wouldn't.

Let me rephrase that: upgrading would be a mess. Especially as it's so critical to get right (IT Crowd reference: "You don't want to end up in the middle of invalid memory!") and such a difficult thing to test - the only way to test it would be to create a test site filled with fake data, logging the way everything should be, running the upgrader and checking it all converted properly; and doing that is going to be very easy to make a mistake, or miss something. Unless there is some major compelling reason that they should never be used that I'm not aware of (if there is, please share: You didn't say why comma separated strings are so bad) I'd much rather know that the upgrader isn't going to be undertaking database structure changes for the sake of it.

I'll say right now, while "proper database design theory" calls for no comma-separated strings, in reality it's not always easy or the most efficient way. While we recognize that some areas of the database design can *always* be improved, I'll state right now that it's not likely IPB3 will have no comma-separated strings in the database.

[quote name='bfarber' post='1763806' date='Oct 13 2008, 07:32 AM']I'll say right now, while "proper database design theory" calls for no comma-separated strings, in reality it's not always easy or the most efficient way. While we recognize that some areas of the database design can *always* be improved, I'll state right now that it's not likely IPB3 will have no comma-separated strings in the database.
:P such as polls

I agree, this would be a great feature for my site as we have a lot of car clubs who would find this very useful. I also think it would go a long way in helping the forum admins delete unused forums and allow enthusiastic members to instead create a group and promote it. For example, I could get rid of all my regional and dead forums and focus on the ones which are active. When the time is right, a member could just create a group for their area instead of having a regional forum, or countless regional sub forums for each car club in that region. I have seen other car forums using this feature with great success on V-Bulletin. Social networks and groups seem to be the wave of the future and I hope IPB will catch up and help us compete with V-bulletin forums. Right now it seems like my forum software is dated and stuck in the pre-social networking era, while all the other forums are zooming into the future. I can understand that not all sites would benefit from this, but there are some which would benefit greatly. Either way, I purchased IP Blob, Gallery, and Board and have been using it since 2004, so I am not going anywhere, but I do wish I was able to compete with the car forums who are using the v-bulletin offered features. :)

+1 for joinable groups..
Would be really awesome to have!
My forum is splitted in "two" parts, and it would be so nice, if one of my mods, could lead the forum, and add/remove mods for his forums.. without i had to give him acp rights.. i know i can do restrictions, but i don't want him to be able to change to other groups, or change user-settings etc..

As a topic starter I will clarify my words - I was asking about "joinable usergroups"

phpbb - has this feature far ago from 2.X branch
vbulletin - has this feature since 3.7.X

IPB has this only as a mod Clans - and great thanks for them.

Users can:
- create a group
- join / leave group
- group leader can create forum category for group members

this feature is a must - I don't understand why ipb developers don't get this.

[quote name='newbigmir' date='07 March 2009 - 10:39 AM' timestamp='1236440391' post='1789261']
As a topic starter I will clarify my words - I was asking about "joinable usergroups"

phpbb - has this feature far ago from 2.X branch
vbulletin - has this feature since 3.7.X

IPB has this only as a mod Clans - and great thanks for them.

Users can:
- create a group
- join / leave group
- group leader can create forum category for group members

this feature is a must - I don't understand why ipb developers don't get this.


It's a "must" for a relatively small niche set of forums. I have yet to *use* a forum of any software that truly utilized such a feature tbh.

That said, we've simply had other priorities. We may or may not add such a feature in the future, but it wasn't considered a must-have for 3.0.

Just to throw my own perspective in on this subject, I would very much like to have joinable groups in a future release of the software. I have two use cases for this feature, both of which I've been personally involved in overseeing:

1) Distributed convention planning. I'm the chair of a (very) small convention that involves the talents and resources of people from across the country. We use a phpBB forum (because it's free) for our everyday planning processes, and each "department" of the convention planning staff has its own section of the forum, as well as specific access permissions for other sections (to keep people on-task and in their own space). These departments are based on phpBB's joinable groups feature, and makes managing the planning forum much MUCH easier on myself and our other web administrator, as planning committee members can add themselves to the department they're a part of right away, without having to wait for us to get around to their requests. While I grant that this is done in a limited context and for a forum with an intentionally minimal number of members, it does make managing the forum much simpler.

2) Specialized groups. I also run a fandom/wiki site. The wiki portion of the site, as well as other information-gathering aspects of the site's mission, are handled by volunteers who receive some elevated permissions and capabilities within the forum's wiki mod (currently running a hacked-to-pieces copy of Inviki). Anyone is free to join this volunteer group, but doing so requires them to send me a PM asking to be added to the group. Again, it's a relatively small and quiet site, so it's not a huge pain for me to manage this process, but it's a productivity drain, and a use case nonetheless, and one that I can't see as being quite as niche (or limited in potential scale) as the first one I discussed.

[quote name='Μichael' date='08 October 2008 - 05:27 PM' timestamp='1223504857' post='1762547']
You don't actually know that.


How do you know what I know? :unsure: :lol:

I could say 'you don't actually know that' regarding your post too. :P

I was just posting my original response based on the numerous topics I've seen on the subject since the early days of IPB. There clearly seems to be a lot of support for this feature. And most of the posts in this thread seem to support it so do the math. :cool:

I have a gaming site that features clan forums to the clans that want to join the network. I have the same problem with IPB and that was just a huge workload on the administrators to actually do each group change manually. As i had created a ticket a while back, the only way to do this is by actually allowing the member to access the Management panel on the Admin CP, :blink: . This is obviously not good... i also added on the ticket a question to know if they had any plans to include this on future releases, since the answer was a no, i had to manually write a script that would do the simple requests:

I have a panel that allows me to add a moderator to any group that begins with "Clan %" on the database. This way the scripts adds the user on a separate table named clan_group_moderators. Once logged into the system, the script will check if the user is a clan moderator and allow the following:

Group moderator functions:
-Invite user to join usergroup
-Remove users (group moderator removal only allowed by administrators)
-View usergroup member's list
-View pending invitations to join the usergroup

Group member functions:
-Accept the invitation to join the group (by accepting the group moderators will be notified on their next login, and the user's field mgroup_others on the database will be updated by adding the usergroup number - this little change will also allow the user to see/post on the all usergroup's forums)
-View usergroup member's list

This was a really simple modification i did in a day, and i'm not a very experienced programmer.

Well, to sumarize, here's another vote (again) for this modification.
Thanks!

would love to see something like this in a later version :)

Of all the forums (which is a many hundreds by now) that I've joined, almost none that offered joinable groups or social groups used them well or at all. There's maybe one example that did, but they could do a better job of making member know it exists... So personally I'm not a fan of adding a feature which most forums won't use. Considering there is some demand for it, I'm sure someone will make a mod or something. That "other" software has it built in and makes such a big deal about it, but I don't understand why.

I am not sure if a mod has come out to add this to 3.x, but joinable groups would be great - it is offered on other forums.

We run forums for clubs, and I know that several of them would like to have their own joinable group. I would not advocate a system whereby anyone could set up a group - but the admin would set them up.

Perhaps anyone who has posted in this thread could offer some feedback if they have got around this.

Thanks.