People have asked me for all sorts of things, some easier, some harder. To be honest, I've started to lose track of everything that people might be wanting across all the threads and all the months.
This thread is now my collection point for development stories (some would use the word "requirements" here). If I said I'd look at it and it's not in here then post to remind me and I'll record it in this thread.
Of course, I don't promise to do any of it, but if something looks easy and worth while, or challenging but really interesting then I'll probably give it a shot at some point.
So, to the development stories... and beyond!
[hr=100]center[/hr]
Development Stories for THN Games
[strike]Option for New Registrants to join selected usergroups automatically
On the registration page offer an extra tick box per target usergroup (BF2, AS, WoW... others?) that says something like "Would you like to register with the XYZ usergroup and see the posts relevant to that section?" If they tick the box they are automatically registered with the usergroup (pending authorisation if that group requires it).[/strike]
[edit]Functionality added 9 September 2006.[/edit]
Last 10 Posts in Sidebar
For the 2-series styles, a small block just below Currently Active Users to list the last 10 posts on the areas of the board you can see, including subject and poster.
Further Event Calendar improvements
Details [post=18975]here[/post].
Reputation Revamp
Still under discussion with the Mod and Admin Teams... loosely, replacing the current Reputation system with something we like to call "cookies". There will be much less cookies, but this should mean that cookies are much more valuable. Also, when you give a cookie you give it from your stash. Admins and Mods can then create (bake?) cookies to give as prizes for events. New users might or might not start with cookies. We may allow a trade of Rep for cookies on switching over (10 Rep = 1 cookie?). All restrictions on cookies probably removed (unlike Rep, which is an ever-increasing commodity). After all, cookies are in short supply, so giving them to someone is a real way of saying "hey, thanks, and I'm putting something useful on the line to say that". Whatever the case, we'll only have one Rep/cookies system.
Rewards
As rewards for good deeds and such, we may allow certain people to have a wider set of privs. For example, cashing in 20 cookies might "buy" you the privilege to have a better signature (90kb, animated with 3 second transitions, ala userbars but slower changes). Other examples might include inventing badges as prizes... "Best BF2 Player (May 2006)", "Eventmeister", "Reviewmeister" or whatever. Badges might then appear in a user's postbit.
[strike]Reply to first post in thread
The removal of the Blue template is predicated on providing a button to reply to the first post in a thread without needing to flick all the way back to the beginning. Then you can either reply to something specific (with the quick reply buttons), the last post (with the quick reply on the last post) or the thread as a whole. Need the functionality and a button to go with it. Then Blue template dies (providing it all works, of course).[/strike]
[edit]Work completed 9 September 2006.[/edit]
Cooler 2-series styles
Amber2 is the most visually striking template, but the banner is much too large for my tastes and the colours are all too dark. Blue2 is a lighter shade, but I'm pretty sick of blue and it's otherwise uninteresting. Need some better colours, cool images, etc, etc. Two/three more 2-series templates required, with images. If we get a development instance of vBulletin set up we may be able to open up the style development to selected community members if they wish to get involved.
Smilies
Need to sweep up the smilies that people use that aren't supported, including
and but others too. May also integrate a cool smilie generator for giggles.
Spell checker
A spell checker available to check your posts.
Improved Polling ... Survey Tool
Extended polling feature giving linked questions, different answer types, stats, etc, etc. Might be good for, say, gathering data about people's characters in WoW, or computer specs in a structured format, or some other thing. Pretty low priority, though.
[strike]Board categories show last post for descendant forums
Currently a board category does not give any indication of what posts are beneath it, just a little orange icon to say "hey, there are new posts". I prefer phpBB's method here, showing the last post in a category. Implementation for this may involve hacking closed forums or something.[/strike]
[edit]Work completed 8 September 2006.[/edit]
Announcements
IntegraMOD allowed us to have persistent announcements at the top of the forum over the shoutbox. The shoutbox is managing some of this for us at the moment but it might be helpful to reimplement the old feature to remind people of upcoming matches or deliver site-wide news or some such. Not so sure about this...
