Make Suggestions for the Next Forum Maintenence
So I know I've told everyone MANY times that the new skin would be up, but I've honestly not had any time to do so. And to be quite honest, the new skin is just the old skin with some added features that the forum software now supports. There aren't too many new features, and to be quite frank, I doubt any of you would notice a great difference.
However, come Thanksgiving Break, in a little over a month, I'll be working on updates and changes for the site. Now at this point, I'll be taking any suggestions for any changes, modifications, new features, or removal of useless features.
Please do not make suggestions for a dark skin, as we will be sticking to a light skin for various reasons.
Go ahead and make your suggestions in this thread, and your suggestion could potentially change the way visitors and current members see the site.
Proposed Changes:
- Mobile shout-outs
- Think of this as a twitter-like feed. At the moment, I haven't decided on whether it's only going to display the last shout-out, or if it will alternate some of the most recent shout-outs. The current News/Announcement bar at the very of the top of the site would be replaced by "mobile-shoutouts." You send a txt (@ no charge other than your standard carrier charges) and it will be displayed at the top of the site. I already have the code for this working, I just have to integrate this into the forum and add some error checking and data sanatization.
- Remove IRC Chat Link
- Nobody ever uses it, it's useless
- Staff About-Us Page
- Add an "about us page" for the staff, so people can get to know the people running the site better.
- More Ratings
- Fail, pwned, etc.
- Mobile Version
- A phone-friendly skin.
- Forum Activity Requirements for Traders
- A lot of traders come here just to post their thread, and rarely come back, or only come to check up on their thread. I propose we either have a monthly activity requirement to make posts there, or require X amount of posts / threads outside of the trading forum before you can post there.
- Remove the extra "features" at the bottom of a new post/thread screen
- Those check-boxes and notification menu are rarely used, so why have them?
- Fix javascript problems
- Some forum features like the Event Log and the rating system act up in Google Chrome, I'll have to look into this.
- Add an Arcade
- Bring back the beloved arcade.
- Forum Blog
- We already have a blog, but we never got around to making it public since we never finished work on it. I say we have a ZomgStuff blog where Admins, mods, and VIP's can post things. They can blog about their life, or blog about projects that they are working on.
- Remove Social Groups
- Hardly ever used...
- Setup correct keywords for smilies
- The most common macros/keywords for smilies such as ":-D" don't do anything, so I'll make it so you don't have to click the smilies if you already know the shortcut.
- Optimize the site & clean out server
- Optimize the forum to run more smoothly and faster, and also clean up the server structure which has become a bit cluttered over the years. This would include removing useless plug-ins/mods, optimizing cache, and optimizing SQL queries. Hell, if I'm paying nearly $40/month for our nice server, I might as well take advantage of the hardware and the intense amount of customization that comes with VPS.
- Update forum software.
- Fix Web Crawler META/SEO
- This is more for me, I need to edit the META/SEO so that topic descriptions in google are actual previews of the thread/post, as opposed to the rep being displayed.
- Add Tutorial Archive for hobby electronics section
- There's not many people participating in the hobby electronics section (which is something that I'm very passionate about), so I'm thinking about making a sub-forum for that forum to include copied tutorials from other sites (with proper credit and references of course). It would be a collection of some of the best tutorials in my opinion. This would add ideas, and hopefully get more google hits for electronics, and hopefully some new members interested in discussing various projects.
- Desktop New Post/Thread/PM Notification
- I had a BETA of this running a while back for the VIP's & 1337's. Basically you a java app that runs in the task tray and pops up with an alert any time a thread or post is made, and when you receive a PM. I might add a functinoality to set custom settings, like only for it to notify you if your name was mentioned, or if your post was quoted. If you think this is lame, it's simple, don't use it. This wouldn't require a lot of effort from me because I already have most of the code, just need to make some slight modifications.
- Random Changes Around the Site
- I'm going to change some minor things all over the forum, most of them being little so they're not worth their own category. But some of these things would include....
- Changing the layout/GUI of the log mod
- Adding AJAX checking for registration form
- Strengthen Anti-Bot/Spammer Registration Precautions
- Self-explanatory.
- Find Effective Solution for Chatbox
- Currently the chatbox adds at least 1.1 seconds to your load time, and can go all the way up to 2+ depending on server load. I need to see if there are updates for the chatbox for efficiency, find a way to cache the code for it, or have chatbox as an option to be displayed, with off as default.
- Continue Work Text2Vid (Title WIP)
- I started work on it a long time ago, but didn't make a lot of progress, although I did have a preliminary mock-up that worked, decently. For those of you who don't know what text2vid is, it is a site that lets you enter any sentence or paragraph, and the site will automatically search through videos and cut out parts where a person says that, crops the clips, and ultimately spits out your clip. Kind of like the terrorist video that they had on "Live Free or Die Hard." Progress would come much faster if I could setup a team to work on this for me, and split the work. Such a unique service would offer ZS plenty of traffic.
- Setup a Donation Drive
- Server hosting isn't cheap, and considering that I'm a full time college student working a minimum wage job off on the side, a little help would be greatly appreciated.
- Setup ZomgStuff E-Mails
- Free POP3/IMAP zomgstuff e-mail. Most likely would be your username @zomgstuff.net This would be like a pseudo-disposable e-mail, it'd be great for a spam e-mail to use when signing up for various services and forums online.
- ZomgStuff Store
- Sell ZomgStuff gear (I know a cheap place), things like mousepads and coasters. T-shirts and apparel would be lame.
- Personalize/customize default vBulletin phrases
- Customize the default vbulletin phrases, like the default messages for registration, invalid permission pages, TOS, etc.
- Change history in public profile
- General idea is to display name changes, although I could easily add other history, like registration date, promotion/usergroup change, etc.
- Add WebSite Stats
- Add website stats.
- Add Global Ratings/Rep Stats
- Self-explanatory
Originally Posted by Cobalt
