Blog Documentation Book a Demo
Vanilla 1 is no longer supported or maintained. If you need a copy, you can get it here.
HackerOne users: Testing against this community violates our program's Terms of Service and will result in your bounty being denied.

what a great forum, 2 things I'd consider pretty essential would be

lubaloolubaloo
edited February 2006 in Vanilla 1.0 Help
I'm currently bb 'shopping' and testing a few. This one is great, but there are two features I consider pretty essential that are missing:
* email notification of new posts
* mouseover preview of post
Have these been discussed previously?
many thanks

Comments

  • MarkMark Vanilla Staff
    I'm actually surprised that the email notification hasn't been a more popular request. It would be quite easy to do as an extension, though, so I'm sure someone will write the extension at some point. Mouseover preview is another one that I'm surprised more people don't ask about. I've structured the db so that this is possible to do, and it could also be done as an extension. My bet is that someone will come along and do it as a new theme - displaying the first X characters right on the page rather than onmouseover. I'm looking forward to see what people do with Vanilla once version 1 is released.
  • blizeHblizeH ✭✭
    Mouseover preview? Never seen that used on a forum before!

    Also, wouldn't e-mail notification put huge strain onto the servers? It's not worth it anyway with bookmarked threads imo!
  • NickENickE New
    edited February 2006
    How about doing it like Gmail and showing a short snippet of each message next to their respective titles?

    EDIT: lol, just saw mark's blog entry about gmail, what great timing...
  • DeniedDenied New
    edited February 2006
    If I were to implement something like this, I'd try something like a "Quick View" link that loads the first post (HTML stripped) inline.

    But I'm not.

    Using "AJAX", of course...
  • lubaloolubaloo
    nice quick responses guys - thanks

    i've had a read of other threads and there's clearly a lot of support for keeping the software light, which is understandable

    email alerts are essential because not everyone wants to return to a forum to regularly check threads they may have posted. I might post an obscure question on an obscure bb and not expect many answers, and then get an answer a month later - long after I'd forgotten about the thread!

    post preview on mouseover is mroe of a nice to have, but I've got very used to it on other bbs.

    Also a quote button would be good

    all the best
  • blizeHblizeH ✭✭
    email alerts are essential because not everyone wants to return to a forum to regularly check threads they may have posted. I might post an obscure question on an obscure bb and not expect many answers, and then get an answer a month later - long after I'd forgotten about the thread!
    Hmm, good point - I never thought of that.
  • MinisweeperMinisweeper New
    Yeah. I did start on an email notifier and got it working (very basically) acting as an alternative text formatter (at the time i'm not sure there was an easy way to chain it onto stuff)
    Then i realised i had no idea how to check the database for who wanted notifications...
  • WallPhoneWallPhone
    someone will come along and do it as a new theme - displaying the first X characters right on the page rather than onmouseover.
    Darn it, there go my plans, right out in the open. :-)

    Well, I would if I was not bogged down by two other day jobs... sigh, the joy of traditional employment.
  • aloiciousaloicious
    what about good old alt text?
  • sherlocksherlock
    edited February 2006
    Email alerts are essential for my group. We currently have no option other than Yahoo Groups, which offers group members the option of participating via email or in a web forum. Without that functionality, I can't move the group from Yahoo to a privately hosted solution.
  • CryptCrypt
    i like vanillas default theme for some reason especially in blue and grey
This discussion has been closed.