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Discussion about bug fixing and planned features for mlf 2.5 (Project organisation)

by Auge ⌂, Monday, March 19, 2018, 13:24 (2201 days ago)

Hello

This is a thread to collect ideas and plans for features and bugs that should gets implemented/solved with version 2.5. At the moment this is a list of proposals. I collected everthing I found whithin the foirst four pages. You can read about a few more proposals in the issues list on Github.

Idea number 1: User groups

Because of a repeatedly pleaded proposal [1] I want to bring it into the discussion. One proposed to make the forum program working as several forums. He wished to have this function from inside one installation instead by installing more then one forum (and possibly sharing some of the database tables) and to regulate the access of the users to the forums.

IMHO this would cause a massive change in the code base. This would not be preferable. On the other hand it should be possible to handle this with user groups and their access to the categories.

Then I found a posting in the collect feature requests and bugs for version 2.4 thread where Milo proposed the feature of user groups. Seems to be a plausible idea not only for me.

Quote:

P.S. Further feature: Define groups for users (and special categories).

What do we need?

- add a database table for the groups
- add a database table for the group-user-relation (a user can be member of several groups)
- add a database table for the group-category-relation (a group can have access to several categories, a category can be accessible for several groups)
- remove column accession from categories table (would be obsolete with the new structure)
- PHP-code to handle the access to the categories by the user as a member of groups instead by her/his rank (actual stucture: unregistered visitor = NULL, registered user = 0, moderator = 1, administrator = 2)

idea number 2: Make pinned threads independent from the category selection

If the groups-feature would be implemented, Magmas feature request (number 2 in this posting) for showing (special) pinned threads in every selection of one or more categories a user can switch to gets more relevance.

See therefore also Github pull requests #471 and #472. (implemented)

idea number 3: Unsubscribing from e-mail-notifications

A the moment an author of a posting can not unsubscribe from a notification when she/he has no access to editing the posting. The user should be able to disable the subscription. This is a request made by Magma.

See therefore also the Github issues #331, #398 and the pull request #399.

The feature got introduced with version 2.4.14. So far it is implemented.

idea number 4a: Store the information about the uploader of an image

Tie the upload to the uploading user account or the information that this was an upload of an unregistered visitor. This would make a new table necessary.

See therefore also Github pull request #451 (implemented for new uploads).

idea number 4b: Enhanced administration of uploaded images

The administration of uploads in a forum is at the moment everything else than convenient (IMHO it's a disgrace). One as an admin sees only five small images at one time in the small popup (like every user) and has to delete every single image one by one. I plan to introduce a new full-size page in the admin area for the uploads-handling. Page should provide data of the image itself, it's insertion in postings and the uploader of the image (if 4a gets consent).

See the associated thread (basically implemented).

idea number 4c: Delete images when deleting a posting where these images are included

If a posting or a thread gets deleted from the database, images that would be orphaned otherwise should get deleted too. This is a request made by Magma.

idea number 4d: Delete all unused images, uploaded by one user when closing the account

The images, a user has uploaded, should also get removed from the forum when the user removes her/his user account when the images are nowhere in use (in a posting of any user or visitor). [edit]When the posting remains, also the images, that are included in these postings, should remain.[/edit]

idea number 5: Make it possible to send e-mails over a SMTP-interface instead over the PHP-function mail()

As requested several times and stated in an answer to one of the requests we plan to test a PHP-SMTP-library as the alternative way to send e-mails.

See therefore Github issue #348 and the pull request #498 (implemented).

idea number 6: Function to report a posting as abuse

As requested (sorry, I didn't find the posting with the request) registered users might be able to report entries i.e. as spam, for abuse of the forum rules or for unpoliteness. See therefore also Github issue #156.

idea number 7: Limited moderation of entries (only when posted by specified users)

Danielb987 proposed a limited moderation feature, where only entries from specified users should get moderated.

Tschö, Auge

[1] I forwarded one of the e-mails in question to the projects allocation address.

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Trenne niemals Müll, denn er hat nur eine Silbe!

Tags:
feature request, 2.5, bug, feature

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Features for mlf 2.5

by Mardor ⌂, Monday, March 19, 2018, 14:26 (2201 days ago) @ Auge

A better way to manage uploaded files would be great. The last time I searched for orphaned files I scanned a database dump with a Python script to find the candidates for deletion.

