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Ideas how to develop the forum software further?
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Moderator
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1. January 2005 @ 07:34 |
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Boss: Thaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaannnkkk youuuuuuuuuuuuuuu!!!! i hate those damn things.
http://www.Lonero.net - friend of the forums, great guitar player
#afterdawn (well i have no idea where it is anymore) |
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I hate titles
35 product reviews
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1. January 2005 @ 08:08 |
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zippyd: Seriously, I appreciate the suggestion -- I've actually developed more than enough forums for various companies and have developed such things (emoticons) for other companies, but I can't personally stand them :-) And again, they would slow down the page loading times as well, even when they would be like 512 bytes, but when you got 100 on one page, that makes 50kb extra to load per page, which is a pain for modem users.
And also, I'm sorta old skool person, I began my "Net career" as a sysop on AmiExpress board back in 1991, I'd personally prefer a text-only, fixed-width font command line site :-) Unfortunately such thing doesn't exactly go well with mainstream users, so that's why aD is graphical, although we try to aim to keep it simple while trying to make it look nice :-)
But as always, suggestions are appreciated, but this one (emoticons) will get turned down, unfortunately :-)
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Senior Member
1 product review
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1. January 2005 @ 08:37 |
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LOL,
Like I said, it was a "fun" but useless idea. I seem to have alot of those. Just thought I'd toss it out there for a vote. I just see everyone using the text versions of the expressions and even some people using the img, /img feature to display some and thought about making the suggestion. No worries on my end.
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Senior Member
1 product review
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7. January 2005 @ 23:46 |
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Quote:
-to have checkboxes next to PMs to allow moving several PMs to the "trashcan"
Can you do this with the subscribed threads list as well?
I just finished unsubscribing to over 100 threads one at a time. Not very fun.
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Senior Member
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9. January 2005 @ 11:40 |
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Also im not sure if ne1 has written this, but like is there a way where some1 who posts a cr*p post in, can they then be like demoted?
System 1 :- Main PC: AMD XP 3200+ - OC Slightly 2.31Ghz, 1024 MB DDR PC2700, 1 x 40GB Hard Drive, 1 x 60GB Hard Drive, ATI 9600XT (256 MB)Graphics Card.
Laptop 1: 1GB DDR2 Ram, 100Gb Samsung HDD, ATI X700 128mb Graphics Card.
System 2: Downloading PC: AMD Sempron 2500+, 512 MB DDR PC2700, 1 x 40GB Hard Drive.
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Moderator
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10. January 2005 @ 15:27 |
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just use the "report offensive post" funtion and it will be seen, just make sure you state why. or PM the link and reason to a mod.
http://www.Lonero.net - friend of the forums, great guitar player
#afterdawn (well i have no idea where it is anymore)
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rroettger
Member
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12. January 2005 @ 01:12 |
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Now how can you not just "love" those great litte "emoticons". I think zippyds sugestion is perfect.
Here is one to get us started.
 lol ;o)
P4 3.2GHz HT 1GB DDR SDRAM 320GB RAID 0
16x DVD-ROM, 12x DVD DL+R/+R Dolby 5.1
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rroettger
Member
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12. January 2005 @ 09:11 |
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It would be helpful if clicking on search results would open a new window.
P4 3.2GHz HT 1GB DDR SDRAM 320GB RAID 0
16x DVD-ROM, 12x DVD DL+R/+R Dolby 5.1
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mryoda
Newbie
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19. January 2005 @ 03:25 |
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you've done one hell of a job with the forum!
frankly I love how speedy it is...
I'm looking into coding my own forum as well in CFMX... and needless to say it's a daunting task...
here's a few ideas:
1/ 'last reply by xxxx' next to thread title?
2/ mouse-over popups on thread titles showing first 10-15 words of the message...
again, a great forum!
