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#204634 04/30/2000 5:04 PM
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Well, the majority of known bugs have been fixed so it looks like it's about time to begin adding new features and continuing development. I'm posting this here to get some feedback on some things. First, of course I'll be going through and trying to gather all hacks that everyone seems to like, and then post them on this forum so we can get a general opinion on if they should be in the main distribution. If everyone thinks I should just add as many of them as possible, then we'll go that route.

Secondly, we might try a bit of a layout adjustment. So, if anyone is interested hop over to http://www.thegreenboard.com/cgi-bin/tgb/wwwthreads.pl, care of notesexchange and tell me what you think. He's made some layout adjustments that look pretty nice and if everyone likes it we'll roll this into the main distribution.

Any feedback would be greatly appreciated before I really jump into anything.


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I love the layout of the greenboard. I definitely would want that.

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I might suggest that when you implement the change. It would probably be a good idea to use sub routines in the w3t.pm file to get the tables that surround all of the text. For example; a send_table_OuterHeader() and a send_table_InnerHeader(). This would allow someone to edit all of the table tags(if they need to do so) by editing the w3t.pm file.
I am glad that you like the layout. It was fun working on it and well worth it[]/w3timages/icons/smile.gif[/]!


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I've been around to other w3t user's sites and it's enlightening to see how they have customised the look and feel to suit their site's subject matter or just their personal tastes.

Any layout which remains flexible and can be modified to an individuals customisations gets a thumbs up by me.

Darren.


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I am all for removing w3tvars.pm and w3ttheme.pm and creating a text-based config file with all that data in it.


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I can tell the author put a lot of work into the site design, and it is put together nicely.

Personally though, I won't be going with it. It looks WAY too much like the Ultimate BUlletin Board setup (and all the UBB rip-offs)-- which is something I never liked and moved away from a long time ago.

I can see why people would like it though, and maybe the fact that it's very similar to Ultimate Bulletin Board will work as an advantage for some users. Seeing as it's UBB-like, and UBB still seems to be the most commonly used board on the www, maybe it'll make things less unfamiliar for new users.

I always kinda liked the "different" feel of W3T though, and I don't want to lose that. If the majority votes for this new layout, that's no big deal to me, go for it. I've hacked W3T many many times already, adding some cosmetic changes won't be much of a problem.


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On a side-note, I like the text icons (ie. "expanded threads") used on the site. I've voiced my opinion on all the graphical buttons many times before-- I think they're unintuitive and too confusing for the average 'net wanderer. I changed mine to just plain text links a while ago, but the text graphics on this site work nicely too.


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To answer the original question: I think adding as many of the hacks as possible would be the way to go. There's been some really clever ones created over the last few months (my favorite being the ignore users/killfile).

Cleaning all the hacks up, optimizing them, and rolling them out into the main distribution would be terrific.

I'd prefer if all the hacks were optional though, and they be split up into seperate files whenever possible and appropriate-- to keep server load down to a minimum.


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Um. I was assuming the new design would be optional. Is it going to be a total replacement?

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Scream,

I'm looking forward to have these new layout features and see some nice hacks included in the main distribution. It would be great if it'd be possible to set different styles/colors for each category!

Most of all I would love to see the following hacks as part of the main distribution:

- The click-to-insert-tags hack (with all the tag-enhancements for [ email] [ url] an [ ftp])
- The Private Message Notification hack
- The Automatic-Reload of online.pl
- The send-PM button in online.pl
- The language flag in online.pl
- The Mark-All-Read feature
- Private Message Enhancements (Preview, Address Book (but address book with bug fix regarding user names including blanks))
- Newsflash-Hack for each category

Scream, I want to ask you for one thing: Could you please make sure that the HTML code to show messages in the forum won't change in future version updates? Or at least to inform us users about changes in the way forum posts were shown as html pages. This will be very important for me in the future, because we're currently building a java based Offline Reader tool for our wwwthreads forums. This Offline Reader already works great, but it wouldn't work any longer when the html pages would change. (at least we would have to change the way the Offline Reader works and roll out a new version of that OLR to our customers)
Thanks.

