[Groups application] Ideas and feedback

lifeisfoo

Anybody interested?
Contribute with your ideas and +1 to features you like.

Here is a first list of features from @phreak (main sponsor). Other sponsors are welcome.

Groups feature list

• Groups page

  • Groups can be made by a specific member group (group moderators)
  • Groups can have a title and a description
  • Groups can have a title image and a profile image
  • Groups can assign moderators which can edit, delete and sink threads
  • Groups will show their threads inside the group but not in the regular forum
  • Users can favorite discussions of groups? where will those appear
  • Invite User (gets conversations message?)
  • Recently joined (10 entries?)

• Groups List

  • View with accessible groups
  • List with profile image, title, description, users, group started, sum of group discussions and comments

• Group Member List

  • Profile Pic (linked to Profile)
  • Name (linked to Profile)
  • Joined Group

• Regular User Profile

  • Shows to which groups user joined

• Compatibility with 2.0.18.8 and above

phreak

Yay here is the thread. Put your function and improvement ideas here so we can outlay a good functioning plugin/application. Also place the amount you'd be willing to donate to the development if a release candidate is launched. I'll assist in graphical issues, conception and money if more people will find a way to contribute.

Tama

I'll have a word with our community lead: to see if we would be interested in this addon . In the meantime, I would envision the page like this

lifeisfoo

Really nobody is interested? Or everybody is on vacation?

lifeisfoo

Groups application, the obvious part:

• Group (concepts and actions)

  • group join can be public (everyone can join), invite-only (only invited can join), approved (everybody can make a join request and admins can approve/refuse)
  • group fields: name, description, profile image, banner image, members (user list), admins (user list), moderators (user list), creation date
  • group moderators can edit, delete and sink threads
  • every group member can invite other users
  • recently joined members

• User profile

  • groups tabs (or side module): show joined groups and roles it that groups
  • activity tab shows also group activity
  • groups discussion favs (tabs or link)

• Group (pages)

  • list: groups list (shows first joined group) with infos and stats (profile image, name, description, users count, date created, discussions count, comments count)
  • single group page (e.g. /group/my-wonderful-group): shows name, description, banner, etc. It's the main page for a group. Shows also notifications about pending requests.
  • memberships page (e.g. /group/my-wonderful-group/members): shows members list with avatars, name, date joined, role
  • pending requests (only for admins - and moderators?)

Groups application, the not obvious part:

Discussions/Comments should be the same of vanilla, otherwise a huge amount of logic and replication will be needed. Moreover every plugin that change discussions's behavior will be lost.
Also the fav system should be the same of vanilla, for the same reason.

businessdad

Suggestion: leverage Categories to implement the groups. That should save a you quite a bit of time.

lifeisfoo

Yes @businessdad you are right. I've thought a lot in the last days about that and I think that Categories must be used to build a well integrated (with vanilla) application: discussions are always discussions, and discussions inside the "Business" group could be discussion inside the "Business" category; private groups could be private categories, etc.

hgtonight

So this would essentially be automating/refining category creation and permissions?

lifeisfoo

@hgtonight Yes, this could be a way

hgtonight

I think this would be a must have addon for large communities. Good luck!

businessdad

@hgtonight said:
So this would essentially be automating/refining category creation and permissions?

More or less, yes. The following should be relatively simple to implement:

• "Tag" categories to indicate which ones are actually groups.

• Intercept the Discussions::BeforeGet and handle the following cases:

  • When NOT viewing a group: discard everything that belongs to a group. This will allow to display all "non group" discussions, as if nothing changed. Note: a great curse shalt be cast upon those who use something like CategoyrType <> 'Group', for thou shalt not use "different from" in SQL.
  • When viewing a group: include everything that belongs to that group only.

• Let Vanilla handle the rest.