It would be helpful if there was a possibility to upload other filetypes as well. At least ZIP files and PDF documents should be supported.

One proposed to make the forum program working as several forums.

I for one prefer MLF because it is a single-forum-system and no BBS.

idea number 3: Unsubscribing from e-mail-notifications

I second that. Plus: Maybe it did not discover the already existing check box but is there a way to implement a setting in the user profile to make subscriptions active by default?

idea number 4a: Store the information about the uploader of an image

Yes. Please.

idea number 4c: Delete images when deleting a posting where these images are included

… if there are no other references. See above.

idea number 6: Function to report a posting as abuse

Maybe a „like“ button would be nice, too?

Discussion about bug fixing and planned features for mlf 2.5

by Martin66, Monday, March 19, 2018, 21:03 (2201 days ago) @ Auge

idea number 3 seems to be necessary because of the EU General Data Protection Regulation.

One more sugestion (see here): The Admin should be able to activate an automatic daily deletion of personal data when a thread will be locked. I'm not a lawyer, but I think this is necessary for legal reasons in the EU.

Martin

Discussion about bug fixing and planned features for mlf 2.5

by Kepha, Monday, March 19, 2018, 23:14 (2201 days ago) @ Auge

I still would like to see categories name as a parent-name?

e.g.
mylittleforum.net/General
mylittleforum.net/Bugs
etc

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Would like to see the option to add Tables, in a simplest way possible, no need to be complicated and too much customizable

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Easy menu to apply/change forum colors by inserting the HEX (#FF5733)
"default-text"
"link"
"visited-link"
"background"
(possibly the logo-text and usernames)

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Discussion about bug fixing and planned features for mlf 2.5

by Auge ⌂, Tuesday, March 20, 2018, 09:28 (2200 days ago) @ Kepha

Hello

I still would like to see categories name as a parent-name?

e.g.
mylittleforum.net/General
mylittleforum.net/Bugs
etc

Hmm, a really nice idea. But what should we do with (then) old styled links (i.e. https://mylittleforum.net/forum/index.php?mode=index&category=7) that was posted anywhere in- and outside a forum in the (then) past? It would mean to have and to nurse two parsers. At least for me a not really nice idea but it's worth to be discussed.

Would like to see the option to add Tables, in a simplest way possible, no need to be complicated and too much customizable

Add tables to what, the database or the posting with BB-Code?

If you talk about BB-code-based tables, we discussed that before (german language) and my personal experience (I also shared there) tells me to prevent such complicated structures. Even an implementation in the "simplest way possible", uncomplicated and not "too much customizable" is often to complicated to handle for the audience.

Much more simple and significantly less fault-prone is an ASCII-table in a [pre]-block like Milo proposed it.

[pre]
Datum    | Termin     | Bemerkung
15.01.17 | Tabellen   | Diskussion über das Für und Wider von BB-Code-generierten Tabellen
17.01.17 | Feierabend | aber erst um fünf Uhr abends
18.01.17 | Aufstehen  | schon wieder morgends *gnarf*
[/pre]

resulting in:

Datum    | Termin     | Bemerkung
15.01.17 | Tabellen   | Diskussion über das Für und Wider von BB-Code-generierten Tabellen
17.01.17 | Feierabend | aber erst um fünf Uhr abends
18.01.17 | Aufstehen  | schon wieder morgends *gnarf*

Easy menu to apply/change forum colors by inserting the HEX (#FF5733)
"default-text"
"link"
"visited-link"
"background"
(possibly the logo-text and usernames)

An absolutely no from my side. When one wants to change the layout and/or colours, one can change or add a theme. I know, that this is much more than only a bit of work, but the theme is the right place to work on it. We currently have exactly 130 setting items. I'm not willing to add further five to ten new settings now and to add further settings every time a forum operator wants to change a further thingamabob in the forum styles per setting for something, that can be done in another and proper way (in the CSS of the theme).

Tschö, Auge

--
Trenne niemals Müll, denn er hat nur eine Silbe!

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Discussion about bug fixing and planned features for mlf 2.5

by Auge ⌂, Tuesday, March 20, 2018, 10:26 (2200 days ago) @ Auge

Hello

idea number 8: tabbed settings page

Since the selection of settings, that are accessible on the main-settings-page, is a bit arbitrary and further settings are more or less hidden on the enhanced-settings-page (even many administrators doesn't take notice of the link to the enhanced-settings) my idea is to display all settings in a tabbed page grouped by their meaning.

