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Br4nd0nW Posted January 16, 2009 Posted January 16, 2009 I think "board hours" be a nice feature to include into IP.Board 3. A description of what I mean is that you could specify when you want your board to be open to the public and when you want it to be closed. It would be a good feature for private organizations and schools.
Stuart Elliott Posted January 17, 2009 Posted January 17, 2009 And there was I thinking more along the lines of "bored hours", an indication of how long you've spent browsing the forums since you joined. :)
Pintac Posted January 17, 2009 Posted January 17, 2009 Couldn't this be done through the task manager? Create one task to close the board at a certain time and create another to enable the board.
AndyF Posted January 17, 2009 Posted January 17, 2009 I thought about that (tasks) I have a suspicion that tasks may not run if the board is offline, but have not actually checked :) , plus they will depend on a bit of activity to work anyway (per page load) More something for a custom modification or something to use as a Cron job (so they run when they should on time), rather than a direct IPB addition :)
bfarber Posted January 17, 2009 Posted January 17, 2009 I think that the number of users who would want to shut their site offline so regularly they want to do it on a schedule is so low that it wouldn't make sense for us to invest time in such a feature. Just my thoughts.
Luke Posted January 21, 2009 Posted January 21, 2009 I can see where this may be a useful feature. Perhaps you have a message board for a school, and there are moderators that moderate the form during school hours, and you want to keep it online only during those hours. The current "board offline" feature uses a boolean 1 or 0 value to determine if the board is offline.. Don't see why adding a couple unix timestamp date fields as an alternative would be such a bad idea.
Mark Posted January 21, 2009 Posted January 21, 2009 I think I'm with Steve and Brandon - the small number of people who do need this could use the task system for this purpose, that's why it's there.
FrostedPopTart Posted January 21, 2009 Posted January 21, 2009 Number of pessimistic posts in this topic: 5 (6 including this one) Number of optimistic posts in this topic: 2 This won't happen.
Luke Posted January 22, 2009 Posted January 22, 2009 Honestly the use of a task for this is a bit overkill. It would be just as easy to do something like if(current_time < open_time and current_time > close_time and close_time > 0) means the board is closed as it would if(closed == 1). And besides, how many people know how to code a task for this anyway? Unless you want to make the task system be able to handle more than just custom scripts. Have the ability to set a setting to a particular value. That way you could setup two tasks to do this (open and close) without any programming. Could have other useful applications as well ;). I personally don't need this, but I can see why someone would have the need.
Brian Garcia Posted January 22, 2009 Posted January 22, 2009 I also think this could be really useful! What about when the server does the backup in the middle of the night and everything runs slow and people still try and surf your site. Board stays offline for 15mins warning that they are in the middle of backups.
bfarber Posted January 22, 2009 Posted January 22, 2009 [b]Honestly the use of a task for this is a bit overkill.[/b] It would be just as easy to [b]do something like if(current_time < open_time and current_time > close_time and close_time > 0) means the board is closed as it would if(closed == 1)[/b]. I think us spending time on a feature that maybe 5 users out of our entire customer base would actually use is overkill personally. ;)
AndyF Posted January 22, 2009 Posted January 22, 2009 I'd suggest posting this as a request in Modification Requests , someone may make something for those who would want this function. But as I posted above a few days ago, its more something for a custom modification, rather than a "needs to be built in" feature imo. :)
Luke Posted January 27, 2009 Posted January 27, 2009 It may be actually quite possible to do this as a hook in IPB 3.0. I don't imagine it being too difficult.
blackfalcon Posted February 12, 2009 Posted February 12, 2009 I can hardly see why a school or something would want to restrict the times that people can be online. I dont see why anyone would want hours to be honest. It is not like you keeping the board online all the time is in anyway hurting you or anything. I mean, if someone here can give me one valid reason why such a thing would be imparitive.
Nathan Explosion Posted February 12, 2009 Posted February 12, 2009 I can hardly see why a school or something would want to restrict the times that people can be online. I dont see why anyone would want hours to be honest. It is not like you keeping the board online all the time is in anyway hurting you or anything. I mean, if someone here can give me one valid reason why such a thing would be imparitive. Professional company, whose employees (moderators/admins) work 9-5 and outside of those hours there will be nobody online to provide admin/moderation on the forum. Another example -> http://www.liverpoolfc.tv/interact/message/
blackfalcon Posted February 12, 2009 Posted February 12, 2009 Professional company, whose employees (moderators/admins) work 9-5 and outside of those hours there will be nobody online to provide admin/moderation on the forum. Another example -> http://www.liverpoolfc.tv/interact/message/ just make an announcement saying that. But the thing about forums is, that unlike chat, they are not real time. Just because staff is not online, doesnt mean that customers cant post on the forums and then the employees can reply when they get back on. This would make it impossible for people in different time zones and those with tight sceduals to be able to post on that forum, thus causing you to loose customers.
LeetScape Posted February 12, 2009 Posted February 12, 2009 And there was I thinking more along the lines of "bored hours", an indication of how long you've spent browsing the forums since you joined. :) That sounds pretty nice, I'd like that to come as standard too.
Luke Posted February 12, 2009 Posted February 12, 2009 In a school environment I can see it being very helpful. School moderators are not online in the middle of the night, so the message board is only available during school hours. Just because it isn't something you would use doesn't mean it isn't valid for someone else.
Br4nd0nW Posted February 12, 2009 Posted February 12, 2009 I can see where this may be a useful feature. Perhaps you have a message board for a school, and there are moderators that moderate the form during school hours, and you want to keep it online only during those hours. The current "board offline" feature uses a boolean 1 or 0 value to determine if the board is offline.. Don't see why adding a couple unix timestamp date fields as an alternative would be such a bad idea.In a school environment I can see it being very helpful. School moderators are not online in the middle of the night, so the message board is only available during school hours. Just because it isn't something you would use doesn't mean it isn't valid for someone else. I just noticed that this post received more replies. :P Luke pretty much has it right. I was planning this more for a school website. But I can see no one really cares for the idea so never mind, I'll not bother with this anymore.
Nathan Explosion Posted February 13, 2009 Posted February 13, 2009 I just noticed that this post received more replies. :P Luke pretty much has it right. I was planning this more for a school website. But I can see no one really cares for the idea so never mind, I'll not bother with this anymore. I care for it - and I'd use it too. There are times throughout the year when I'd like to be able to schedule the board to be offline but can't...so have to make sure to that someone is online (me) at the times to close and then re-open the board.
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