Author Topic: Share Your Input: Forum Software Upgrades - What Do You Want To See?  (Read 4183 times)

Offline Phillip Dampier

  • Mayor - BetterMost, Wyoming
  • Town Administration
  • BetterMost 5000+ Posts Club
  • *****
  • Posts: 6,347
    • BetterMost
BetterMost has begun working on laying the groundwork for a major software upgrade to the forthcoming SMF v2.0 forum software.  This is the first major software upgrade for BetterMost since the site launched in 2006.  As the SMF software upgrade is still under development, the authors have created a forum asking for input from people about what they'd like to see changed or introduced in the next version of the software.  Now is your chance to give us your thoughts, which we will pass along to them for consideration.

What would you like to see changed, from the user registration process to the profile system, to the Private Message (PM) system, the way the forums work and display, the message editor, etc.

We are looking to deploy v2.0 around the end of this year, depending on when the official release is made available.

Thanks for your input!
« Last Edit: November 22, 2007, 05:29:43 pm by Phillip Dampier »
You're a part of our family - BetterMost, Wyoming

Offline Phillip Dampier

  • Mayor - BetterMost, Wyoming
  • Town Administration
  • BetterMost 5000+ Posts Club
  • *****
  • Posts: 6,347
    • BetterMost
Re: Share Your Input: Forum Software Upgrades - What Do You Want To See?
« Reply #1 on: October 03, 2007, 10:53:06 pm »
How about getting a better spell checker?  From my experience, the current one doesn't always recognize contractions (when's) and words not considered proper (cutie).  Maybe an administrator can add frequently-used words, if that wouldn't be too time consuming.  I mean, this one doesn't recognize "Proulx" or "Lureen"  or "Gyllenhaal" (I just tested it to make sure I was correct.).  That's just scandalous on this site.  It's no big whoop, but it'd be nice gravy. 

Heh... thanks for this.  I know there is a plan to introduce a feature to let us add words to the dictionary.  I have found the same irritation you have, so it's definitely something that needs improvement.
You're a part of our family - BetterMost, Wyoming

Offline Phillip Dampier

  • Mayor - BetterMost, Wyoming
  • Town Administration
  • BetterMost 5000+ Posts Club
  • *****
  • Posts: 6,347
    • BetterMost
Re: Share Your Input: Forum Software Upgrades - What Do You Want To See?
« Reply #2 on: October 06, 2007, 07:23:20 pm »
After a certain number of pages, you can no longer view a thread as flat (“view flat” is the only thing I miss about ~a board somewhere else on the Internet~). Is there a way to get the software to display several pages at a time? (ex. - 1 through 5 of 100) Is it possible to make this a user-controllable feature? (ex. - set a profile preference to increase the number of responses displayed on a page to 15, 20, 50)

The reason this doesn't seem to be a user setting is that the forum software message database stores messages in a manner that makes it somewhat CPU (processor) intensive to render the pages for viewing.  The more pages one loads at once, the more system power is taken to do it (as well as memory on your computer).  With some of our video threads, just seeing 10 instances of a player can use 200 megabytes of memory, depending on the videos involved.  I had this turned up to around 25 replies per page and the old hosting company we used to use basically said we were creating a problem for them.  It also slowed down the whole forum, because many of our pages contain graphics and other elements and it took a lot to render them.

I am not sure if they are making a change in the database in the next version that would change this issue, but I'll pass it along.
You're a part of our family - BetterMost, Wyoming

Dagi

  • Guest
Re: Share Your Input: Forum Software Upgrades - What Do You Want To See?
« Reply #3 on: October 08, 2007, 04:38:24 pm »
Maybe this is a stupid idea, but I´d love to have a pop-up that tells me when one of my buddies is going online....

Dagi

Offline Phillip Dampier

  • Mayor - BetterMost, Wyoming
  • Town Administration
  • BetterMost 5000+ Posts Club
  • *****
  • Posts: 6,347
    • BetterMost
Re: Share Your Input: Forum Software Upgrades - What Do You Want To See?
« Reply #4 on: October 08, 2007, 04:48:07 pm »
Maybe this is a stupid idea, but I´d love to have a pop-up that tells me when one of my buddies is going online....

Dagi

Other forums have made suggestions like this, so it's not at all a stupid idea.  Then again, I am hoping for a cleaner way to represent a new PM is in one's box as well.  Instead of a giant white page with a little box in the middle, I would like to see a much smaller box just notifying people they have a PM.  I know there is something being worked on, so this idea has a good chance of coming to pass.
You're a part of our family - BetterMost, Wyoming

Offline Ellemeno

  • The BetterMost 10,000 Post Club
  • ********
  • Posts: 15,367
Re: Share Your Input: Forum Software Upgrades - What Do You Want To See?
« Reply #5 on: October 21, 2007, 05:16:19 pm »
Other forums have made suggestions like this, so it's not at all a stupid idea.  Then again, I am hoping for a cleaner way to represent a new PM is in one's box as well.  Instead of a giant white page with a little box in the middle, I would like to see a much smaller box just notifying people they have a PM.  I know there is something being worked on, so this idea has a good chance of coming to pass.

Hunh - my pop up letting me know that I have one or more new PMs is small, about an inch high and two inches wide, and just floats over whatever page I am opening up.  That's an interesting difference.  Do you think it's our browsers?