Since 5.4.3 is pretty close to being out I figured I would ask everyone what they think the focus for the next major release should be. A couple things have been batted around, templates and site integration being the 2 major ones. What's your opinion on the matter? What would everyone like to see most?

Site intregation would be very much appreciated Scream.<br />Most site offers many features which require some registration, it would be very nice to have an easy configuration for W3T to be intregrated to other database.<br /><br />

Hi,<br />Ooh This is great news []/testimages/icons/smile.gif[/]<br /><br />I have some suggestion :<br /><br />In send email to users could you add replacement variables?<br /> Eg, %Username% , %Password%<br />So If I includ this replacement it will automatic replace with a username .. etc <br />I hope that you understand me []/testimages/icons/smile.gif[/]<br /><br />2- Polls, if you can add bars to it<br /><br />3- If you can add online users status (Board name, Post name)<br /><br />4- Just that<br /><br />Anyhow .. WWWThreads always great and the best without this suggestions []/testimages/icons/smile.gif[/]<br /><br />Regards,<br />eDeveloper

SITE INTEGRATION !!!!!!!!!!!!!!Would be groovy []/testimages/icons/tongue.gif[/]<br />maybe a 3rd title (Moderator,Administrator,VIP) something like that

Good News .... <br /><br /><br />and i have some thing to tell : <br /><br />1. for Admin Area and FAQ ( Add to them a language file ) because it's on english only<br /><br />2. a feature to allow Admin or Moderator to post threads and the user can reply only not post new thread <br /><br />3. it will be a great idea if we can send email to all users but in HTML type .... as advertisment of any service we provide in our site .. so we can use this service as email list serivce .<br /><br />4. the 2 files (header.include & footer.include ) ... I hope if we can move this 2 file in different dir not under cgi-bin ... and will be ssi files ( header.shtml & footer.shtml ) .. it will be too useful .<br /><br /><br />any way ...... the w3t with out this suggestion is perfect .... and hope we can do any thing (even small ) to improve this greate script ....<br /><br /><br />we are waiting for this version .... and i will dream of it every day []/testimages/icons/wink.gif[/]<br /><br />Regards<br />BMH<br />

I would suggest adding a link with a function of the avantgo channel. (http://avantgo.com) For users like me who have a palm, I want to download the whole category to my palm for later browsing. Can it be done?

The one feature that I'm jealous of (from vBulletin) is a calendar.I'd like to be able to configure it so that either admins only, moderators only or all registered users can post an event.It could accentuate the community feel to wwwThreads.Just my 2¢.[]/testimages/icons/cool.gif[/]

Site integration would be top of my list ... With more and more people creating site-wide communities I think that this area has to be addressed fairly quickly. In addition to any code changes I think that this needs to be accompanied by good documentation.<br /><br />On the site integration issue, in addition to being able to use the WWWThreads users' database it would be great if we could use the message system. For example, I would like (registered) visitors to be able to post comments about articles, news items, site links, etc. but I would like to be able to do this via threaded discussion. Since WWWThreads provides this I would like to be able to create a new thread for each article and link to that thread from the bottom of each article (maybe including the discussion itself at the bottom of the page). The thread would be in the w3t_Posts table but it would not be visible (or searchable) via the main discussion forum. Effectively I want to create a hidden category containing hidden boards that contain threads relating to web pages linked by some sort of ID number. The threads would only be visible via the 'source' web pages.<br /><br />One other small thing ... Can we have a configuration setting for where email notifications come from? I would like to be able to set message notification as coming from the defined Webmaster (as currently happens), coming from the recipient (if they reply it goes back to them!) or from the poster (if they reply it goes to the poster). I always forget to hack this bit when I upgrade! It would also be good if this could be set for subscriptions, private message notifications and reply notifications.

Hello!<br /><br />I would suggest the following:<br /><br />1-Custom table names. This could be either during installation or through a pm or a dat file.<br /><br />2-A sub board facility under a board. This hack was given somewhere here but not integrated in the routines of wwwthreads. Would be beautiful to integrate in the admin optional.<br /><br />3-Ability to display Categories in different ways i.e. in two columns table and such layout flexibility. Now it is extremely hard to change anything out there.<br /><br />4-File permissions correctly done when the scripts saves changes. On a shared server it is stupid that the scripts creates 644 and later the provider gets headaches to make then 755.<br /><br />5-Different possibility for layouts of the threads. It is extremely difficult to change even any of the fonts while not using the css.<br /><br />6-Ability to use dynamic codes while showing threads within the subjects and messages.<br /><br />7-Ability to send mass emails in steps of 25 emails batch or 50 per batch with clickable links to whom to and also searchable which users to.<br /><br />8-Backup the database<br /><br />9-Kind of a possibility to integrate other programs for authentication for e.g. e-classifieds<br /><br />But some of the above could be already in the script or discussed in the forum, I do not know.<br /><br />Even without any of those above, its a great script.<br /><br />

1. site integration<br />2. different email addresses for "contact" and for automatic mails from the program (e.g. noreply@domain.com)<br />3. moderators should only "carry the M-flag" within the forum they're moderating. I'm running a lot of forums,meanwhile the main forum sometimes looks like a moderator chat, even if no one has any priviliges on the main board.

