What features?

for me, yes, it is really good (frankly i can't wait for brett to license it!)

personally i like custom built products (not just regarding software) - for all kinds of reasons.

there isn't a feature i can think of that i'd want.

i'm a speed freak and this forum satisfies me!

I was speculating generally about using non-standard forum software i.e not using the big 2. Does having custom software deter say casual visitors from registering and posting? Stuff even as simple as buttons and login/registration not being in the exact spot that people are used to on other forums may deter people (or maybe not?).

However since you asked, and remembering that soliciting user input is a quagmire:
- pics. user pics are an excellent way to get an instant visual as to who's in the discussion. Sometimes I have to check number of posts to see who's in the conversation, if they're new or not.
- a non-google search box. Right there, in the top right hand corner of the screen, with a drop down exactly like vb does (whatever they do, we're used to it, and it works).

I know the users here are non-standard and the forum software caters to them. So we're almost looking at the difference between say twitter and a 1999 prof's authority page designed in frontpage 97. Which is better starts to get into opinion. And it's opinions I was curious about :).

It has been my general impression that visitors to this site prefer this forum software over others and IMO, there are many reasons to think so. So do I think that the forum software deters potential users from registering? I think not. Personally, I'm deterred from forums that use more mainstream forum software as I find it a real pain to use over this software.

I love hearing what people want/need.

Anything else?

urls that are displayed without shame or truncation as if they are inherently meaningful and valuable...

I have to say I like this software. Speed is a big thing for me, and recently when I was restricted to a 7k connection I could still use this forum. I've stopped paying for upgrades from one of the big 2 forum software people. Can't access them on 7k any more.

All the other bugs come across as deliberate. If anything is holding the software back it would be that massive usability issue of a registration page which includes credit card symbols.

Other than that the only features I can think of that would be nice would be to show the latest post on each forum in the forum list. And avatars for everyone so we can see who we are talking to. And an ignore list to help avoid the more self important members.

> usability issue of a registration page
> which includes credit card symbols.

Could you talk about that more and explain your thinking there. I am not following you.

Apologies, it looks good.

A while ago when I recommended that someone join the forum they complained at me that it was a paid site. Had a look and I remember seeing the confusion but was able to point them in the right direction. That might have been some years ago.

The main thing which I miss in this forum software is the content of the latest messages while I am replying. As long as I am working in the Quick Reply box everything is OK, but as soon as I hit the preview button the other messages are gone. It makes it sometimes more difficult to accurately respond to the other posters.

I go back to text based unix conferencing, so I like this one much more than some of the glossier forum packages I've seen.

If there were one feature I'd add, it would be a 'reply with quote' function. I know it took me a while to find it, and I've seen plenty of newbies struggle with it (and ask how the heck the quotes work) too.

I've occasionally had issue with the urls too, particularly with twitter.

wheel: - pics. user pics are an excellent way to get an instant visual as to who's in the discussion. Sometimes I have to check number of posts to see who's in the conversation, if they're new or not.
- a non-google search box. Right there, in the top right hand corner of the screen, with a drop down exactly like vb does (whatever they do, we're used to it, and it works).

Avatars? TBH I don't find that omission here to be an issue at all. The username is the avatar for me.

Searching... when it comes down to it, I find searching the WebmasterWorld forums far more successful that VB! I have been frustrated with VB in this respect.

However, a couple of things I would find handy...

- The option to "Quote and Reply" to a particular post. (as netmeg mentions)

- The ability to 'subscribe' (receive email notifications of replies) to a thread without having to post in that thread.

:)

> The option to "Quote and Reply" to a particular post. (as netmeg mentions)

We have intentionally left that out because inline quoting take threads off on tangents. People turn a thread into side topics unrelated to the original core post. Go to any VB forum and notice the sideways effect that inline quoting has. I feel it is the #1 thing that lowers the quality of VB forums. We want to do everything possible to refer back to the original message at the top of the thread.

If I ever wanted to sabotage a competitor, I would do it with mass inline quoting within their hot threads. Checkout slashdot sometimes. They had to go to a rating (threshold) system to make sense of their sideways quoting tangents. It almost destroyed that site.

When i first came here i thought this was VBB1.x (or an version of 2.x)

Vbulletin is awesome SW (BEFORE V4) and this looks alot like it so i figured it was!


Nice site anyway :)

>>because inline quoting take threads off on tangents

I completely agree with Brett on this. I run a busy vB forum and I hacked the code to eliminate the "quote" feature. I do get some users who request it, but, as Brett notes, whenever I visit a forum that has built-in quoting I see really messy threads. Lots of redundant text taking up vertical space, for one. Also, it encourages the dissection of posts by other members. Line by line rebuttals may be satisfying for the rebutter, but don't make for good community.

vBulletin

... forum software generating bloated code, with the biggest boat load of Duplicate Content and crawling issues this side of a default Joomla install.

I want to slap the developers for their bone-headed design spec.

Checkout slashdot sometimes. They had to go to a rating (threshold) system to make sense of their sideways quoting tangents. It almost destroyed that site.

I like the off-topic stuff on Slashdot.

That said I would not want WW to do the same, so I think you made the right call.

It is possible to quote a particular point you want to reply to (as I did here), that is enough.

Mark Cuban: [blogmaverick.com...]

So what did my company do when they saw what their competitor had done ? They repeated their mistake and once again asked their customers what they wanted in the product. Of course the customer responded with features that they now loved from the other product.

They didn’t improve their competitive positioning. They put themselves in a never ending revolving door of trying to respond to customer requests. To make matters worse, resources and brainpower that could be applied to “inventing the future” were instead being used to catch up with features that locked them into the past.

<rant!>

Is This Forum Software

A real point of frustration when trying to post code that's readable, because you can't just stinking indent?

Oh, Yeah Baby! Sorry, love the site, but the inability to indent code in some forums where it should be expected people will post code seems so 80s it's not even funny. I can understand not allowing it in most forums to keep things uniform, and I heard it was going to be available in an update, but I would sure like to be able to just even single space indent code. I don't even mind having to use the pre tags to do it, but to have to use the pre tag and then double all the spaces and then redo it every time you preview or edit is annoying...
</rant!>

> TheMadScientist

#!/usr/bin/perl use strict; for $rant (@TheMadScientist) { print "There is a fix for that currently being tested"; }

testphp:

---

On the downside, we absolutely do not want to become a code dump forum for "do my homework" posts. We really try to discourage too much code posting. There are new members that think nothing of posting 100-200k of html/php/css/whatever code and asking why "the character at pixel 44x244 is off by one pixel" (we have had that post before). So, we will probably limit the syntax display to something like 25 lines or less.

LMAO. Thanks!

I don't even mind the limit and think it's a good idea...

Glad you're working on it, because there's times when it drives me batty, especially if I'm trying to post or read something at all complicated. Really, there are actually times when I don't answer or don't even read posts where there's an error because I don't want to try and sort out what should be where and which closing brace goes with which function to figure out where the error is.

>> 25 lines or less

Most members who post large code dumps are new to the forums and will not know about this code syntax anyways. You aren't preventing code dumps by limiting the syntax generator because they won't be using syntax highlighting.

Also, to put a limit this low on it is going to render is basically useless. Syntax highlighting becomes essential the more lines of code there are. No one needs syntax highlighting for 3 lines of code, because it is clearly readable.

I think making the restriction 25 lines or less is a bad move.