Forums » Suggestions & Development Discussion » Many Small Suggestions

Here I have many small suggestions ot change. Most of them deal with the forums.
I have only been on this site for maybe two days, so if something already exists and I have not found it, I apologize.
Also, I may have mentioned some of this in other threads, so sorry if the idea(s) has already been noticed.

Clickable Avatar
In forums, the name leads to your profile, but it would be nice to have the avatar link to it as well (just a larger space to click, is all).

Subtitles to threads
Especially in the Roleplaying forums, it would be nice to have a subtext or quick preview of the thread before clicking it. Many titles do not give enough information on what type of roleplay the thread is. It would be similar to taglines character pages have.
(easy alternative to this would just be to add tags to threads)

Signatures
Pretty standard; would be nice to have a forum signature.

Quote option
Would be nice to be able to quote a specific post. Normally this is default in forum systems.

Footer Breadcrumbs
At the head of every forum page, there are breadcrumbs. Example:
Forums > Suggestions & Development Discussion > Thread Title
It would be nice to have this duplicated at the footer for easier navigation.

User Control Panel
It doesn't need to be full-use. Just something basic to be able to edit signature and view/edit subscribed threads in bulk, rather than finding them one by one.

Stop autosize of avatars if under limit
If the limit in dimensions of an image is 95x95, it would be nice if an image I uploaded that was, say, 25x80 was not resized.
Actually, I am not sure if it even resizes smaller images, but being as I've seen how it resizes larger images, I would assume it would do the same for smaller.

Add tabbed layout template for character pages
I mentioned this in the template sticky; basically a template mimicking the one we use to edit with, with tabs for the subpages rather than links.

Treat Transparent PNGs properly
In the user pages, if there is a transparent png, the transparency is changed to black in the thumbnail image. I'm not sure if you can fix this being as you're using another system for it (slimviewer? Shadowbox? Whatever that thing is called) but PNGs are handled similiarly for your avatars for character pages. In some cases, the transparency will be handled correctly, but in other places it will be a solid color (black or white).
It's just kind of offputting.

As an example if I'm not making sense, I use transparent png avatars for my character Quatre Bornes Lee and Lori Lentil. In my dashboard, the transparency is handled correctly. In Lori's profile, it turns to pure white and in Q's profile, it still works correctly. The more I look at this, the more it seems like a template issue.

Stop auto-bordering avatars, or make a template without an avatar border
On the subject of transparent PNGs, I like avatars blending into my layouts, and they can't do that when the avatar automatically has a border around it every time. I know this would be an easy CSS fix if I became an elite member, but that seems like a lot of money just to remove a border around an avatar...

Ability to close preview
Currently if you preview a post or text widget in character pages, there is no way to close the preview (that I've found). Clicking the icon again just re-renders it.

That's all I can think of for now.
Thank you for your time and making such a great and useful site.

You can quote a post by clicking "Reply" at the bar on top of the post you want to quote, instead of the button at the bottom of the thread. And then there's always the previous posts listed below the box in which you type your post, so you can copy, paste and use the code.

Ah, thanks. I feel dumb for missing it. Would be nice for a different button, maybe so it's more obvious?

Another suggestion...

Page numbers or Latest Post
Right now there's no way to tell how many pages a thread has until you click it. It would be nice to have either a pages breadcrumb thing near the title on the main page of the forum, or at the very least a 'view latest post' button of some kind to take us straight to the latest post.
Speaking of this, a 'first' and 'last' button for pages once you're actually in the topic would be good as well. I'm not sure how many pages the three arrows skips ahead, but it's usually not all the way to the last page.

Has been addressed in the upcoming new version.

I can see the use of this, I'll put it on my list and see when I find time to do it.


I am intensely resistant to adding signatures. In far too many forums I have participated in, they extended the page with long, repetitive messages over and over, and often contained images that slowed down the loading of the page. So often I experience them as sheer torture rather than useful. If they ever happened, I would police the heck out of them, and delete any signature that was longer than say, three lines tall.

We also have the added complication of characters. Would every character have a separate signature? Would they share their player's signature?


Click "reply" on any forum post, and you will automatically start with it quoted.

Already addressed in the unreleased new version.

We have one of these already, although you're correct that it does not currently show subscribed threads. It's on my list to do. Maybe it will make it into the intitial release of the new version. It's already got a lot of changes between what it looks like now.

Already addressed in the new version, except in situations where resizing is required for some reason.

I responded over there already, but I see no problem with this. Templates come out slowly, so I can't say when it'll happen.

For gallery images, this is a product of the resizing process to create a thumbnail, and a bit of a PITA to address. I've wanted to fix it for a long time, but it's incredibly low priority given how much work it would take for the small payoff. The lightbox preview has nothing at all to do with it, it's a server side image editing program I would need to recode.

