22 replies to this topic

[Drakior]

These are the kinds of features that would help bring IP.Blog a little bit more up to speed. While IP.Blog plays nicely with the whole community suite, and the integration is awesome, as a blogging system, it's sorely lacking in some very key areas that many basic blogs out there presently enjoy.

These are just the basics that are missing:

• Assign an Image to an Entry
  Like any blog out there on the internet, every entry has an image associated with it. This image is shown as part of the teaser. IP.Blog presently does not parse any image code while displaying teasers so there's no elegant alternative. And enabling full html to all users is not an option. IP.Blog's basic entry listing is just text and an avatar. Not very exciting, not very interesting. Allowing users to put a little thumbnail of an image for each entry would go a long way to make this look like a "real" blog.
• Some basic user customization
  Give the users the ability to do basic customization to their blogs, namely the ability to upload a custom header image/logo, with size restrictions set by the admin.
• Easily re-order entries
  An elegant solution to allow blog entries to be reordered, at the very least some kind of inline "quick edit" to modify post dates if that's all that can be done.
• Sorting options throughout
  The option to sort posts by date (asc/desc) throughout the blog engine. For example, when viewing Archives, it just sorts by date DESC with no other option. Just as a blog reader, options to filter through content need to be added.
• Custom fields
  Allow admins to add custom fields so that we can parse, sort and order blog entries using our own criteria.

There's lots more that could be added and improved upon, but these few things would go a long way to bring IP.Blog a little bit more up to speed.

I don't expect IP.Blog to compete shoulder to shoulder with years-long established systems like Wordpress. And IP.Blog has done some really great things with forum/community integration, so please give some IP.Blog users some love! We will now have over 1200 IP.Blog bloggers in my community, so please consider some updates soon!

Thx!

[XOO Planet]

Assign an image to an entry!
This is urgently needed, i cant consider this a blog without it.
I would pay anything to have it as well

[grnd]

6. User should be able to set up a subdomain for his/her blog, if server/hosting environment makes this possible

[Robulosity2]

6. User should be able to set up a subdomain for his/her blog, if server/hosting environment makes this possible

How is this any different than sitename.com/blogs/username ? Aside from making the user feel like people care about what they just ate

[grnd]

How is this any different than sitename.com/blogs/username ? Aside from making the user feel like people care about what they just ate

The last sentence didn't really make sense for me.

But the main reason would be, that the user gets a clean, easy-to-remember url to the blog, like myblog.sitename.com

sitename.com/blogs/username is little inconvenient to share with anybody and not at all as appealing. I know, that IPS suite is not blogspot, but in my opinion, blogname.blogspot.com for example is indeed better way to reach certain blog than blogspot.com/blogs/blogname

Now the blogs are pretty much locked in to the community. This option would expand the ways people could reach the whole community, I think.

BR,
grnd

[Tanax]

I like all suggestions.
The URL thing seems kinda weird though.

tanax.invisionpower.com goes to my blog then? What if a user is named "blogs" ? Then it'd be blogs.invisionpower.com which is the URL to the blog-index.
Isn't it better to just have blogs.invisionpower.com/tanax ??

[grnd]

User could specify the subdomain name. It could be http://tanax.invisionpower.com or http://the-blog-of-t...visionpower.com

This would not be a feature for all sites out there. Especially, if we take a look at the site www.invisionpower.com, it would only mess up things because it already uses subdomain to separate the community from the main site. But for some other sites out there, that would be really nice addition.

[CallieJo]

Really nice suggestions. Count my vote.

[Luzifull57]

yess Ok Thankss!

[DH1234]

Sorting of blog categories, please. Newest to oldest, oldest to newest, alphabetical.

Are any of these possible now in individual categories? If not in the core, is there a mod, hook, or hack?

[Jimi Wikman]

All suggestions have my vote as well

[ZakRhyno]

6. User should be able to set up a subdomain for his/her blog, if server/hosting environment makes this possible

I don't agree with this as many people have problems with subdomains and how they really work adding something like this just make it hard to understand. The current setup is idea for me and I would think many others.

[grnd]

I don't agree with this as many people have problems with subdomains and how they really work adding something like this just make it hard to understand. The current setup is idea for me and I would think many others.

I agree, that sometimes we all struggle with technical aspects while running our sites. And a feature that makes things even more complicated would do more harm than help us out.

But in other hand - for some sites this would be greatly appreciated feature. If one prefers the current way of addressing of the blogs, nothing would be in their way to use it. Possibility to link a blog to subdomain would add great value to product and certainly wouldn't harm users that chose other methods.

Regards,
grnd

[Tomzl]

• Assign an Image to an Entry
  
  
  Like any blog out there on the internet, every entry has an image associated with it. This image is shown as part of the teaser. IP.Blog presently does not parse any image code while displaying teasers so there's no elegant alternative. And enabling full html to all users is not an option. IP.Blog's basic entry listing is just text and an avatar. Not very exciting, not very interesting. Allowing users to put a little thumbnail of an image for each entry would go a long way to make this look like a "real" blog.

Yes, this is really a must feature.

Can one of the IP employees gives us a reply, if this is planned for the next version of IP.Blog?

[Dmacleo]

subs would be nice, really we can do it now using redirect but has to be done in the host control panel.
the choice to do so would be nice.

[dzbeebo]

Isn't it better to just have blogs.invisionpower.com/tanax ??

This would be a great feature. I'm not sure if it would be implemented soon or not

[Ikadon]

Yes!

[rmnp4ms]

How about a feature that let's the member choose, via usergroup or specifically by member, who can view their blog or per blog entry?

[texterted]

The ability to hide group blogs from other groups would be good.

[DJ Zah]

I would LOVE to see the ability to have some blocks on the BLOG page like categories, tags, calendar to start. Not just in the individual blogs.

For example you could have global categories.. for instance when you create an entry you could select from existing global categories or create one. Same thing goes for tags... as you type a tag it gives you suggestions. If the block was to the right when creating a blog, you could at least reference what was already existing and use those.