KT Walrus

Since my suggestion to have all content (for all apps) stored into a single topics/posts table for better searching and tighter integration of the forum and other apps is not going to be acted on, I'd like to make another suggestion in this area.

As a user, I don't like the way View New Content is presented to the user. You have to click on the individual tabs for each app to see if there is new content for the content that the app manages. Obviously, the forum is probably the most frequently updated area, but since other areas, are less so frequently updated, I rarely think to click on these area tabs. This results in missed content.

At the risk of slower performance, I'd like to see all the new content for each app fetched when the View New Content page is first loaded and cached. Then, the tabs could at least show the new content counts in each tab. Ajax (or even full page subsequent loads) could be used to fetch the cached content for an app and display it. The cache would be refreshed if the user clicks on the original View New Content link again, otherwise, the content of the page doesn't need to change (maybe update the unread topics markers).

Anyway, I'm not advocating any specific implementation. Rather, that the page the user sees for View New Content should have new content counts for each tab as well as the list of new content in the active tab.

I just want to get this suggestion read by IPS. If it wait until IP.Board 4, that is fine. I won't bother unifying the various app specific thread and post tables for my installation. But, if it will never happen, I may take a day or two and cut this feature in. I don't need to keep compatibility with other apps that I'm not using and I can cut this into the one's that I use in a fairly straight forward manner. All the apps that I have currently installed have their own thread and/or posts table so it might not be that bad for me to implement.

But, if I fork my version of IP.Board (and apps) too much from the IPS maintained ones, I could be making a lot of work for myself when it comes time for me to integrate bug fixes. It is bad enough to manage skin changes. I don't really want to make too many source changes (especially for something that really should be done in the IPS maintained version).

I'm a little surprised that IP.Board 3 didn't integrate this feature in the first place. They didn't even seem to want to change the names of those tables to use the new convention (either ibf_core_topics/ibf_core_posts or ibf_forums_topics/ibf_forums_posts) but I do understand that they probably didn't want to cause third-party modders to have to change too much of their existing mods.

Every host I've used has allowed you to create multiple MySQL users and assign the MySQL privileges for that user. It is very simple in phpMyAdmin. If they don't, then it is a simple task to just use the single MySQL user to be both the Admin user and the Public user.

I suggest that you change many of the Info panels (the blocks of text that start with the little blue circle with a lowercase i in the middle) to have a control to collapse the panel. See the control icon on the right in the forum category header in the forum index.

I'd like to see the state of this toggle be remembered for the user across sessions (and preferably stored in the database instead of a cookie).

The reason is that it is distracting to visit a forum that has a larger sized block of text explaining the posting rules. You really only need to read this text once and then it becomes less important. So, I'd like to collapse it (and not delete it permanently) from the top of the page where the collapsed version would take only a single line of space.

Note sure if there are other places that could use a collapsable info panel, but it wouldn't hurt to implement any multi-line panel of info text (say, over 5 lines of info text) in a consistent manner and include the collapse toggle.

For a bit of added security, I'd like to have the ability to have two separate MySQL user ids/passwords (one that only has Data MySQL privileges and the second that has both Data and Structure privileges) and have the IP.Board software take care in choosing which user id to use to connect to the database. Hopefully, only the Admin would need to connect with the user id that has Structure privileges and then, only when the code needs the extra privileges. This might give slightly better security.

Administrators that don't want to bother with this could just use their existing MySQL id during the initial board installation, providing it for both ids.

As a programmer, I think that if you moved the topics and posts table into the core application and made them available to the other application, the board would be better.

Basically, every app I've installed so far including the various apps that come with IP.Board (forums, members, messenger, blogs, tracker, calendar, gallery), have the equivalent of the topics and posts table. A member's profile has the About Me section (topics), and the profile comments (posts). The messenger has the messages (topics) and replies (posts). The blogs has entries (topics) and comments (posts). The tracker has issues (topics) and comments (posts). The calendar has events (topics) and could easily have comments to events (posts). The gallery has images (topics) and comments (posts).

Every app is likely to have this same basic structure: a single table for posts (so all content posted by members is searchable in a single table and a single table for threads (to describe this content).

Apps would have to have the ability to extend these core thread and post tables with new columns, but they should all be made to agree to populate the common columns when adding, updating, and deleting content. Note that you would need to introduce the concept of class to the core thread and post tables (that is, have a tag/type column and allow extension by adding columns or overriding the common columns for a particular instance of a class object.

The result would be global searchable content and lists (like View New Content) that can show all content ordered or filtered in a more efficient manner to the member. I want to be able to generate a single list of all content posted by a member ordered with the newest content first. I want to visit a community that has blogs/galleries/calendars/forums and just look at a single list of new content. I really don't want to poke around in various tabs to see if anything new has been added. I even want to see calendar events for the current and past days in this single list (so I don't miss birthdays or can see that I missed some community event the day before. Same goes for personal messages. It would be nice if they showed up as well in the new content list (although most members are probably comfortable with viewing the messenger as an online mailbox and don't necessarily gain as much by treating the member's messages as a private forum). Still, for the sake of consistency, I would treat messages as conversations (or threads) which is really what a forum is all about.

I'd love to hear back from you as to whether something might be done along this line in the coming year or so. If not, I might make a pass over the code and do it for myself. The mods would be extensive (although not as bad now that the software is more object oriented.

This is my biggest suggestion for the future.

I'd like to see you add image cropping for uploaded personal photos like the Gravatar site does.

See http://deepliquid.com/content/Jcrop.html for some JS for doing this.

Currently, many people are not savvy enough to crop their photos before uploading them. Currently, IP.Board scales the image, but sometimes this doesn't result in a good photo. Cropping with image preview like gravatar.com is a good way to improve the set of personal photos on a board.