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I hate titles
35 product reviews
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19. January 2005 @ 07:53 |
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mryoda: Thanks. The pop thingy I've wondered, but decided so far not to implement it. Reasoning: it would roughly double the html pages (main index of the forums and the forum_view.cfm pages) and I still prefer to keep the site fast even for modem users (I'm on 8/1, so I can't really tell the diff, but :-). The "last post by" is a different matter -- that would involve a new join to the SQL query to pull out the member nick for the person who made the post, thus slowing down that query as well. Only a matter of probably 5 milliseconds, but that adds up quite nicely when you have 400,000+ page loads for the forums a day :-)
Anyway, I wish you luck with the development. I've been toying with an idea to release the forum software either as an open source or a LGPL'd shareware (free for personal sites, $50 - $250 for commercial sites). I have only two probs with that at the moment -- the codebase is still, despite quite a lot of "neutralizing" work, very afterdawn-centric. And I simply don't have time that it would need to make the installers, code documentation (true coders never doc their code ;-), project maintenance, etc.
Anyway, I'm always into CF chat, so if you got anything interesting going on, gimme a PM. After all, as my "day job", I do CF code and db designs for various companies.
To all: Thanks for all the suggestions. We've received tons of good ideas, etc and will evaluate all the suggestions within spring 2005 and will start developing them with the typical timeline (read: when I have time :-).
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mryoda
Newbie
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19. January 2005 @ 12:09 |
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yup, i can see how it can grow the page enormously... i guess as long as the title of the threads are relevant to the first post, then it's all good... afterdawn doesnt seem to suffer from such a problem, but a lot of forums, thread starters title their post in such vague manner, features like it helps a lot... and it was something I noticed only after I started looking into features required for forum app...
as for the 'last reply', would it really be such an overload? i think I read this site runs off 5 servers, correct? haha it sounds like you have cpu cycles to spare!
how about page links next to the title of the thread that has multiplage pages?
it shouldnt be too detrimental to the speed of the site... (maybe..)
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I hate titles
35 product reviews
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19. January 2005 @ 12:49 |
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mryoda: Actually, at the moment, the CPU cycles are a major headache to us -- I've reported this in various threads and our loyal users know it: our system has been on its knees during the peak hours pretty much every day after Christmas 2004. The problem is really the database box -- 2GHz Dual Xeon can't really cope with the fact that we get
a) 400,000+ forum page loads a day
b) additional 400,000+ heavily dynamic page impressions (main site) a day
c) the forum database contains almost million posts and our user db contains over 260,000 users
Out of five boxes, only two are used for CFMX and one for db. Other two are for downloads (about 2TB a month only for software downloads..), log analysis, ad serving, etc.
Anyway, we've just received few quotes from various hosting companies and will move our cluster to seven server setup (that has load-balanced database setup) -- in addition to having two additional nodes, the new setup will also replace our P4 webservers with either Dual Xeon 3GHz boxes or Dual Opterons.
So, as a summary -- no, probably the 5ms wouldn't kill the system, but I'm reluctant to add any further load to the db until we get the current hardware mess sorted out that was "caused" (well, not like I'm complaining :-) by a recent traffic boost. We have been forced even to take down the forum search engine and temporarily replace it with Google.
But yup, the page number viewing makes sense and I'll add it to my to-do list. And the "last post by XXX" will most likely get added too, but as said, only after we get more oomph to the db :-)
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mryoda
Newbie
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19. January 2005 @ 17:43 |
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260,000 users and 800,000+ impressions per day?
jebus... I'm more impressed now given the numbers... *bows*
anyhow thank for listening to my suggestions...
can afterdawn possibly be one of the biggest coldfusion -based app on the web?
I'm just not used to seeing a cf app pushing such huge numbers... hehe.. ;)
[edit] another idea, how about taking the user back to the last page of the thread after posting the reply?
This message has been edited since posting. Last time this message was edited on 19. January 2005 @ 17:44
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Moderator
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23. January 2005 @ 09:34 |
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What do you think about change DVD-R for advanced users to DVD-R for advanced questions?
