Thread

Good information and communication at all levels, Leslie, appreciated.

This sounds like a very useful forum upgrade, which then clears the runway for fresh thoughts at next stage.

Or, a series of ‘fresh thought capsulized upgrades’ - maybe a more effective thought and action process than a killer one-time?

Regards,
Clive

Having learned some really hard lessons during EE 2’s development, the answer is yes. We prefer short (2-4 months vs. a year), shippable, meaningful upgrades over “rewrites” and “overhauls.” Even for something as big as a template parser, we think that is the better way to go.

I very much appreciate how honest and upfront you’ve been in this thread, Leslie.  Better that the community knows what’s under development, than for us to create unrealistic expectations for the next forums module.

Sounds great! Thank you, Leslie, for this Infos about DF4 (+5)! This really helps us to plan ahead. I’m looking forward to the DF4-Update.

Hi Leslie, will James be releasing a new forum theme to go with DF4? If so, please make it minimal.

Thanks Robin, keep it coming, and please consider a way of connecting what’s happening over on the ellislab.com blog and here. I can’t be the only person who missed a lot of interesting blog posts, and more importantly, activity and intent on EE development.

Noted. We announce everything at @EllisLab but I’ll see if we can find a smarter way to connect the two here.

Thanks. I really think it’s needed. I’m not an avid Tweeter (I know, I know…) and my morning check of the EE.com blog was making me very depressed along with the apparent lack of updates to the Forecast, and I was blown away when I stumbled on to EL.com. It just makes sense to me that product specific stuff should be on EE.com, and perhaps referenced on EL, or the other way around.

Reading a lot of what’s been posted really made my day, so thanks for listening.

On the subject of forums, I have mixed feelings. Upgrades are nice and necessary, but turning the Discussion forum into a support forum with these upgrades implies “we need this for EL, so might as well throw something to the masses too” as opposed to addressing some of the core upgrades DF needs via feature requests or what not even if that is as part of incremental upgrades as opposed to an overhaul. Yes the templating is a pain, but, like a relative you dislike, you don’t have to deal with it every week or every day once a site is up and running. Disclaimer - I am not saying that what is implied IS happening, but it does seem that way.

I’ve said it somewhere before, but EE could be the “Huddler” without the need to allow a 3rd party to take a cut of your ad revenue and be very successful because of it. Especially if you take it to the next level with built in social media controls.

Thanks,

Dan

Hi Leslie, will James be releasing a new forum theme to go with DF4? If so, please make it minimal.

A new theme is certainly in order. RIght now our focus is on getting it done and live on our own site so we can tweak it based on a real world use. When that happens we’ll take a look at what else can be done prior to the public release, such as a new theme.

I’ve said it somewhere before, but EE could be the “Huddler” without the need to allow a 3rd party to take a cut of your ad revenue and be very successful because of it. Especially if you take it to the next level with built in social media controls.

Hi Dan,

What do you mean by “the Huddler”? I’m not familiar with that terminology. And thanks for the rest of your post as well. I’ve flagged this entire thread as part of “learning list.”

Leslie, you may have been properly fishing for a targeted answer, but huddler.com’s first page should rapidly answer any questions. Not going to comment on their results.

This entire area seems very ripe for encouraging add-on developers, doesn’t it? By inclusion and any needed technical hooks.

Then you can let the social thing ebb and flow as it will, and where there is anything of real interest, add-ons will come quickly to satisfy desires.

I’m thinking this would be much more effective than having Reactor contention on such topics. In that kind of view, anything Reactor ought just to be about frameworks and enablers, as a way to get outside contribution and directions on those.

Hope the thoughts useful, one way or another.

Regards,
Clive

Yep, Narration is spot on.

That’s something focussed on big vB sites, who want the ability to have a wiki/product reviews and a blog/editorial content, and who, for whatever reason, don’t want to look at vB’s CMS solution.

The main Huddler difference is that it’s a fully managed service from deployment/design and ultimately ad revenue share. Not a model for you, but providing a well thought out combination of CMS/wiki/forum etc as a software only solution has merit in my mind for the more hands on web developer.

EE pulled me in because of it’s flexible CMS, plus first party wiki (that I ended up not using) and forum. If EE offered all those things well executed, plus gave me an easy path to integrating social media to boot (as much as anything as an alternative to a forum), I’d struggle to justify looking elsewhere. If they were tag based, rather than module based, I’d probably cry happy tears.

But that’s just me. EE is great, I just think it could easily be the greatest and default option for anyone willing to get what they pay for, from small sites to enterprise solutions.

Hi Leslie, will James be releasing a new forum theme to go with DF4? If so, please make it minimal.

I’ve really missed the “Minimal” theme. We used it in at least a half-dozen sites.

Love what’s slated for the next generation of the forums mod though.

I mean that the new features in DF 4 are centered around improving the support experience and providing a tool set for others to do the same (like Devot:ee, 3rd party devs, others who run communities where people help each other out). For example, as a thread starter you’ll be able to mark a post as a “Solution” to the thread. You’ll also be able to do some basic Like/Dislike (+1/-1) for all posts. This can then be used to make the best content/data more easily findable.

