Hey Xanz,
We attempted a few different off-the-shelf forum solutions, but none of them integrated with the rest of our technology the way we wanted them to. So we've been rolling our own. The response to our initial introductory feature on MMORPG.com has been staggering, and we're scrambling to get more content onto the website, as well as to make functional improvements.
There will be many more forum features coming in the week(s) ahead. Feel free to use this thread for feature requests.
Not sure what the posting is built on, but it would be cool to have more coding options like how bbcode or html work (security risks?). I like to mess with the code to get it just how I like it sometimes.
- images!
- later on video so people can show off the great things they're doing in-game
- text color
- stickies for threads
The features I would like to see are:
1) Editing! As the queen of typos it would be helpful to be able to go back and amend things.
2) Highlighting threads that have had a developer response. Critically though do not flag just any staff post, only developer interaction and not moeration. While the community is great so far it it can be very frustrating on other forums where any moderation post is flagged up equally to the community so it almost advertises bad behaviour making the community look far worse then it is.
3) Neater quote syste. I think hiding all but the last quote would make the forums neater. Currently if you quote someone who quoted someone else your post includes all those previous quotes too making for increadibly long, and makes the forums more difficult to read.
That is all I can think of so far!
You can edit your post right now! It's in the lower right corner of your post called edit. It's hidden just like the reply button is when you want to quote someone. I'm assuming the hidden thing is to make it look cleaner, which I like.
Xanz you are a saviour thank you. It doesn't seem to be availale on mobiles though, which I do a lot of posting from. However, at least I can always grab a computer and clear up my messes.
Are you by any chance using an Apple device? I can reply and edit topics on my HTC and Android Tablet, but not on my iPhone 4.
As for features, I'd like to see the text editor fleshed out. Text colour, underline, images etc and also the ability post/edit in code.
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Is there a way to post pictures? I saw someone do it in another thread/post with html code, but now I can't find that thread/post. I tried using <img src="http://www.blahblahblah.com/awesomeimage.png"> but nothing happened.
Yea that was me but looks like it was removed.
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Hey Xanz
I'm not sure how Silv did it (I need to find out from him) but blocking the ability to post HTML is "by design". We don't really want people posting arbitrary images into the forums. It creates opportunities for people to plant malicious images and other code that needs to be moderated, and if not designed for, can destroy the layout of the forums.
As for forum colors, we also don't want you guys applying your own styles to the posts - at least, not in a way that's not provided by us. If we choose to change the theme later to something darker, for example, and you've set your own colors, it could render part of your text unreadable.
In the end, we want to give you all a minimum set of tools to style your posts so you can correctly convey your questions, answers, etc... but we don't really want to turn these forums into a vine or stream of lolcats (though I do love a good lolcat :P).
With that said, I appreciate peoples' desire to personalize and we're looking into adding support for profile pictures, etc... It may be we find a compromise somewhere, such as allowing you to post images within a certain size range, or posting images only directing to elsewhere on the website etc... Worst case, we can always grant the ability to post images within the Tavern, as that's really the place for those types of threads.
Thoughts?
Regarding the HTML posting, feel free to shoot me an email or whatever. Or would you prefer I emailed support?
As for minimal tools for the text editor, I know sometime down the line people are going to want to fancy up their guild posts, guides etc which is my main reason for asking.
Though I share your concerns with images, text colour/size etc being abused, most people are likely to agree to the CoC if you were to implement restrictions on their use and the introduction of mods to help moderate the content being posted. A "Report Post" option would also go a long way to help mods keep on top of forum misbehaviour.
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Would also like to see the ability to send private messages haha.
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I actually just wanted to doll up my guild post and wondered about it down the line if I ever made a guide, like Silv said. I'm completely cool with not having any pics within posts or like you said, minimizing it to just the tavern. Maybe there's a trusted image hosting site that only pics from there can be posted? Just trying to think more of the security aspect.
I do like sigs though, but they don't have to contain pics at all. Request: Sig space.
Pics in general do tend to bog down the site, so what ever you guys/gals choose to do, I'm good to go with it.
Thanks for your feedback, all. I'll look into more customization on the forums, signatures, etc...
Also, we'll be adding community features for recruiting and running guilds/families later. Once we get further along and have done features on both Families and Guilds, we'll put some user experiences up here on the community site that'll make recruiting for your guilds/families super easy. There won't be a need, long-term, to recruit via the forums.
I plan to give guilds and families a lot more support and tools than is available with other MMOs.
Now that things are picking up around here, a search function would be very useful.
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