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Hiding avatars and making announcements

RP Rasmus Max Petersen
Rasmus Max Petersen
Member
Member since Nov 2012
20 posts
Jan 7, 2013 · 11:55 am · Edited

Hi there

We have recently converted from our phpBB forum to Simple Press for our WordPress based blog located at www.ndroid.dk/forum/

So far, i’m quite happy with the way things work in Simple Press, and with your Codex i have managed to implement some of the cool plugins (like the “thanks” system) without needing help from our programmer (that is quite a accomplishment on your side, since my programming skills are very limited).’

So… Even though im happy for the most part, i’ve run into a couple of problems.

First off all, in regards to avatars, i think the default avatars in Simple Press are quite annoying. I would really like avatars to be disabled by default, and only be shown if a user uploads an avater to their liking. Is this possible?

Second of all, in regards to “announcements”, having forum rule accesible at the top of all forums is something i really want. Not only to explain the guidelines of our forum, but also to explain the “thanks” point system. Do i have to pin a post to every single forum, or are “forum-wide” announcements possible?

Also, a feature i would really like to see in the future, would be customized Simple Press registration/login form/widget. So far i have had luck with implementing the Ajax login widget on our site, and redirecting all frontend profile links to the Simple Press profiles, but having 1 plugin for everything would make integration easier, and help keeping people completely out of the ugly WordPress backend.

Thanks for a great plugin though, i really enjoy using it.

1 Answer

New Answer
YS Yellow Swordfish
Yellow Swordfish
Member
Member since Nov 2008
16,437 posts
Jan 7, 2013 · 12:22 pm

Avatars: You do realise, I suppose, that you can change the defaults for alternate images if you prefer? All you have to do is keep the same name and file type and they will be used instead. We don’t support not showing avatars if a user has not uploaded one but you could just replace the default files with blank, transparant image files which would have the same effect.

Forum Messages: Each forum can have it’s own, unique message which you can define on the create/edit forums admin panel. If you want message text to appear on the top of ALL forum pages however then I would suggest you just enter your required text in the WordPress page that the forum displays on. Anything you create in that page will be displayed before the forum content. It will also follow the style of your usual WP pages.

Registration/Login: As a WordPress plugin and not a standalone forum application then we really prefer to leave WP to do what it needs to do which includes the login and registration processes. Yes – I know we include an in-line login form but that really if just for the convenience of our users – many of whom do not know how to attach an alternate login form to the page. The other point is that there are a variety of decent plugins out there that already perform these tasks and mask the WP side of things which we do feel is a better option.