Some of the templates do have white backgrounds on them for avatars, which should probably be remedied.

This is a personal preference thing. We won't be undoing any templates that already are. There may be templates that don't have them in the future.

I can't say this is very high on my priority list, but I will take note that you've brought it up as something that annoys.

Thank you for the suggestions! I love that you are so involved and vocal.

This is actually because we are a small site with a small server, and doing a database search to see what the latest topics are with the most recent replies is not an insignificant task for a tiny computer to do many times a minute if not a second at busy times. Asking it how many pages there are in every topic on the board at once is just one more thing for it to do that could contribute to lag when there's lots of people doing it at once, so I've really tried to trim out frills like this. It will probably happen eventually, as we expand.

One arrow skips you one ahead, two arrows skips you five ahead, and three arrows skips you all the way to the last page. You won't see two arrows or three arrows if you're close enough to the end of the thread that you can just pick the last page number without needing to scroll. Ditto with reversal arrows.

Thanks for replying. Ah, that makes sense. Do you rent or you run the server from your home? If you rent, I can't imagine it being too difficult to do, but if you run it out of your house, then I agree with you. Ah, but how do you KNOW you can click the last page when there is no indication that that page is the last one (when you're not already on it?).
For example, the templates sticky is 7 pages long (currently). It only shows the two arrows, so when I click it, it takes me to page six. How was I supposed to know page 7 was the last page when I was viewing page 1? Well, I don't know the answers to those questions. At first I would say, make it text only or have a maximum character limit. Really, the only reason I wanted a signature was to link to my characters in it to show them off rather than hoping someone lcicked my profile.

I've seen my fair share of crappy sigs, though, so I can see where you're coming from. On other boards I'm on, they either disable a bunch of things (like flash), add a max character limit, make it a fixed size and have it scroll if it outstretches that, or has a lot of mods heavily policing guidelines.

We have a "virtual private" server, which basically means we rent a tiny corner of a larger shared server. We can't currently afford a full server to ourselves, although we desperately need one. I know the page numbers would be a tiny thing, I just can't bring myself to add more tiny things this month. Or at least, not tiny things that would happen many many times per hour. Notifications are a huge one in terms of resources, and they are currently in the process of being rewritten to try and squeeze even more efficiency out of them (and make them more useful to people in general) to try and take some weight off our poor server. I put some pretty overzealous cacheing in in the meantime that serves to protect, but sucks from a usability point of view and I can't wait to get rid of it or lighten it up. That was a major motivator for creating the new version, which I'm really hoping will be ready to release toward the end of this month.

An interesting point. I'd been using the convention that we only show 10 page numbers at a time, in addition to the convention that the arrows only expand as "necessary". I could see how this might take some getting used to. I'll have to ponder this.

I feel it's important to add that probably 95% of all forums you've seen use pre-written coding, like phpBB, Simple Machines Forums etc. These forums are already fully, completely coded and all the admin needs to do is upload the files, follow a few simple instructions and BOOM, you have a fully featured forum that can be expanded with add-ons.

RPR's forums aren't like that at all, so a lot of 'default' features that a forum like SMF has, doesn't exist here. Kim wrote the forum from scratch, which has the benefit that things are only added when needed plus she has 9000% control over the whole thing. I've used SMF for a few years and have my own two sites on shared servers, it's safe to say I really admire Kim's ability to make a forum so efficient!

Loved all your suggestions except for the signature. They are the spawn of all that is eeeevil!! *smites them with kittens*

(And I'm pretty sure nobody is interested in a thousand avatars/banners of my kitten in every post I make......)

Thanks Sanne.

phpBB and the like are great forums, and I was sad to have to make the decision not to use them because it's true they do come with a lot of fancy features built right in. I did go for control (and perfect integration of our crazy accounts, with characters and all) in the end, though. It does mean a certain amount of time spent reinventing the wheel, however. Knowing which wheels people most want to see is invaluable for picking priorities.

it is definitely alot different than other forums, I'll definitely give you credit for that. You did an amazing job. Control that goes along with the endless amounts (ok not exactly endless but you get the picture) of creativity, all rolled into this. I commend your efforts, and you're doing a great job still. *highfives!

Ah, see I was assuming this was a heavily modified pre-existing BBS, not that she built it from scratch.
Thanks for the information.
I was sitting here wondering "why was this disabled" rather than "Why wasn't this added"

Reading this makes me feel really good. Thank you.

There were about three and a half months between the site opening and the forums being opened, because, well.. I was still writing them. They've come a long way since then and I am certain will go a long, long way before we're done. If we're ever done with them.

But that they work about as well as you'd expect one of the other forum programs that've been years in development and had whole teams of programmers to work on them is awesome, even if it does feel like I took one of those programs and shot it in the kneecaps. On the bright side, that's still a whole torso!