61 replies to this topic

[The Old Man]

Now that IPB3 is here, I think its really time to address the way emoticons are managed because times have changed and boards no longer have just 20 of them, many have accumulated 100's of them. Large, small, light, dark, seasonal etc.

Surely there has to be a better, less confusing way of managing them for Admins, and I seem to recall suggestions in the past have been confirmed as having to wait for IPB3 because of its improved programming structure.

Sorry I'm going back to basics here, because after several years I still don't understand or have forgotten how Emoticon Management is supposed to work in the AdminCP, and there is still no documentation for it.

I don't understand why it is that you can add numerous folders of smilies in addition to the default emotion group, if IPB doesn't automatically include them (the default folder and all additional folders or child folders) when you actually come to post? I also don't understand why you can't turn entire groups of emoticons on and off.

One possible solution...

Lets say for example you have 150 smilies on your board, consisting of:

• 50 general ones
• 50 Halloween theme
• 50 Christmas themed (a little OTT but will do as an example!).

It could just as well be large, small, adult, whatever...

You wouldn't need to have the 100 seasonal emoticons available to click all year round, and you wouldn't need to have access when posting to the Christmas ones when posting near to or at Halloween, and vice versa.

So why not have a folder for each group, and have a check box in the Emoticon Manager to instantly enable or disable each group of smilies as required, and a separate sub-screen to enable, disable or delete individual emoticons within each group, either one at a time or all?

This would make things much more manageable for this with lots of smilies, and all smilies would still show in older posts because they are still on the server, just not all in the clickable list all at once.

You could take it a step further, by adding tabs (suggested so many times before) to the Show All Emoticon box, so that clicking on default or general would show those, then a tab would be available for the Halloween, large, small etc as defined by the groups in the AdminCP Emoticon Management screen.

[TekMiL]

Good idea. I would like to see a better handling of them as well. AT least in version 3 the sidebar is nice and neat inside the fast reply box.

[Dlf]

Or for another idea for the mass "disable" or enable of emotions: Timed based, set by the admin - just like posts (that can be timed to be shown or not shown) why not with emotions? When this the time of the year reaches this day (set by the admin) the emotion(s) (group(s)) YOU set (as admin) will automatically turn the emotions on or off (start time, end time). If I think of more suggestions, I'll post them.

[superstrikertwo]

Very good ideas!

[Feneroin]

Reallu super ideas "emoticons per theme/group/etc"

[AJArend]

I haven't yet upgraded to 3.0 on my board and one of the main reasons is Emoticon management.

Right now, I have a mod on my board that allows me to organize emoticons based on categories that I choose. My users can browse through categories to find the emoticons they want. Instead of browsing through hundreds of emoticons to try and find that one "happy" one they wanted, they go to the "happy" category, and only have to browse through a few.

This is similar to how The Old Man has suggested it should work, and I agree. My users find it much easier to browse by category.

I also remember years ago, an old IPB mod that allowed you to sort emoticons based on usage. Those that were the most used could be put at the top of the list. Again, this seems to me to be very logical.

IPB has been saying for years that they would eventually get to this, but nothing has happened. I agree it's time to make changes in this area.

AJ

[The Old Man]

Thanks for supporting the feedback on this AJ (and everyone else above), in fairness a lot of people have been asking about this for a long time.

Its a shame there been no official IPS feedback at all.

[TCWT]

I want to be able to rearrange the order of he emoticons.

[The Old Man]

Yes me too! I want to add in Halloween emoticons and remove my Christmas ones too, but they are a nightmare to organise. Oh wait, both my Halloween and Christmas smilies have been in the Show All Smilies all year round! Its all so confusing!

It would be nice to see some IPS comments in this topic, if only to say they are aware of this feedback on emoticon management and whether they too agree its time for improved management of the emoticons.

Ideas so far:

• Enable / Disable / Delete Groups of emoticons.
• Enable / Disable / Delete individual emoticons.
• Drag and Drop re-ordering of emoticons (default option A-Z ordering).
• Drag and Drop re-ordering of emoticon Groups (default option A-Z ordering).
• Ability to rename emoticon Groups.
• Tabs for Groups in Show All Emoticons box.
• Depending upon how many resources it would consume - Most popular smilies show in the initial smilies box.

[Mark]

Sorry I'm going back to basics here, because after several years I still don't understand or have forgotten how Emoticon Management is supposed to work in the AdminCP, and there is still no documentation for it.

http://community.inv...html?record=166
It's also inline when you click "Get Help With This Page" on the emoticons management page.