For example, if there is a complex issue that is 5 pages deep, once the solution is marked, instead of wading through 5 pages its auto linked up front along with potentially the “most helpful” post. It could potentially be used to inform search results (show only helpful posts or threads with solutions, color code them, etc…). 

You’ll also be able to do things like create a “queue” of sorts that tells you if threads aren’t answered, time someone has been waiting, custom statuses, and other things that will make person-to-person help better (regardless if its Staff/mod to person or person to person). You’ll also be able to select which Forums are included and exclude ones that don’t provide the most critical data (exclude Lounge, include Installation help help for example).

VERY excited about these updates :D

At Solspace, we’ve wrestled with the idea of using something else instead of EE Discussion Forums (or even building our own! haha). These new features you mention are most of the limitations we are encountering. 😊

Count me in with Pie Man, an EE forum module with features specifically geared towards a support system would be absolutely fantastic. I’ve spent a fair bit of time deliberating over various support options for my addons and still haven’t found a solution I’m particularly happy with. This sounds like it could be exactly what I’m after. Can’t wait to give it a try.

I’m trying to read between the lines here, and compare it to promises made earlier…....

It appears the Discussion Forum improvements may be geared toward letting EE itself upgrade it’s forums from the 1.x code base? In other words, they would finally start using the software they have been selling for a couple years?

Is that correct?

Derek had earlier stated:
“Posted: 05 February 2010 11:31 AM
“The Discussion Forum module will see a significant update in the future, it is not slated for removal.  It is a lifeblood product that we use ourselves.  Work on the update will not begin until after ExpressionEngine 2.1 is released”

This was in the middle of long threads about features, total rewrite, etc…....so it was not a statement by Derek talking about upgrading it for “support” reasons.

Again, I have to read between the lines because there appears to be less than full disclosure on much of this. Many have asked point blank about the Forums being updated - and to we laymen, “significant” and “after 2.1” means something. There were other posts mentioning a complete overhaul this year.

As to the feature requests, those have been given for at least 3-4 years, both in the feature requests areas and in threads (and I’m sure in other ways”....they are too numerous to mention, and it’s been too long for me to look them up. It’s a moving target. Can we easily share posts on Google+ and FB, etc.? Heck, I don’t know. Most add-ons do not work with the Forums.

Please note, Leslie, this is more a statement of fact and recent history than a complaint. I like the forum module. But I and many other expected that promised would be kept and significant upgrades finished by now.

Quickie off-the-top of the head stuff on forums….

1. Ability to easily place banner ads or other things in the forum - even every “x” posts in a thread. Other forums have this (often as plug-ins).....many of us make a living from ads, so they are important!

2. Social media hooks (whatever they are).....

3. Ability to easily archive posts in various ways (all before a certain date, all from a certain forum, etc.) and therefore make the data set smaller and faster for current live data.

4. Any and all image upload and various related simplifications and tools.

5. AJAX and other methods of interacting with the data which appear more modern to the user.

6. BETTER AND FASTER searches and indexing - speed as well as fuzzy logic, etc….

7. Restrict certain actions - forums that new users can post into…until they post X times, etc.

8. Better Documentation of the Forum variables and hooks.

9. Previews of the content of a forum post by mousing over title of that post…..

10. Lots of membership options…for the admin to deal with users. For instance:
a. Delete users who signed up and never posted in X days (years)....or send them an email about it.
b. Remind users who signed up X days ago that they have not posted.
c. Lots of others things I can’t think of right now…..

That’s the one minute quick think…...I would assume that someone from EE has a list of items from the feature request forums….which may relate!

Here are some from the last 3 years…I doubt many have been done yet…..
http://ellislab.com/forums/viewthread/94455/
http://ellislab.com/forums/viewthread/92388/
http://ellislab.com/forums/viewthread/91515/

After all those, there are dozens more that should be considered. A decent way of doing so would be to query members as well as look at other modern forum software (Xenforo, for instance) and see what is being implemented. Realistically, most people need…or can use…most of the same things. Not to say you have to add thousands of features, but the top 20 probably deserve consideration.

Yeah, maybe too many posts - but here is a criteria based engine…note the video. That’s slick….
http://xenforo.com/community/threads/notices.18390/

These kinds of tools are really valuable if we want to, for instance, sell something or tell something to certain people…based on where they live, their gender, the forum they are in or many other criteria. A criteria engine also allows for that “only go into X forum after X posts in the regular forums”, etc.

This and some other suggestions can really be linked together as “social media” helpers, in that they help us (mods, admins, others) communicate better with our users.

We could, for instance, easily add or remove custom messages which “guests” see, asking them to sign up (if that is what we desire).
We could use it for instant news blasts….winter storm notices, etc…..

Well, this could go on forever. I’m signing out. If EE really wants to upgrade the forums, they will start a real project and ask users. I’ve pretty much given up on being surprised.