... anything else I've missed?
This thread is now my collection point for development stories (some would use the word "requirements" here). If I said I'd look at it and it's not in here then post to remind me and I'll record it in this thread.
Of course, I don't promise to do any of it, but if something looks easy and worth while, or challenging but really interesting then I'll probably give it a shot at some point.
So, to the development stories... and beyond!
[hr=100]center[/hr]
Development Stories for THN Games
[strike]Option for New Registrants to join selected usergroups automatically
On the registration page offer an extra tick box per target usergroup (BF2, AS, WoW... others?) that says something like "Would you like to register with the XYZ usergroup and see the posts relevant to that section?" If they tick the box they are automatically registered with the usergroup (pending authorisation if that group requires it).[/strike]
[edit]Functionality added 9 September 2006.[/edit]
Last 10 Posts in Sidebar
For the 2-series styles, a small block just below Currently Active Users to list the last 10 posts on the areas of the board you can see, including subject and poster.
Further Event Calendar improvements
Details [post=18975]here[/post].
Reputation Revamp
Still under discussion with the Mod and Admin Teams... loosely, replacing the current Reputation system with something we like to call "cookies". There will be much less cookies, but this should mean that cookies are much more valuable. Also, when you give a cookie you give it from your stash. Admins and Mods can then create (bake?) cookies to give as prizes for events. New users might or might not start with cookies. We may allow a trade of Rep for cookies on switching over (10 Rep = 1 cookie?). All restrictions on cookies probably removed (unlike Rep, which is an ever-increasing commodity). After all, cookies are in short supply, so giving them to someone is a real way of saying "hey, thanks, and I'm putting something useful on the line to say that". Whatever the case, we'll only have one Rep/cookies system.
Rewards
As rewards for good deeds and such, we may allow certain people to have a wider set of privs. For example, cashing in 20 cookies might "buy" you the privilege to have a better signature (90kb, animated with 3 second transitions, ala userbars but slower changes). Other examples might include inventing badges as prizes... "Best BF2 Player (May 2006)", "Eventmeister", "Reviewmeister" or whatever. Badges might then appear in a user's postbit.
[strike]Reply to first post in thread
The removal of the Blue template is predicated on providing a button to reply to the first post in a thread without needing to flick all the way back to the beginning. Then you can either reply to something specific (with the quick reply buttons), the last post (with the quick reply on the last post) or the thread as a whole. Need the functionality and a button to go with it. Then Blue template dies (providing it all works, of course).[/strike]
[edit]Work completed 9 September 2006.[/edit]
Cooler 2-series styles
Amber2 is the most visually striking template, but the banner is much too large for my tastes and the colours are all too dark. Blue2 is a lighter shade, but I'm pretty sick of blue and it's otherwise uninteresting. Need some better colours, cool images, etc, etc. Two/three more 2-series templates required, with images. If we get a development instance of vBulletin set up we may be able to open up the style development to selected community members if they wish to get involved.
Smilies
Need to sweep up the smilies that people use that aren't supported, including
and but others too. May also integrate a cool smilie generator for giggles.Spell checker
A spell checker available to check your posts.
Improved Polling ... Survey Tool
Extended polling feature giving linked questions, different answer types, stats, etc, etc. Might be good for, say, gathering data about people's characters in WoW, or computer specs in a structured format, or some other thing. Pretty low priority, though.
[strike]Board categories show last post for descendant forums
Currently a board category does not give any indication of what posts are beneath it, just a little orange icon to say "hey, there are new posts". I prefer phpBB's method here, showing the last post in a category. Implementation for this may involve hacking closed forums or something.[/strike]
[edit]Work completed 8 September 2006.[/edit]
Announcements
IntegraMOD allowed us to have persistent announcements at the top of the forum over the shoutbox. The shoutbox is managing some of this for us at the moment but it might be helpful to reimplement the old feature to remind people of upcoming matches or deliver site-wide news or some such. Not so sure about this...
... anything else I've missed?