Carsten

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Carsten Müller, Hamburg (Germany)

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I think that there would be a very simple method to make the look optional. Add to the w3ttheme file variables for two tables, opening and closing. For example, on the green board, I used the following HTML, two nested tables, in place of the original tables in all the perl files:
[:blue]TABLE_ONE_OPEN = 'table cellspacing="0" border="0" cellpadding="0" width="$theme{'tablewidth'}" align="$theme{'tablealign'}"
tr td bgcolor="$theme{'bordercolor'}"
TABLE_TWO_OPEN = ' table cellspacing="1" border="0" cellpadding="5" align="center" width="100%"
tr td bgcolor="$theme{'tddark'}"
TABLE_ONE_CLOSE = '/td /tr /table'
TABLE_TWO_CLOSE = '/td /tr /table'
[:green](sorry the html tags don't have the closing and opening brackets, couldn't figure out how to put html just for display in the message)
Then you replace all of the tables in the code with the variables and you can modify the style how you wish. Either leave it alone or tweak it away.

I just wanted to mention that I have nothing against the original layout of W3T. It is different, and that is good! However, our jobs as site designers and webmasters is to make the User experience as pleasant as possible. Depending on the market you are targeting with your site, changes may not be necessary, but as powerful and cool W3T is, I think that their should be the abiltiy to customize the look 'n' feel relatively easily. I also dont think that looking like UBB is a bad thing, it is the most popular discussion software out there, despite its ineffiecency for large discussion boards. If something is familiar to someone they are more likely to use it, than if not, because they will have to adjust/change, and we all know people just dont like to do that []/w3timages/icons/smile.gif[/]. Just my opinion. Thanks to Scream for a great product!!!

Mike


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For the most part it would be an option. The only part that might be a bit tough to make optional is the main forum listing, but I'm going to try a few things to see if I can come up with something. I don't want to put a ton of if's and else's in because that will end up bloating the code.


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In reply to:

If everyone thinks I should just add as many of them as possible


Sounds like a winner []/w3timages/icons/smile.gif[/]... as long as each would be optionally (via w3t_vars?)... However, what I would really appreciate would be some improvements for Admin, especially a single page for setting all boards' read and write permissions would be greatly welcome... e.g.

Board | Group1 | Group2 | Group3 | Group4
R W R W R W R W
Board1 X X X X
Board2 X X X X X X X
Board3 X X X X X X
etc.

That would be super... and make things much easier. Additionally, for creating new boards, there should be a way to set the permissions right away, without having to go to the extra pages(!) to set the permissions after creating the board. Eileen's hack helps (thanks, Eileen![]/w3timages/icons/smile.gif[/]), but this is nonetheless just a "fix", not a solution.


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That's a thought. Maybe before rolling all the existing hacks into the distribution, it's more urgent to address the things that have been asked for but that there are presently no solutions for.

Consolidating the boards' read/write permissions.
Moving a single message.
Selecting which individual Boards to view instead of just whole Categories.
A "recent messages" view.
Stripping html from email notifications.
etc.


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As for layouts, I like the way Eileen did Wopr.com's lounge.

[:red]D[:orange]a[:blue]v[:green]e[:purple]A

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Aargh! Not another one feeling frame nostalgia! []/w3timages/icons/shocked.gif[/] That split-screen layout looks so retro to me now. It was necessary then but I think the program is so powerful now it just doesn't need it any more.

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Here's a new feature request... How about the ability to have the "From envelope" (where the bounces go) on the "initial password" e-mail set to something that, if a bounce is received, will auto-delete the user (since they never got their password, they can't do much of anything, the user account might as well be deleted as invalid).

Thoughts?


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That's something that I have been thinking about as well. There are quite a few features that are a bit more complex that hacks don't exist for. So, I'm kind of undecided on which way to go. Which is kind of good, because my wife just had all of her upper teeth pulled for dentures, and my stepdaughter is in labor, so I can't concentrate on anything at the moment anyways[]/w3timages/icons/crazy.gif[/].

But it's good that this thread is getting some posts to it so we can decide on what everyone wants the most.


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Go with the new teeth, the new baby and the new features. (And get some sleep!)

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JMFH #204653 05/03/2000 11:49 AM
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In reply to:

if a bounce is received, will auto-delete the user


That sounds like a good idea, IMHO! I'd suggest to first go for some new features that have NO hacks available... if anyone wants a particular hacked feature, that should be possible for them to get on the forums here or the Resouce Center, adding them into the release version is merely a cosmetical solution (one worth doing either way). But since the hacks are available (those that are) I'd vote for adding those features that we've most asked for, make the most sense, bring more ease of use. Just don't get me wrong - I'm all for adding all those great and cute hacks and hacklets into the release (as options), but I think there are some more pressing features that would be of great help for everyone. BUT: First of all, Scream, take care of your family business, and comfort your wife and stepdaughter!