I'd like an easy way to cross reference existing posts.<br /><br />When making a reply I could say...<br /><br />"This has already been discussed, please see [easy way to insert a cross reference]"

Hello!<br /><br />Also I forgot.<br /><br />In the moderator section, if there are lest say fifteen boards the one moderates and if there are three new posts, then one has to go through all the boards manually to be able to dig out where are the new posts which is tiresome. Hence if the moderator is given an option to display how he wants, i.e. if he wants to see the new posts by boards or in a bulk of each 25 or 10 per page, that would be grreat!!!<br /><br />Further, if by clicking on each link to view if the target = _Blank thats great instead of manually opening.<br /><br />This is very important for moderators.<br /><br />Thanks

1. Site integration<br /><br />2. Ability to display Categories in different ways<br /><br />3. Different possibility for layouts of the threads.<br /><br />4. Allow Admin or Moderator to post threads and the user can reply only not post new thread<br /><br />and for become the BEST of BEST !!!<br />the following features:<br /><br /><br />5. Any format of multimedia can be added to content pages without knowing HTML including PDF, Flash, Shockwave, and streaming audio/video<br /><br />6. Synchronous sharing like:<br />Chat;<br />Voice chat;<br />Whiteboard;<br />Application sharing;<br />Virtual space;<br />Teleconferencing & Videoconferencing<br /><br />7.Upload tool for users, moderators & administrator, supports uploading of files: text, graphics, <br />video, audio.

Here's my suggestions:<br /><br />* Multi-choice signatures (up to 3)<br />* Multi-nickname choice (1 username as login name only, but use 3 selectable nickname for displaying in the post)<br />* The registered user can decide to post anonymousely by selecting one of his nickname and did not allow the others querying their profiles.<br />* Switches to grant groups/users/boards/categories privileges.<br />* Forum boards can be applied as an article/news/download center, etc.<br />* More features for users & sub-communities, such as calendar, event manager, voting center, board master's page/news/notes.. blah, blah, etc.

Can you insert a field in admin so that we can alter the message received by new users after registration.<br /><br />I had someone install my board for me but the message people get is far from what I want it to be and it would be nice to be able to add to or subtract from it as and when necessary.

Scream: what's the matter with the layout of the previous post?

Sorry to be the one dissenting voice, but Site Integration means nothing to me. <br />I want Templates!

I saw that the moderators can Ban users in all the forums without the Administrator decide<br />I suggest the Moderator ONLY can ban user in his forum , so the user who banned him the moderator can't send posts in the moderator's(who banned the user) forums <br /><br />Regards,<br />eDeveloper

I would like to be able to search the users info. This has been discussed many times, but basically it would mean being able to search the "hobbies" field (for example) to find other users that share my interests...<br />

1) Templates! (site integration, too. But maybe afterwards)<br /><br />and<br /><br />2) Cross-Language Forums []/testimages/icons/smile.gif[/]<br />I want to be able to have a different language for each category. For example Cat1 is in English, Cat2 in German. For me it makes no sense to let the user define his language in his profile. The discussion in the forum is done in one fixed language anyway. Move the language selection out of the user-profile. Let's have it as an option for the admin, when he creates/changes a category.

storking just the markup code and smilies takes up much less space. I have don't this already with my copy of www and it was very, very simple. Now each simile only takes 2 or 3 rather than 30 or 40 bytes, someone could have several in the subject line and not exceed the the size limit.<br />Rob in Houston

Aha! Once more the CrashMaster™ lives up to his name ;)<br /><br />Since I've edited it after posting I thought at first that the edit script has "hard" wrapping but that is not the case. From the page source it looks like it has (br) tags embedded in the post. Moreover, the textarea I'm using is much wider than that and the showflat.php script is displaying the post just fine. I guess this is related to the php wrapping feature: in 5.4.1 showflat has the line that is supposed to do the wrapping at 75 characters commented out, while showthreaded has it uncommented. An explanation could be that Scream was using a php version prior to 4.0.2 and he updated to a newer one and the code in showthreaded kicked in?<br /><br />PS. This _definitely_ looks like wrapping done at 75 characters so it must be the php wrapping feature.