I implemented this anciently for MLF1 but it was never released. As example a screenshot of the MLF1-settings-page, tab "postings" (reduced colour table).

[image]

I am willing to implement it again for MLF2. It will need enhancements to the structure of the settings table and will result in massive enlargement of the language files because of the need of strings (name and description) for every possible setting.

Current structure of the settings table with only two fields:

CREATE TABLE `mlf2_settings` (
    `name` VARCHAR(255) NOT NULL,
    `value` VARCHAR(255) NOT NULL DEFAULT '',
    PRIMARY KEY (`name`))
ENGINE=InnoDB CHARSET=utf8 COLLATE=utf8_general_ci;

As a comparision the settings table form the rework of MLF1 from the repository (latest touched three years ago):

CREATE TABLE `mlf1_settings` (
    `name` VARCHAR(255) NOT NULL,                   -- same as in MLF2, name of the setting
    `value` VARCHAR(255) NOT NULL DEFAULT '',       -- same as in MLF2, value of the setting
    `type` VARCHAR(30) NOT NULL DEFAULT '',         -- form field type name
    `poss_values` VARCHAR(160) NOT NULL DEFAULT '', -- NULL, or list of allowed values
    `standard` VARCHAR(80) NOT NULL DEFAULT '',     -- default value
    `cat` VARCHAR(20) NOT NULL DEFAULT '',          -- category of setting (determines tab of the setting)
    UNIQUE KEY `setting` (`name`))
ENGINE=InnoDB  DEFAULT CHARSET=utf8;

I introduced this idea once two years ago and Milo gave me then his o.k. @Alex: would it be ok to change the settings that way?

Tschö, Auge

--
Trenne niemals Müll, denn er hat nur eine Silbe!

Discussion about bug fixing and planned features for mlf 2.5

by Martin66, Wednesday, March 21, 2018, 08:10 (2199 days ago) @ Auge

idea Nr Whatever:

A User should have the possibility to activate E-Mail notification for any Posting, even without publishing something inside this thread by himself.

As written before, each User needs the Chance to deactivate any activated notification also.

Martin

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Discussion about bug fixing and planned features for mlf 2.5

by Auge ⌂, Wednesday, March 21, 2018, 08:40 (2199 days ago) @ Martin66

Hello

idea Nr Whatever:

Here in this thread it is the number nine (in ciphers: 9). :-)

A User should have the possibility to activate E-Mail notification for any Posting, even without publishing something inside this thread by himself.

This is a much more valid idea than your first one. It's the one I described in the last paragraph of this posting (Abonnements, subscriptions). We will see, what can be implemented in an adequate way and with an adequate effort. I actually work on idea 4b from the opening posting.

Tschö, Auge

--
Trenne niemals Müll, denn er hat nur eine Silbe!

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question about idea #3, unsubscribing feature

by Auge ⌂, Monday, April 23, 2018, 14:32 (2166 days ago) @ Auge

Hello

idea number 3: Unsubscribing from e-mail-notifications

A the moment an author of a posting can not unsubscribe from a notification when she/he has no access to editing the posting. The user should be able to disable the subscription. This is a request made by Magma. See therefore also Github issue #331.

Would it be enough to provide an unsubscribing link in the e-mail-notification? An addition with a higher effort would be to provide a page with a list of subscriptions in the users profile (was requested in that posting). I know, the best would be to have both ways but I want to limit the effort to the necessary.

IMHO it's worth to implement the link in the e-mail first and to add the page afterwards. With the link and it's processing we have the infrastructure to get such a page working.

Tschö, Auge

--
Trenne niemals Müll, denn er hat nur eine Silbe!

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question about idea #3, unsubscribing feature

by Magma, Wednesday, April 25, 2018, 18:24 (2164 days ago) @ Auge

Personally I'm just happy with a link in the notification email that the guest or user can click on or copy and paste to unsubscribe from further notifications.

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unsubscribe link in notification e-mail in 2.4.14/2.4.15

by Auge ⌂, Wednesday, December 05, 2018, 10:29 (1940 days ago) @ Magma

Hello

Would it be enough to provide an unsubscribing link in the e-mail-notification? An addition with a higher effort would be to provide a page with a list of subscriptions in the users profile. I know, the best would be to have both ways but I want to limit the effort to the necessary.