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I don't like the green look ... it's too run of the mill (and confusable with UBB) and the WWWThreads look is just fine as it is.

Regarding including modifications, hacks, improvements, etc. into the main distribution, perhaps if we had a numbered list of items to select from then it would be easier.

However, off the top of my head ...

1. Gerrit's (?) 'mailboxes' for private messages. I'd like to see my hack for including previous message text included too []/w3timages/icons/wink.gif[/] as well as Eileen's version of my address book (fixed for the space problem (which I will try to look into!)).

2. Optional inclusion of Eileen's one-click-to-include-the-icons hack.

3. My hack to change user's names via the admin tools.

4. Eileen's language support/automatic selection modifications. I would also like to be able to restrict the software to one lanuage too.

5. Easy inclusion of new icons.

6. The various PM notification hacks.

7. Eileen's pop-up instructions.

8. The option to use text-only hyperlinks in place of the buttons.

9. The Bozo filter.

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I agree with Simon's list with two minor exceptions.

1. #4 I'd like to be able to make individual forums language specific. This would encourage those who speak that language to talk in areas where others will understand them. smile (I'm bilingual but my gawd, there are too many languages supported!)

2. No pop up instructions unless it is optional. (pop-ups are annoying, imho)

and a new item: better documentation (please)

thanks,

Bridgette


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I think it would be nice to make these as customizable as possible. Therefore... using some kind of template should be the answer.

I.e. an HTML-style system with tags...


Sebastien.


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Personally, I agree with some of the others that the priority should be on popular / important requests for which no hacks exist. While it would be great to see many of the hacks implemented in the main release eventually, the fact remains that if one wants that feature enough, they'll use the hack. []/w3timages/icons/wink.gif[/] However, if there's no hack available, we just have to wait patiently. []/w3timages/icons/smile.gif[/]

My top five (in no particular order):

1) No more forcing the user to use the back button to edit after preview / spell check. This is by far the biggest complaint on our board, and it is an awkward one to reply to ("Sorry, but you're S.O.L."). There really needs to be another way -- either have the text box (already filled in) right on the spell check / preview page, toward the bottom; or have a "Edit some more" type button, bringing them to a text box already filled in. It can't depend on caches / external factors. (Actually, that one is in order -- it should definitely be #1, IMHO.)

2) Stripping HTML from email replies. Many of our users have large, colorful signatures (we've given them more characters), and it looks insane in an email. []/w3timages/icons/crazy.gif[/] Plus the icons, other code, etc. It can become quite a mess.

3) Private Message improvements -- I believe there was a hack of Gerrit's that was said to be headed for a 5.1 release -- a preview option, a sort of "sent folder," etc. Eileen's instant notify hack should probably go along with it, as an option.

4) The ability to move a single post, to another board or within its current board. Mostly necessary for people who post what should be a new post as a reply, or what should be a reply as a new post. (I must say it's amusing seeing a brand new post saying something like, "LOL! I totally agree!")

5) Wee search result improvements -- page number links at the bottom, and a result count at the top ("70 results found" or "Showing messages 1-25 of 70 results" - something to that effect). Many times you get more than one page, but who knows how many there are -- if it told you, you could decide (before clicking through page after page of results) if you need to go back and refine your search.

Oh, and...

6) More time format options... I'd love to have "Sun. May 7" format, but the only way to do that right now is with military time -- I want it with a.m. / p.m. time. On a somewhat related note, we get a lot of requests for the users to be able to custom configure their time zones. That would be excellent.

Oh, and I love the layout of the Greenboard. Run with that one! []/w3timages/icons/smile.gif[/]



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In reply to nemesis23:
1) Agreed - this is the #1 most important and needed feature! I'd prefer the version with having the option to edit the message right on the spellcheck screen - reduces calls to Perl scripts by taking out the extra step to get back to an edit screen, and makes for less waiting time []/w3timages/icons/wink.gif[/] for the page to build up.
2) Good idea - this should not be hard to do, either, a simple filter should do (sorry I don't have the time right now to do this - if nobody else does mess with it, I might try to hack this some day...)
3) []/w3timages/icons/smile.gif[/]
4) Also, agreed - very important! I moved some posts via phpMyAdmin, but it's a dangerous process... could loose all replies to a certain post (at least from showing up)
5+6) would be nice
About greenboard - I would prefer a way to be able to customize the board more easily - I do like the standard layout in general, but things like the table borders are tough to customize. Someone suggested templates, that may not be a bad idea, if feasible - and not creating more server load, for those of us that have a hosted server, not a dedicated one, and have to watch processor load (and traffic?).


