UBB.Developers Forums UBB.threads 6 UBB.portal (CMS) The *Official* Features Request Thread

What better way to kick off the portal forums then to get some feedback from the users about what they want to see in the portal. After all, it is made by UBB users, for UBB users. In this thread you may post your thoughts and ideas for features to be included in the UBB.portal.

I'll start it off by explaining what we have planned/done.

- News
- Polls
- Who's Online (PNTF)
- Calendar
- Reviews
- Styles Integration
- Latest/Most Active Topics
- Login

Please let us know if we are missing a feature that you would like to see included, and most importantly if you think you can help us creating some of these features contact TheX, Allen or I to join the Sourceforge team!

Here's my list:

-PM's
-Statistics of some sort. (Including latest member to join, top poster and top thread starter maybe)
-Search Box.

Thats all I can think of right now.

Please add:
-A list of the users, that were online during the last 24 hours.
-I think it you should be able to manage your whole site with it

How about a search option?

One that searches the forums you already have but how about a webcrawler of some kind.
You know like google. I dont have too much experience with things like that but if its too much trouble to code dont worry

Something like the $RegisteredMemberLine from the UBB if you can't go too deep with Statistics. And maybe UBBNews interegated into it too.

how about reviews like post and php nuke?

*edit* oh yeah and banner support for when we have our sites sponsered *edit*

How about a Web Links option. So we can add a Yahoo type links section. This hopefully will be similur to PHPNukes version (Categories, sub-categories, sup-sub-categories, link checking, etc..)

Intergration of postnuke modules would be nice.

I'd like to see the recent visitors extended to cover the rest of the website as well.

If this is going to be database-driven, possibly a PHP Nuke -> UBB.Portal conversion script? I know it probably can't be done, but it's just a suggestion

Some excellent suggestions here. Keep them coming. I like the sounds of the search box, I will add it to the to do list.

How about personal links section.
Sort of like my style but each logged in user has the option to add their own links to the page so that if they do have the site as a front page like me they dont have to click on the adress bar and start typing they just select their links from the link section.

I like the search box as well... that one hasn't been mentioned much recently. A web-links addition would be nice as well... could be used as an affiliate-type-links section, a members link section, etc...

Comment on article (something like CNET/ZDNets)
Links (something like Gossamer Threads's)
Downloads
Frequently Asked Questions

i would definately like to see an image gallery. That would help my sites a lot!

Why not use SourceForge for this?
http://sourceforge.net/tracker/?atid=442697&group_id=45372&func=browse

Make use of what ya got. Also somewhat more organized.

could you make the templates easily created and maybe even able to run off the ubb one so we dont have to re create our ubb templates?

My suggestions are

- Downloads ,with comments,official homepage and how many users downloaded the file until now

- History Database, where all the post news will be automatically saved in a database and the user could search them by month. ex July 2002, May 2000 etc

- A counter where it shows how many users are online in the site and in the forum. Also which has been the biggest number of users connected on the site the same time

Good luck with the project.It was something that UBB Community needed for a long time

1. live news feeds you could config per page.

say you have a gaming section on your ubb.portal, it would be cool if you could log into your admin cp and insert xml news feeds from around the net. heres a example.

click here i would LOVE to see this in the portal.

also a weather feed would be nice. a hack for vBulletin and a mod for postnuke have been made with this, its a VERY nice feture for users

I don't know if this is mentioned before, but as postnuke users know the permissions system in PN is terrible. This could be done better in this project. The permissions can be given to groups and/or individuals in PN and it would be great if this will be in the ubb portal.

What Brad said about the news feed would be great to have on it.

Not sure if this has been mentioned, but in the VBPortal, they have news which has a different picture and title for each section it comes from.
IE For news about forum announcements, it has a title of 'FORUM ANNOUNCMENTS' and a pic of a forum,
For news on Sci Fi, it has title of 'SCI FI NEWS' and a picture of the Enterprise.
You get me?
If not, I can get an example.

Planet Plastica had one of the UBB's that got me hooked on template hacking.

I understand Hank, and that aint a bad idea either.

Another possible idea is something like the Authority List.
It shows all the staff in a little box or on another page.

I don't know if this has already been said :

-Memberlist
-Search feature for news
-Chatroom, maybe?

How about integrating a picture upload into the users profile, not a general upload feature, just for this one specific area to minimise security implications. Automatically tie the pic to the users profile, limit the size, only allow jpg & gif, and hopefully tie it into a members list.

The list of official features mean that the Portal will be an awesome product when it is finished.

Regards

Websorceror

And an option to have a chat room or not! My server wont allow chat rooms.

There is something you need to keep in mind while making feature requests. Anything that requires modifying the UBB source code can't be easily done - the portal is going to be designed to just "plug in" to the existing files & scripts.

