Andy Millne

The XML skin is one huge API, really. It's great for syndicating content and completely transforming how you display data.

That it is Matt, it's a hidden gem. Well not so hidden really, just overlooked :)

p.s. Bug reported and already fixed in 3.0.3

Well that's a pleasant surprise :) Thanks Josh.

There's a tag mismatch on that query though, bug in the output?

I would like to use a single search facility across my site and as such a search API would be very useful. Say a search query is submitted via my site I would like to simmultaneously request search results from IPB/gallery etc and have them returned as an xml result set in order to combine them with my own search results. Is this currently possibly or likely to be considered for a future version?

Hmmm something seems to have changed in the way groups are handled in 3. The spam user is now in group "Members (Banned)" and my banned group is empty. Is this group now redundant? If so how do I apply your suggested change?

You can set a usergroup to not display on the memberlist. Group Settings > Hide this group from member list? > Yes

Cool thanks, does that group still count towards the member count statistic?

So back to the original problem of having banned users cluttering up the members list, is there a solution to that?

I know why don't we charge say 0.01 pence for a "forum message stamp"? oh wait hang on... #fail :)

I can think of a few things that would be a little more... shall we say... abrupt :)

Sounds good :D

On a serious note though "Registration failed due to suspected abuse. Please contact us if you think you have received this message in error." Could work.

When adding a member in the ACP you can already opt to have the password emailed to the user. Couldn't you just button-mash and check that option?

So it does :) Thanks Brandon. Are we getting a "nasty message to spammer" option then?

They would use the link to contact the board admin on all the error pages in that case.

Yes but does the error message say why they don't have permission and they should contact the admin or again is it just an assumption that people will contact the admin similar to the Friendly error messages topic already posted here.

Thanks for listening.

Of course we could always add an option: "Give spammer rude message and do not create account record"

:) I think that would be better. Maybe some kind of error message to that affect suggesting they contact an administrator if it is a genuine registration.

I'm not sure how it would be dealt with once they contacted an administrator, maybe by manually adding them via ACP?

If that was the case it would also be useful if when adding a member manually from the admin panel we could choose to have a random password generated and emailed to the new member rather than setting it ourselves. I think that that would be a good suggestion in it's own right regardless of the spam issue.

The idea was that if the spam service overreacted and banned someone who was real you could just click to unban them.

Is that not what the admin review option is for? ;)

Regarding the new spam service, it seems to have caught it's first spam account on my board and succesfully banned them which is brilliant! Why though does it take this action? I don't really want a load of banned spam accounts show up in my members list.

If you aren't logged in it IS followed by a message stating as such. It would make no sense to say that "you might not be logged in" when in fact the user is (for the record, that was how it worked in 2.3 and we received feedback to make it conditional - only show if the user is actually not logged in - which we implemented).

No, I might not have made myself clear but that isn't quite what I meant. I am not suggesting saying "you might not be logged in" Here is what shows now when logged out...



Now if I'm a guest and see "You do not have permission to post" with no suggestion as to why I have no permission it is not very helpful. Yes I might assume that I have to log in to view because of the text below (which could be easily missed as it kind of loses focus when a big red alert takes your focus) but it still relies on an assumption.

What I suggest is "Only registered and signed in users are able to view this post." or words to that effect. It is not that I don't have permission it is just that I haven't signed in.

If I am signed in and it genuinely is a permission error it should say "You do not have permission" as it does currently but even then a link to a help topic explaining why certain users don't have permission to do things and how they are able to obtain permission would be much better.

I hope I have explained myself better. I know a lot of things are overlooked because the majority of forum users are particularly tech savvy but when you are trying to bring an archaic offline community into the 21st century then these seemingly minor issues do need to be looked at.

Hope that helps, keep up the great work on what truly is an exceptional group of products.

I know a lot of people have requested a tags feature for posts. I don't really see the long term value in this as the majority of non technical users would ignore this.