IMHO it's worth to implement the link in the e-mail first and to add the page afterwards.


Personally I'm just happy with a link in the notification email that the guest or user can click on or copy and paste to unsubscribe from further notifications.

The unsubscribe link was implemented for the (buggy) MLF version 2.4.14 and works now with version 2.4.15.

A page with a subscriptions list would be a nice enhancement but IMHO it would need a rework of the personal menu (default theme: top right corner of the page above the search bar) which got a large width with the links to the entries and the bookmarks list anyway. It would be nice to put these links and a hypothetical link to the subscriptions list into a submenu but I would like it to implement it to work with and without JavaScript. I've no idea how to do this without a unnecessary high effort.

Tschö, Auge

--
Trenne niemals Müll, denn er hat nur eine Silbe!

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My perfect MLF 2.5 version

by Laurentiu ⌂, Buzau România, Wednesday, June 20, 2018, 12:21 (2108 days ago) @ Auge

Hello guys and maybe some girls:-D, I would like to suggest some features I'd want on the next 2.5 version of this little awesome forum engine:

  • voting plugin, a Like feature would be enough;
  • responsive theme;
  • GDPR banner;
  • ranks or at least some user titles;
  • ability to add new widgets on sidebar, a simple text/html widget will do;
  • adding a logo;
  • simple user profiles;
  • forum icons legend;
  • more file types to upload;
  • maybe add relative dates (2 minutes ago);

These features would make this the best forum engine for me. I already like it a lot!
I started translating it in my own language, Romanian, and will post the translation here very soon, and I'm also working on a modern but simple theme for it.

Thank you so much for this forum engine and keep up the good work!

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My perfect MLF 2.5 version

by Auge ⌂, Wednesday, June 20, 2018, 13:20 (2108 days ago) @ Laurentiu

Hello

Let's answer to the feature requests one by one.

Voting

I use such a feature in a another forum, where it is connected with additional features (upvoting, downvoting, set tags, create new tags, editing someone elses entries (for corrections)) and I like it very much. But the system gets criticised every few months because people are pissed about negative votings they receive. This leads to endless discussions again and again.

I would like to see a similar feature here but I have no clue about the effort and want to state it currently as postponed.

Responsive theme

The actual default theme is in its structure more than 10 years old. Yes, this is a serious issue in my humble opinion. Forums are unusable on small mobile devices like smartphones even in landscape mode. On most tablets (not the small ones) the forum is at least readable.

I started to implement an alternative responsive theme two years ago. With the actual version 0.1.4 it is usable with the MLF-versions 2.4.8 and 2.4.9 but it is not feature complete and does not support the actual version 2.4.10. The new 2.4.10-based version is more or less complete but I had no time to process the last checks.

GDPR

With version 2.4.10 you are able to enforce the acceptance of your own data privacy statement when a user posts entries or registrates an account. To display a banner (what should it contain?) however is not possible.

Ranks or user titles

To be honest, I'm not convinced.

Widgets on sidebar

If you only want to add a HTML snippet and your forum is not multilingual, you can add the snippet to the template (hardcoded).

Adding a logo

The same as for widgets is valid for adding a logo. Add the necessary HTML-code to the template.

Simple user profiles

User profiles are implemented since ages. Is there something, that makes them not simple in your eyes?

Forum icons legend

Can you please explain more?

More file types to upload

I'm not convinced. For us in the jurisdiction of the European Union the upload feature in it's actual form can be a pitfall because of the upload filters, probably coming within short time. Therefore I for myself have no spur to enhance this feature with exception of the earlier mentioned multi upload.

Relative dates

In my humble opinion this should be a task for JavaScript on the visitors side. This opinion counts also for the places, where we have relative dates currently (latest postings list in the sidebar).

I started translating it in my own language, Romanian, and will post the translation here very soon and I'm also working on a modern but simple theme for it.

Your translation and your theme is welcome.

Thank you so much for this forum engine and keep up the good work!

:-)

Tschö, Auge

--
Trenne niemals Müll, denn er hat nur eine Silbe!

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My perfect MLF 2.5 version

by Laurentiu ⌂, Buzau România, Wednesday, June 20, 2018, 15:12 (2108 days ago) @ Auge

Okay,let's clarify some of the requests I made:

Voting

I don't think a full voting up and down is necessary, just a simple Like system will do. If the user likes the post, just press Like, if not...nothing.