Ahh so It's just going to be an upload and set thing? Ahh that may ruin some ideas...:/

Or we could just request two UBB.portals, one that is a plugin, or one that requires modifying the UBB.classic code. Of course, starting out, I'd go with the first.

~Jon

I'm sure that once the portal is released in beta that the UBB haxxors will start modifying the code. Having the Portal software conform to certain standards means that it will usable by anybody with a valid (licensed) UBB without modification.

Not everybody is into hacking their UBB's to bits. It sounds strange even hearing myself say that.

You need to talk to [email protected] if you have an issue

I agree with all of the suggestions above (last few pages), yet I do have one reservation / concern.. Processor usage.

The advantage of systems that use PHP is that they're both static and dynamic and much more efficient, Perl/CGI simply isn't. In other words you wouldn't really want the output to be as dynamic as say the forums themselves – too much CPU usage on larger sites.

As an example, most separate news systems (NewsPro etc.) store the data in static files, updating whenever a new item is changed. Yet the files that are actually called are either .txt or SHTML (via SSI), thus massively saving on CPU time by not having to run a CGI each time the page loads.

Running CGIs may seem like small peas to some of you, but even a small script can cause some serious load on a site getting 6,000+/- visitors per day (main page). You need to be clever and look for ways to have the data update at set periods (excluding news, which updates when you add a post) rather than all load when the page is loaded. This could turn 6,000 daily instances into say 24 (update per hour) or 48 (guess = 30mins =]) and yet still appear just as dynamic to the end user and ultimately save resources.

I like the UBB Latest Threads hack for this same reason, you can output to an HTML rather than call the CGI directly. The HTML can be made to update when somebody adds a new post only and thus not have to load dynamically each time a visitor loads the front page (not forum page - the main external HTML page).

Anyway that’s just my idea.. crazy eh =).

That is a huge concern of course. That's one of the reasons that the site my UBB is on is still built with .shtml and .txt files for the most part. I am experimenting with a lot of .php in my other sites but since I'm glued to flat files with UBB I not going to put the effort into Netwerkin to change over at this time.

I guess we need to see the first beta code when it's available to see how this is going to work. Your suggestions are great, and I hope they're listened to. I'll give you information just as soon as I have it.

Perl and php are both cgi, both are equally good at being fast in the hands of a good developer or slow in the hands of a poor one. There's much more to it than the name of the language.

Yeah but output to SSI included files is even faster =), screw CGI and PHP hehe j/k.

tell that to deviantart.com with the php/sql running @ like .0005sec to load a single page. (man i wish i could code like that) i like the journal entry system they have.. just a thought.

Deviantart's site has been fine tuned over a long time. That place is amazing. I love the thumbnailer they built too.

is UBB.portal FREE ? I hope that

The portal, when it's available will be a free addon. It is not supported by, or endorsed by Infopop. It is being put together by some people in their spare time.

hope that UBB.portal is a free software, that's a product of UBBDev.com

Yes, it will be free. Yes, it will be a UBBDev.com "product".

when will it be out huh ? we will wait for you, but for a short time

As it is a voluntary project, it'll be ready when it's ready...

In other words you won't see it for a year or so =) since the opensource place for it seems dead. Things like this rarely get done quick or well unless a set team puts some time in, often projects just die due to the admin..

Hopefully this will actually come to pass, although you might be better off just getting vBulliten =) or Delux Portal.

Let me re-word, "Hopefully this project will actually come to pass". Not that it comes to pass that it should fail =).

I hope it doesn't take long to get a beta going. I'm not one of the talented programmers here obviously but I know that we have some real talent here.

I recommend to you:
http://www.web-app.org/ <--web-app cgi portal
http://www.ihs-squad.com/html/ <--- web-app & UBB

If that's a UBB then where is the copyright and why does is look "off"?

Just looks like limited a CGI clone of PHP Nuke with a UBB Forum, yet the forum isn't actually integrated as a portal, it's separate.

lets hope it works for ubb 6.3.0 when it does go into beta

Quick Search should be added on this board! Hehehehe just because its my first modification! I´m working on other modification now!

PS: I just make cosmetic/visual Mods, I not good scripter!

See ya!

The right sidebar of this board has "Search this forum"

IS THIS GOING TO BE SOMETHING LIKE PHP NUKE ...

IS THERE A SITE OUT THERE WERE I CAN GET SOMETHING LIKE PHP NUKE BUT IN CGI

It's called UBB.

There is a strong interest for an "all in one" site/board system although even that will take time and effort. I don't know what's happening with a portal in the "official" sense of the word, but there are members here who are working on projects that will intergrate UBB with their site (PHP or Perl).

Members such as Paulus and Sub Zero have successfully intergrated the UBB logins with their PHP site, something that many had thought were not possible. Another member Bookie is working on a .cgi-type home page based on the UBB file structure. There are others out here too who are working on projects...