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You probably could guess that I would ask for this one....

But MS SQL Support - Please! Although a hack exists for this, it requires so many files to have the same basic modification that (a) it should be relatively easy and (b) if we don't get it, it will be a real pain to upgrade.

On the rest of my wish list:

1. Better documentation - especially on upgrades & admin
2. Some kind of API or integration into external user databases (again an extensive hack at the moment)
3. Better admin controls. In particular, I would like to see some of the w3ttheme, w3t and w3tvars parameters configurable from within the admin screens
4. More configuration control over what links (login etc) appear on the menus and where they get directed to.
5. Enhanced support for filtering of categories (eg only showing certain boards in search screens, by category)

Also, on the green board look - I like it - as long as we don't lose the ability to add custom headers and footers around the board, and it is option.

Hope this is useful.

Dave.




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I go along with a33, here - the green board is not an improvement, and back-steps from what makes w3t distinctive -- with one exception: for the icon-challenged, text buttons in place of icon buttons could be helpful, but these should be an option, config'd. in w3tvars or w3ttheme, and if that, why not go all the way with the option, and give the Previous thread, View all threads and Next thread buttons text values, as well.
In general, though, if it isn't broken, don't fix it, works here.
Thanks, Scream.


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Wonderful! []/w3timages/icons/smile.gif[/]



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You're probably aware of it, but if you want to see one the best WWWThreads customizations, look at the new Gossamer-Threads support board:

http://www.gossamer-threads.com/perl/forum/

It's simple, clean, easy on the eyes, etc.

As for features... adding in as many as possible to prevent as much hacking is great smile Also, some thought to moving more of the HTML into template type files so that customizations were easier would be really neat. After functionality, design becomes very important. How easy it is to change the look of the Forum starts to become more and more important -- and with each new release, it means updating the code multiple times -- and lots of places for errors.

The shift to templates would be a radical redesign at this point, but what about putting the HTML into a code file that would be substituted at run time? Or, using an idea from "patch" make an HTML code file that could be changed, and then patched into the main code files. Doesn't have to be really elegant, and the patches could contain PERL code, too, since it would be a block-replace between marker tags.

Just a thought. It's an extension of "include" files.




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Yes, the GT forum is awesome! []/w3timages/icons/smile.gif[/] Plus, they did a great job of converting everything from UBB to W3T.

As for making changes, yes, it is a hassle to do them as the program sits. If only all references to tables could be stored in one 'include' file and then all files could simply be updated without having to hard code that in, it would make things realy much easier! I am clueless, so someone tell me this can't be done! Otherwise I'll be []/w3timages/icons/mad.gif[/] that it isn't already done that way! []/w3timages/icons/smile.gif[/] []/w3timages/icons/laugh.gif[/]

Regards,

Muhammad Chishti
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I very much like the look!!! It what we were looking for!

-Ken Torbeck [:blue]WWW.INFOSITE.[:red]ORG Special Needs & disAbilities Info. Center


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Are you going to use the http://www.thegreenboard.com/cgi-bin/tgb/wwwthreads.pl templates?

They look awesome!


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Well, if the template experiment works out like I am hoping then I'll have a default template, that will look like the standard version of WWWThreads, and then create another with the greenboard layout.

A very interesting thing about using templates is it could make for a very nice option for the end user. Say you have 3 templates, the default template, one like the greenboard, and another one that maybe doesn't use many tables like a WWWBoard. This might be able to become part of the user's profile to allow them to choose what template set they want to use.


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Yes, that is the beauty of using templates. It allows customization to the extend of the webmaster/developer imagination. Of course, a good starting template would be great. The "green board" guys did a great job and, I think I speak for a few here, I do like it very much.

Perhaps the option of giving the users the capability of choosing their own "style" does not awake my attention, but once again, templates can be modified to disable it.

Keep it up, guy!


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Why not list topics and posts in reverse date order? Newest at the top ?

That is one of the main reason we cannot make up our mind between ubb and wwwthreads. A competing site uses ubb and people really like the topics moving to the top of the list when a new post is added.

mee2

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This is already in the current version, but you have to set it in your w3tvars.pm file... it's called 'Dateslip' and when on, a thread that gets a new post is moved to the top of the forum.

But the reverse order of posts inside the flat threads would be really nice, for the users to be able to set.

Muhammad Chishti
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can we see it, try it??????



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