Where I see "tags" as useful is tagging of entities IPS have a suite of community products so this would fit very well indeed and start to move forward the traditional forum software which let's face it hasn't really evolved a great deal in recent years.

So what if you could tag members in posts/galleries/blog entries calendar events etc..? Say somebody writes a post about another member they (or somebody else) then tag it with that members name who is notified they have been talked about. Facebook do this very succesfully with images so why not extend the idea across the community suite. It wouldn't be much of a mind leap for current users as they are already used to doing this on facebook.

There may be issues with software patents somewhere but there are always ways around this.

Thanks, Can we get a mouse-over button like the one for editing topic title please? Editing description now takes three clicks and three full page loads. when it used to only take one mouse hold.

I'm not sure if this is a bug, an omitted feature in 3 or just me being stupid but the ajax edit topic description doesn't seem to work when listing topics. There also doesn't seem to be a way of editing it from within the topic itself. Am I missing a fundamental change with IPB3?

To save bandwidth :P

6. Announcements - Similar to the announcements we can set on a forum by forum basis, how about announcements on a calendar by calendar basis.

Also what I said about Calendar seeming to "Take a back seat" a prime example of that is the fact that no feedback sub-forum exists in this forum yet all other IPS products have one :P

As for charging I wasn't suggesting you charge for it as a seperate app (Although I do think a nominal charge would be justifiable) just that it was credited with a bit more of an equal footing with the other apps. If I sound like I am knocking products don't worry that's not the case, I am trying to offer up my constructive opinions wherever possible in order to help development.

Sometimes the error messages thrown by IPB can be a little bit abrupt and not very user friendly. Particularly those that involve viewing permissions. Perhaps these could be made to be a bit more helpful to the end user in a future version? For example instead of the current "[#103139] You do not have permission to view this forum." how about offering up some reasons as to why this might be the case. e.g "not logged in" followed by links to register or log in. etc.

By all means, if you have suggestions for it, we'd love to hear them :)

Here's a few to get started (I've just really seriously started using Calendar so I'll add more as they crop up.

1. Improve recurring events so an event can occur on more than one day repeated weekly. here is a screenshot of how Google calendar handles this.



Obviously this is a lot more flexible than the current setup as currently I need to add two seperate events when really it is just one. Also the two events sometimes show in the upcoming calendar events right next to each other as shown, which can be a little confusing.



2. Support for extra fields, certain things occur frequently like "Location" and "Entry Price" this would keep a consistent formatting. Currently it's a bit mish mash with different people interpreting the description tag differently. Even better if the calendar could be searched on these fields but that may be a bit overkill.

3. A better way of switching between weekly and monthly views possibly add a daily view as well. At the moment if you hit "view current week" when you get to the weekly summary there is no easy way to return to the monthly view.

4. Ability for members to watch events similar to topic subscriptions. This would alert members to any changes and send them a reminder closer to the time.

5. Ability to invite members to an event you have submitted and list those members that have confirmed, declined or are still awaiting a reply. Facebook-esque!

With those things Calendar would be a formiddable app in it's own right and would integrate into the community package a lot better, currently I feel it is useful but underused as their is not enough integration with the rest of the products.

I'm not sure if this final suggestion would work as it may be a bit of a mind leap for the average casual user but linking galleries to past calendar events could also be a nice feature


Thanks for listening :)

I was just thinking why Calendar is part of the default IPB package and not an application in it's own right. I would have thought this product would do well as an application similar to gallery and blog. This is a product that I feel is kind of taking a back seat and may warrant a bit more attention. Seperating it out from the main package may help with that.

Thoughts?

I think it would be a nice features for moderators to be able to set a topic as "PG" we often have topics and jokes threads that are only really suitable for an adult audience but I don't want to remove these outright. i.e. guests have to confirm they are over a certain age before viewing. I know we can restrict registration but I think that this denies people access to the majority of content that is perfectly suitable for all ages.

It's because only certain browsers support the rounded corners functions of CSS if IPS wanted to have rounded corners for all browsers they would have to resort to invalid xhtml with images or messy markup.