You might want to stick around a while.

http://www.web-app.org/cgi-bin/index.cgi

I'd reccommend searching Google (or yahoo) for Perl Content Management System (or Perl CMS).

For note, don't use PHPNuke, its a resource drain compaired to PostNuke.

PrimeTime: if you were using say UBB.Threads you could customize a MySQL/PHP (php can be replaced with whatever web language you wish so long as you know the mysql calls) and customize a CMS to use the member system.

True...I've thought about that option since last year.

If you want to see a great php CMS visit e107.org

That is kinda cool...Something to shoot for. I think if anything we'll do the hard coding ourselves. My main goal is to intergrate the members info with the site...Although we have a minor setback with that.

it looks nice, but arrghhgh it's slow maybe it's just busy right now

I was thinking the same thing since right now my site is acting sluggish too. I guess I'm not the only one.

http://www.e107.org/

This is nice. I like their link directory.

I'm the Director of Operations for JavaNuke, a Java based CMS ... Our first version actually will be released within the next few months for anyone that cares :x... http://www.javanuke.com/ for those who wish to read up on the project (not much up right now).

For a PHP CMS I prefer PostNuke since PHPNuke can be a resource drain, some hosts actually won't allow PHPNuke (which kind of sucks) because of its resource waste.

anyway thats my two cents ...

I love postnuke and I was a very active member over there. I also went through a few versions of the DuskyBlue system all the way up to the latest Envolution. The Xaraya project (if it ever happens) may be an awesome template engine but the focus seems to have been lost when the big postnuke split happened. It was ugly.

There are so many systems out there, and most of them have so many functions that most people don't need that they're turning into bloatware. e107 is a very thin system and runs well on most any virtual host.

When I built my personal site I went through literally 50 different systems before deciding to use pMachine. It's a blogging system on steroids. I don't need forums on that site and I turned off registration because it doesn't need member functions.

*gets back on topic*

I think my needs for a UBB portal are nowhere near the typical CMS. I would like to have a dynamic "homepage" (calendar, latest threads, blah blah blah) and user/group level access to the site based on the UBB members files. I've seen pages done by LK in the past that were near perfect and I'm sure that something like this would be easy for a guru like him or CC. I know that I could learn it myself given time but I have a 9 month project start in a matter of days that coincides with a new server product that is going gold in 51 days. I just want to be the typical UBB user that opens up an editor and installs the great stuff that the devs here produce. This is the kind of thing that will help keep the UBB community alive.

I'm actually going to be drawing up a ubb summary page for my main site at http://www.undergroundnews.com/ for the whole site when our new design is completed. It'l basically be php based and will call data from the content islands (and if i can ever get the calendar to work on the 6.5 install to work i'll have the calendar running).

I'll get to it eventually, but it'll be a pain to find time to do it :x...

Time is a killer right now. Thankfully I have to be on a computer most of the day and I need to have an outlet like Netwerkin or UBBDev to keep my sanity.

Haha, I had so many windows open earlier this morning that I ran out of memory and started paging like mad...I have 1.5 gig of PC-2700 DDR333 in this box with a 2 gig proc. The page file is 3 gig on a 10,000 rpm Ultra3 SCSI drive...

I guess I could be guilty of abuse but I need to run a lot of stuff. (it was probably because I had sim city 4 running in the background..shhh)

lol nice system . If I had the time I'd do it now, but I'm self employeed and usually swamped between moderating at a few differant sites, working as the Director of Operations at both JavaSpot Services and JavaNuke (cms system) plus web shops lol... If only i could find someone who wanted to trade services lol...

The page wouldn't be too difficult to draw up, if you wanted it like ubbdev you'd need 3 rows (minimum, includes the header, footer, and the third for data). In the data cell you'd need to have 3 colums (right sidebar, left sidebar, center for news or whatever you'd like).

I'd use php includes to call the data that i needed for the sidebar's from content islands (latest posts wherever, recent visitors, etc).

It doesn't seem too difficult but then again i sit and play with php for fun :x...

The page layout is easy, it's the authentication (done safely) that I have the hardest time with. Calling ssi is a breeze, and the content islands are simple enough. I would prefer that the page be cgi and called like any other UBB page. That way it gets the styles, the security and all the other benefits. A UBB portal should be part of the UBB.

Click me and you can see my postnuke project. My theme has been showing up a lot since I released it at the postnuke themes site. I would love to merge UBB with it but that's not going to happen so I would like an all UBB portal. I am probable going to delete that postnuke install because it really isn't serving any purpose other than teaching me php.

Any thoughts on a .cgi portal called as ?ubb=portal?

Hey...Is that a new Postnuke design? I don't think I've seen that one yet. I've always loved grey-theme boards.

This weekend I'll experiment again with the .cgi page. I've been looking at some of the hacks that insert extra .pl and .cgi files and see some of the common codes. Because I'm not a Perl coder I'll just have to go about it trial and error.