But templates are so last year![]/testimages/icons/wink.gif[/]

Three things:<br />1- The ability to collect more info when new user register, like first and last name.<br />2- The option to ask users in the registration process to sign up for newsletters.<br />3- Easy customization "Templates" and all email messages.<br /><br />Thank you

How about form boxes in the post listing that allows you to open, close, delete, move, etc a number of threads at one time... plus this way I would not have to edit the individual thread to make changes. This function is just like ezboards admin or mod interface.

Some of the main things I'd like to see are:<br /><br />1. Voting - If a person has already voted, automatically show them the results in bar graph form.<br /><br />2. New User Message - It'd be nice to have an easy way to edit the message that goes out to new users.<br /><br />3. An easy way to include the addons using Windows NT or AsP (top posters, news threads..etc).<br /><br />4. A Community Calendar of Events would be a great addition!

I think I've mentioned this before, but allowing the moderation of the user registration process is a big one for us. we have several private BBS's that have no public viewable data. currently we have group permisions setup so that new users are allow access, and the moderators/admins have to add them to a viable group.<br /><br />there was one other thing, but it escapes me..<br />

Your not the only voice about site integration. I can see where it is useful and wanted by many but I have absolutely no need for site integration nor any plans in the future for such.<br /><br />But what is driving us crazy is the hacks. For example the smileys. It is a pain to add everything everytime there is an incremental release, so therefore we skip releases or worse yet we start on one then there are multiple increments and we have to start all over again. So some sort of module system would be helpful. That way maybe some of the features we add would not have to be rewritten everytime there is a minor change to the main code for security, etc. We don't have html allowed so a fix for html and a couple of minor tweaks still mean that we have to rewrite many things.<br /><br />I don't really have an answer on how it would work, but that would cut down on the work that we have to do. We have started hacking a version recently only to have another release before we get 1/2 finished. As a result we are still with 5.0.9 and now we are looking at 5.4.2 with 5.4.3 being about ready to be released.

Site Integration

Just a couple of small things:<br /><br />1) When you delete a PM and/or reply to a PM, I would like to see the default action to return you back to the Control Panel.<br /><br />2) The ability to search users by their IP address.<br /><br />3) I concur with another poster re: this matter of upgrading and having to redo all and any hacks that have been added. It might be an impossible task, but it sure would be great. I can't imagine upgrading with a board like Eileen's!! []/testimages/icons/wink.gif[/]<br /><br />Jeff

Change the example email address in the FAQ. Have you been to blow.com looking for Joe? []/testimages/icons/smile.gif[/]

It would be nice to have a complex archive system, so that posts could be rolled to a backup board instead of removed. <br /><br />It would be useful to have a browsable history that was separate enough to not affect performance, but that users could still mine/search for past posts of interest. <br /><br />This would be useful when trying to determine if someone has been a problem poster in the past. We currently use the "Move this Thread" feature to move questionable posts to Admin only boards, but it still moves all replies to the post as well.

I would need the following features:<br /><br />1. Possibility to subscribe to a board so that each message is sent by email as soon as it is sent to the board AND that the user could reply to it by email.<br /><br />2. Much more extensive logging with statistics script:<br /> - How many different registered users have visited each board and all boards during each day/month/year<br /> - How many new messages have been sent to each board at a given time<br /> - How many different registered users have written messages to each board at a given time<br /> <br />3. Easy way to include hacks to a new version, perhaps more use of subroutines in a library, not duplicating the same routines in different scripts<br /><br />4. Easy archiving of old messages as suggested before in another message<br /><br />That's it for the moment.<br /><br />LPa