I realise that wasn't there when you posted, but just pointing it out now

[The Old Man]

Thanks Mark!

[optrexnz]

Plus 1 for emoticon management please. Just added some custom ones from my old board and I can't believe how rubbish this part of the system is - lol.

[Gabriel Petrelli]

It would be nice to be able to assign certain emoticon sets to certain forums as well. I have a spam forum for members to alleviate themselves, and it would be nice to assign a certain emoticon set such as spammish smileys to that forum which aren't appropriate for the normal forums.

[kooh]

Yes please I would love to see the emoticon management revamped and improve. Its like currently you can only have one set of smilies all you you gotta make sure is that its not set as a clickable smilie it really annoys how low this feature is. This is on of things I hate about IPB management, and thats not the bad thing its been like this way for years, I was really looking forward to a change in IPB3.

[darkon]

I definitly like categorized Smilies, as admin and as user.

I had such a mod in an old (and now closed.. ) phpBB-board i coadministrated. It was really nice to work with and we had about 3.000 smilies

[AJArend]

Nothing yet on this??

[PrefeX]

I agree that the emotion system needs an overhaul... I't not any good the way it is now. Should add several keywords to each emotion in addition to the other suggestions here...

[bfarber]

http://community.inv...8-smiley-system

[Wolfie]

The problem that I have with being able to turn on/off different emoticons is consistency.

Let's say I make a post using a Halloween emoticon a couple of days before Halloween. Then after Halloween, those emoticons are turned off. Will the emotes in my post still work properly? What if I need to edit the post, will it break the emote that I was using? I shouldn't have to remove the emote just because it got turned off.

I'd rather there be the ability to show/hide available emotes. If hidden, they are still available to use, but not displayed, which would allow for holiday emotes that could be used at any time, but then the admin could show/hide different groups based on the time of year.

Would also be nice if the groups could be expanded/collapsed when browsing. If someone doesn't like to use emotes from a certain group, they could collapse that group and not see them.

Being able to re-order the emotes (as someone else mentioned) is also a great idea. Could put new ones at the top or some 'common defaults' there, etc.


Here's an idea kind of similar to another idea I had mentioned. I had the idea of allowing someone to upload their own emotes for their use. Here's a slight change in it. In the UserCP, if someone could pick and choose which emotes show up in the emote list. They would start out with the default set that is set up in the ACP, but they could 'trade off' emotes in that list with others that are available. So if someone likes to user a certain group of emotes, they could have those appear in the list instead of having to dig through the 'Show All'.

In case that didn't make sense (I do tend to word things in a hard to understand way)... User John Doe goes to his UserCP and to the emoticon options. There is a default list of 20 emotes that show in the emotes panel when making a post. He decides that he doesn't like 5 of them because he doesn't use them as much, but likes 5 others that are in the 'Show All' list. He clicks on the 5 to remove and then gets to pick 5 as a replacement. Then, when he's making a post and has the emote list open, he will see the 15 remaining default emotes plus the 5 that he picked.

I believe that they shouldn't be allowed to have more than X number of emotes (no more than either a max setting or no more than the number of default emotes). Otherwise someone might choose to have a huge number of emotes loading which could cause problems.

I would imagine that it shouldn't be that hard to process when making the post screen. Either someone is using all the defaults (so no change) or their choices are loaded in place of the defaults. Depending on how IPB is set up (does it load a list of ALL the emotes for the post box?), it could even remove emotes from their list if certain emotes are no longer available. Either that or have those replaced with a red X so the member knows there's a problem with their selected choices.

Oh also, if the remember wants to revert to using the boards defaults, they could just go into the UserCP and tick a box to use the defaults.

[AJArend]

http://community.invisionpower.com/topic/304398-smiley-system

Maybe I'm being dense, but not sure what this is supposed to tell me.

So...if I'm someone who has seasonal smilies and only wants to turn certain seasonal smiles on at certain times of the year, I can do that now? Well, that's awesome.

But...that's not the problem, as I see it. The problem is with the fact that so many people have hundreds of smilies on their boards, and no way to organize them. They all get dumped into one folder, and members have to scroll through hundreds of smilies to find the one they want. Not practical. And to say, "Well, just don't have so many smilies" is also not practical.

It would seem that if we can have sub-folders, there should also be a way to turn several sub-folders on, and instead of it showing a huge scrolling list of smilies, show the names of the sub-folders as clickable links or pages at the top. That way, you can organize your smilies (happy, sad, angry) in sub-folders that are accessible to members, but not lumped in with the default smilies.

AJ