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I hate titles
35 product reviews
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24. January 2005 @ 00:06 |
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mryoda: Oh no, there are several huge FuseTalk-based forums out there, so I don't think we would even rank within the top 10 largest CF-based forums. But obviously the aim is to "get there" :-) Granted, we could easily boost the number of posts by removing few restrictions like the one where newbies can't reply to old threads, etc. But then again, I prefer to keep the content more accurate rather than toy with posting figures.
And yes, the "take me to last page/my post after replying" is on our to-do list. Will get added there once our higher priority stuff (server upgrade, etc) gets done.
flip: Would the naming convention make much difference to the content of the forum?
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Moderator
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24. January 2005 @ 13:11 |
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Quote:
flip: Would the naming convention make much difference to the content of the forum?
It might. Alot of newbies post simple questions in the advanced forum thinking that is where the people with the most knowledge hang out. What they don't realize is our members browse the whole forum.
I've moved so many threads from the advanced to newbies, because they are simple questions. There really aren't that many true advanced questions, but they do come along. Or you could just combine the two and make a DVD-R forum.
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Senior Member
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24. January 2005 @ 14:10 |
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i think merging the two dvd-r forums is the best choice. some memebers don't know if questions are advanced or not.
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mryoda
Newbie
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24. January 2005 @ 17:37 |
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hm, I have hardly come across a site that uses fusetalk (except MM's forum)...
btw, I agree changing the name for dvd-r forums can help... perhaps putting ADVANCED in caps at the front.. people just see "dvd-r" and dont bother reading all the way to the end..
anyhow good luck with all the upgrades... as for me I've been looking around for a possible solution, and i might give "galleon" forum ( http://www.camdenfamily.com/morpheus/forums/index.cfm ) a try ( hopefully it has some semblance of admin CP ), and add what i need on top... heh..
This message has been edited since posting. Last time this message was edited on 24. January 2005 @ 17:38
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Moderator
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24. January 2005 @ 17:43 |
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The only problem I see with combining the two, when a true advance question comes along I wouldn't want to see it get lost among the many newbie threads.
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I hate titles
35 product reviews
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14. May 2005 @ 07:49 |
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Thought I might resurrect this thread. Some of the ideas listed here I have finished now. Some are still open. Here's the list that I plan to implement next (not in any particular order):
-"profile" pages for users -- each user nick on forums would link to his/her own profile page, if there's one. This would list: short description by the user, user's homepage (if entered one), gender (if they wish to publish one), birthday (again, based on the user's selection), list of 20 latest threads they've posted to, list of software items they've commented, maybe an optional image and maybe an optional "journal" they can update.
-major changes to the sig system that would allow turning off sig viewing when browsing the forums.
-PM alerts within the forum pages, so the page shows you when you have unread PMs.
-possibly pages next to thread titles in forum_view pages that would allow directly to take you to the page number X if the thread has several pages.
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Moderator
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14. May 2005 @ 09:01 |
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dRD,
When do you think you'll make it so we can check a box to delete certain PMs from our box? It would make clean up sooo much faster :)
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Moderator
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14. May 2005 @ 13:51 |
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That would be awesome. My inbox is becoming gargantuan.
My killer sig came courtesy of bb "El Jefe" mayo.
The Forum Rules You Agreed To! http://forums.afterdawn.com/thread_view.cfm/2487
"And there we saw the giants, and we were in our own sight as grasshoppers, and so we were in their sight" - Numbers 13:33 |
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Noqoilpi
Member
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14. May 2005 @ 13:56 |
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That what happens when you are such a slut. I hate it when a "Inbox" is gargantuan. ;o)
*Edit* Need to learn to type someday.
This message has been edited since posting. Last time this message was edited on 14. May 2005 @ 13:58
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Senior Member
1 product review
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19. May 2005 @ 02:27 |
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When do you think you'll make it so we can check a box to delete certain PMs from our box?
I'm hoping the same will be applied to the subscribed threads list....?
I tried cleaning up the list one night as I had never unsubscribed to any threads..... after unsubcribing to 100 threads individually I gave up....lol
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