I am having trouble deciding among what should go first, site integration or templates.<br /><br /> - If wwwthreads is to move into Templates, it might as well be done as soon as possible, so as to save time in redoing new features (new features converted into templates). I do want templates to change the layout, the design, and so on... have more control of the design and emails sent (yes, not just page templates, email templates as well).<br /><br /> - Then there is Site Integration. I guess each one of us might think of something different, as we have different web pages using different programs. I think it would be nice to choose free open source programs and integrate with them, for example, there is that calendar thing... I dont see Scream working on all types of plug-ins, developing calendars, pop email checkers, and so on... its too much work, Scream specializes in board forums, if he moves into developing more areas then he wont be able to spend as much time with the forum software itself, of the best to be found. Meanwhile, for example, there are others who develop open source calendars, specializing in them, tons of features. Why not work integration with them? It makes more sense to me, I think it would be more productive and bring better results. So my idea on this would be to choose free open source programs to integrate with, sharing the same database of users, I hate it when my users have to log into different areas of my site with different nicknames and passwords.<br /> <br /> Another integration aspect is that one I suggested time ago, and that Simon Wolf and others have brought up as well. I would love to have articles, outside of the forum, but that could have a threaded replies to it on the bottom of the page, all this, using the same database of users... Here again, if working on this from scratch is too hard, there are open source programs that do this and what could be used if you share the same database of users so they dont have to relog in.<br /><br />The main advantage of this kind of integration is that they could almost be seen as plug-ins to wwwthreads, meaning that Scream could concentrate on the development of the forums, while there are others that continue concentrating on the other scripts.<br /><br />What do I want first? Templates or site integration? Templates are very welcome, and site integration can help our sites grow... I would probably lean towards site integration, though both are very very welcome.

Great feedback from everyone on this so far. A couple things to note about the templates/site integration stuff. <br /><br />Templates would first be introduced on a small scale, probably like showflat/showthreaded. This way everyone can see the direction they are going and make suggestions and give feedback before doing a bunch of the scripts.<br /><br />Site integration will lean on using WWWThreads within other parts of the site. Like a couple of the posts suggested being able to have articles on pages within your site that have feedback forms that go with them. Calendars would be a possibility as I have some code from a personal script I use that would work well for this. Polls. Emailing replies to forums. These would come a little at a time as I don't want to spend the next 6 months just working on site integration because then other areas start to lag behind.<br /><br />No matter which comes first it won't affect the other. Site integration won't require much modification of existing scripts as it would me a bunch of addon type scripts so it won't make templates any harder to do when it's time to do that. Working on templates first wouldn't make it any harder to do site integration later.

We really NEED an email<->WWWThreads gateway mechanism. This would be immensely useful for a variety of applications.<br /><br />

I have another suggestion..[]/testimages/icons/smile.gif[/]<br />Attach a file in send email to the users groups []/testimages/icons/smile.gif[/]

Another 5.0.9er!!! I have the very same problem, my board is way too much customized and hacked... with features I don't want to miss, here are some of them:<br /><br />- newsletter (preformatted) to a "subscriber" user group, users can edit their group profile any time to (un)subscribe.<br /><br />- site integration with two .htaccess protected "members only" areas, again users can edit their group profile to join, but I set an expiration date after they pay and only then they get access with their w3t username/password<br /><br />- site integration with a CGI chat script, w3t user names can be password protected when entering the chat (again, this is selectable via the usergroup edit)<br /><br />- auto URL, email and image markup<br /><br />- several added markups: my email<br />[ul] and [ol] (plus [li]) for lists<br />[hr] for a separator line<br /><br />- HTML formatted mail (Eileen's hack), I set up the moderator notification to be fully formatted with colors etc. to make the email look just like the post on the forum<br /><br />- inline images (Eileen's hack)<br /><br />- inline poll results instead of poll form when logged in user has already voted<br /><br />- enhanced search with number of hits and page numbers<br /><br />- PMs to multiple users<br /><br />- in preview of PMs keep the original below for reference<br /><br />- optional read receipt be email, PM or both<br /><br />- PM search function, including for deleted (but not yet purged) PMs<br /><br />- PM preference settings/edit form<br /><br />- enhanced "who's online" to show board, thread title, or the username when viewing a profile<br /><br />- clickable titles with pop-up explanation for new users<br /><br />- Main Index login form<br /><br />- orange icons for ALL new posts in a thread, here the main post does not show up as orange/new, also proper icon color when coming from an email link (took a while to fix it, but it can be done, since I did)<br /><br />- URL checker to verify userpics<br /><br />- view profile and who's online only available to logged in users<br /><br />- :-) to []/testimages/icons/smile.gif[/] etc. conversion<br /><br />- one click approve button on each unapproved post (for qualifying moderators only) when in showflat/showthreaded<br /><br />- delete and edit buttons for the post owner, only when the post is editable (edit time not expired), and for the qualifying moderators<br /><br />- show unapproved posts to the user who posted it, to avoid double posting because they can't see it and think their post is gone<br /><br />- automatic reminder emails to users who have not logged in for X number of days, and remove them Y number of days later from the database (added a total user field to keep track of the total ever users for stats)<br /><br />there's more... but this list should do for now... upgrading is a nightmare that I have been avoiding, instead I try to implement the new features or "work them in" from the release version... so, getting as many hacks as possible into the release version would be on top of my wish list!!! Many could be done as an