Responsive theme

I will dedicate my time and effort to design such a theme.

GDPR

I was thinking to show a banner like most websites do nowadays. Like this one:
[image]

Ranks or user titles

A way to show what user rank the user has, just like already on the platform but maybe not as a hover effect, maybe an icon or a label.

Widgets and Logo

As a coder, you may know how to hard code them, but what about the general user?

Simple user profiles

You are right,they are perfect and simple, for some reason, I kept trying to see my profile and always got to the editing page and I though there were any pages for the actual profile, stupid me...:-D

Forum icons legend

Show the icons of threads like the sticky and unread ones to the bottom of the forums to let users know what each of them mean.

More file types to upload

So there will be no way to add other file types other than images? Like a .zip file? I guess we could just use links to them, from other sources...

Relative dates

This is really not a must for me...but would have been nice to see dates like 2 hours ago on the forums.

The theme and translation

My theme is already kind of responsive, it's based on the default one powered by the Bootstrap framework. I do have a lot of work to do until stable release. I could give the link to my live development if needed.
As for the translation, is about 40 % completed, without the admin interface.

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My perfect MLF 2.5 version

by Auge ⌂, Thursday, June 21, 2018, 08:14 (2107 days ago) @ Laurentiu

Hello

GDPR

I was thinking to show a banner like most websites do nowadays. Like this one:
[image]

Ah, I think we should reflect on it. This is no one-liner because it would change the complete structure of setting cookies. Additionally it's at least annoying up to disturbing because either the visitor sees this notice on every page because of ones non-acceptance of cookies (the script can't recognise the visitor on the next page) or the script has to set a cookie even the visitor doesn't accept cookies to prevent displaying the banner again and again (so the script can recognise the visitor on the next page).

Ranks or user titles

A way to show what user rank the user has, just like already on the platform but maybe not as a hover effect, maybe an icon or a label.

Do you talk about being an unregistered or a registered user, a moderator or an administrator? This is already implemented (in an admittedly inconsequent way). Registered users (independent from the rank) can be marked with the char "®" and the information if a user is a moderator or an administrator can be displayed when hovering the user name with the mouse cursor in the thread tree. Yes, this could be made in a smarter way.

Widgets and Logo

As a coder, you may know how to hard code them, but what about the general user?

Sorry but "general users" doesn't change the general structure of the page(s). There is no difference between changing the template by generating new HTML-elements and pushing a button after generating the same new HTML-elements i.e. in a form with exception of the handling of this function.

Forum icons legend

Show the icons of threads like the sticky and unread ones to the bottom of the forums to let users know what each of them mean.

This could be purpose of a help page but the forum itself is not a blueprint with a legend.

More file types to upload

So there will be no way to add other file types other than images? Like a .zip file? I guess we could just use links to them, from other sources...

If the script allows to upload new file formats, it has to handle these new formats in a proper way i.e. by checking the upload for malicious file format and so on. That's nothing we can handle for all the file types. I say "all the file types" because you say now ZIP and tomorrow someone asks for support of PDF and another day someone asks for ".obj" which is a format for 3D-models or, to stick to 3D-models, an encrypted file format like ".block" (encrypted Blender file format) or for file formats, noone of us knows. Where to draw the line?

I think, we can't and shouldn't try to implement a file storing function because we are able to implement a bunch of bugs and security holes by trying that. There are a plenty of solutions for file storing and sharing like NextCloud, DropBox and so on, where one can share files and release it to a group of people or the public. Adding a link to the download in a posting is IMHO the simplest and safest way.

The theme and translation

My theme is already kind of responsive, it's based on the default one powered by the Bootstrap framework. I do have a lot of work to do until stable release. I could give the link to my live development if needed.
As for the translation, is about 40 % completed, without the admin interface.

Nice

Tschö, Auge

--
Trenne niemals Müll, denn er hat nur eine Silbe!

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My perfect MLF 2.5 version

by Magma, Sunday, June 24, 2018, 13:09 (2104 days ago) @ Auge

Vote here for NO cookie pop-up, they're horrible :no:

I was thinking to show a banner like most websites do nowadays. Like this one:
[image]

Discussion about bug fixing and planned features for mlf 2.5

by Martin66, Monday, September 03, 2018, 17:06 (2033 days ago) @ Auge

There should be a new button for “quotation” marks. The marks should depend to the „language“, given with the «language_file».

Martin

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