Support Forum

Gomlers said

Now that I've been using simple:press for a week or so – I really enjoy the forum software! You have thought of almost everything – but I still have some wishes for the next version..

• Participation-icon in the topic-view – it would be nice to have an extra icon to indicate that you have participated in the discussion.

  Like so:

  forum-custom-icons/requests-topic.png (already there)

  forum-custom-icons/requests-topic_posts.png (already there)

  forum-custom-icons/requests-topic_posts_participated.png (I want this)

What you ask for would probably best be done as a plugin to make it firmly optional as it would add multiple extra database queries and processing overhead which we would really prefer not to add to core.

If this could be achieved by a plugin - sure, Please do it! From my experience with forums, this is something that increases the user-friendliness. It might not be the most important factor, but it sure will help a lot - e.g. on a "Hi and welcome to us"-topic. If you have 10 new members each day, you don't want to spend time searching for the 2 you haven't answered yet.. I can't see that this is anymore than a "1" in a db-table, and a if/else-statement anyway?

• Topic View again: a small icon somewhere, to go directly to the newest unread posts. So that if you have 10 posts in a thread which is unread, go to the first one of those 10. (In other words, NOT the same as go to the last post)

There is a codex article which might explain how new post handling is carried out (http://codex.simple-press.com/…..ost-lists/) which might be worth reading. Knowing which posts a user has read is not really as straightforward or easy as it might sound. We can niot always carry that information across user sessions. But the 'new post' list (popup or page) does offer a 'new' button link where appropriate which does take the user to the first unread post. But – as I say – this can not be carried across user sessions so if they do not read that post in the current session the button will not be shown on a subsequent login.

Ok, I'm not a skilled programmer, but I can't understand how this is not attainable. It must be possible to store this information in the DB, by using the post-ID, the User-ID and the topic-ID. If the user has visited topic A, and the last post in topic A was post-ID 1111, then store the number 1111 for the user in topic ID. Next login: If there is any posts with a higher post-ID than 1111, give the user a link to the next one. Delete the records after 30 days. - Don't know if this really is doable, but if it is, why not do it?

In phpbb, IPB and VBulletin, this is not a problem.. And this is highly requested as this increases the user-friendliness by much!

• See some kind of list over recent topics that you have participated in and still are unanswered by you – not just "New/Recent topics" by "everyone". Maybe modifying this list, and make the ones that are unread or not posted in as bold <strong>

How do we know which topics may or may not have been answered? I will throw out the same challenge I always do. If you can come up with a model that is sensible, does not involve massive data storage, is not a massive performance hit, can work across login sessions etc., that let's hear it. It if it workable then we will seriously consider implementing it.

I've used many of the "large" forum-softwares the last 15 years. This has never been an issue on any of them. The functionality has been there - and also the forumspeed. I can't see why this couldn't be done by som queries either. I don't think vBulleting or phpbb works slow. Again - NOT a programmer, just very used to having this functionality..

The way it is now, in my opinion, and also my users - is that it is little hard to know which topics have been read, which topics have been answered, and where in the topic is the first unread post.

I do not mean to be "mean" and criticize Simple:Press. There are many great things about simple:press which many of the other major forums don't have. But I feel that the points I've mentioned above, are really important ones to have in an active forum. In my opinion, a member should never be unsure of which threads are read, and which threads the member has already written in.