AmgedOsman

I use reputation for this. Once a user has accumulated enough reputation, the user is promoted to a group with more liberal permissions.

Reputation is more useful than post count, since any spammer can post 20 posts.

While working toward the release of IP.Board 3.3.0 and IP.Content 2.3.0, the development team took some time to refresh our developer documentation, aiming to provide useful information for our third party developers in order to help them update their work as necessary.  We are still very much working on expanding and updating the developer documentation we...

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I'm sure this is already on the roadmap for IP.Board but I'll request it anyway... Basically the entire user cp needs to be simplified and the UI needs be improved. In this topic I'll talk about how I feel it should be simplified, setting wise.

The user cp area is far too cluttered with too many options which is not very user friendly. This is something I feel XenForo got correct when designing the user end area. Hopefully IPS can improve it to compete. So... I decided to create a mockup of what I feel it should look like. I feel a lot of settings should be merged together instead of having a list of nearly every setting you can change.


With this layout, there is all global settings (including profile options) on the user cp home. Than each application and their settings is located on the tabs (at the top) like blog, chat, gallery, etc. Keeps application specific and global settings separated nicely. I know the page isn't exactly designed great, but that's something that should and could be easily changed.

The following setting changes were done in the mockup image, that I feel should be implemented:
- Display name, email related settings, and passwords would all be under "Account Settings"
- Notepad and My Attachments are moved to the main user cp screen under "Global Settings"
- My Notifications and Notification Options would remain unchanged
- Profile Settings would be moved to the Settings page. Again, this is more of a global setting anyway and lots of times people go to the user cp to change their signature, profile info, or avatar. It saves a click.
- Avatar and Personal Photo merged into the same area
- Open ID, Facebook Connect, and Twitter Connect would all fall under "Social Connect"

Global Settings
--Global Settings
--Account Settings
--Liked Content
--My Notifications
--Notification Options

Profile Settings
--Profile Information
--Privacy Settings(?)
--Change About Me Page
--Change Signature
--Change Avatar/Photo
--Social Connect

Thoughts, Feedback, Comments?

None of the current IPB sitemaps to do a proper job of marking change frequency, or more importantly priority. They mark them all the SAME. Search engines see this as an error, resulting in a lower "trust" factor for the sitemap, and slower indexing. Priority and change frequency should be dynamic, based on last mod, topic views, last view, etc. It can't be hard to use existing data to create a simple algorithm.

CSEO's implementation wasn't perfect, but it was pretty good (and the code is open sourced). vBSEO's sitemap does an excellent job with vB forums. Not to mention a complete sitemap implementation should have not just an XML, but an HTML sitemap as well.

If they taught SEO in college, a proper sitemap may not be a 101 course, but it wouldn't be more than 201. Basic SEO. Too bad IPS doesn't appreciate the value. vB4 included XML sitemaps.

First of i'd like to mention that this is my #3 ipcontent site and i'm feeling kinda comfortable when developing for it. In this point i'll be throwing my own few cents on IPContent.

My latest ipcontent site (http://www.blizztv.com) was actually based on wordpress 3.0 and moved from it to ip as i'd like to run an active community (don't need to mention IP is the best community software,at lease for me, whom has before tried the vb, phpbb and so). Before throwing my cents i should build the reasons for it by explaining my requirements.

First of all my site http://www.blizztv.com is a common dedicated news source for some popular games out there, but the different part with it is, it relies on a replay vod's (video-on-demand) database. So at the first hand with wordpress 3.0, the custom-post types and custom taxonomy i had implemented a "kinda" vod database. I flag it as "kinda" because even with wordpress latest custom post-type's support, you can only implement kind of databases with tags, categories and custom-taxonomies. Yea, you can also implement custom-editor boxes and implement your data input forms and save them but that's another story. Anyway it's was all good except wordpress is never a community-software but a blogging platform. Being tried available kinda-forum solutions for wp, they're never enough for some real community.

Anyway the idea behind moving to IPB is above and it's all going good as i've ported my content & stuff to ipb suit already. Now my vod database is already implemented as ipcontent database. Managing a ipcontent database is quite easy and when it comes to limits even a wordpress with implemented custom post types can't reach it's flexibility. Though i want to mention that ipc databases should implement some kind of tags & custom taxonomy support and this tags should be rendered by the software (ie, site.com/tag/alex should be able to list all posts & stuff from a specific ipc database entry tagged with alex). But that's a suggestion and never was the main idea of this, let's go with the real cents i'll be throwing.

So from my POV, ipc should feature easier templating subsystem as the one that exists right now is quite complex and limiting. At least we should be able to customize our category,tags and taxonomy templates (of course if tags and custom taxonomy support is added the system sometime in future).

Complex Templating

As being a developer myself i already know that writing great & optimized code behind with exceptional capability does not always mean a successful & friendly product. From my point of view, ipcontent is a great code and stuff but requires a simplified & friendly framework. As i've mentioned before with my third ipc site i'm quite used to with it but being used to something does not always means you're productive. The main problem with ipc i think is the productivity asset.  Okay we can all php, html pages, templates and so but things are quite complex. I'd like to compare this with wordpress templating system, i know it's not the same thing with ipc but i think it resembles a great simplified templating framework.



The above is embedded from wordpress official codex, which anyone could easily understand under hood of wordpress's templating system.  As you can see it the core checks what type of content is required by the user and then routes the request to suitable template file. ie. if we're on a static-page, easily wordpress will go for <pagename>.php, page-<slug>.php, page-<id>.php and page.php. To clarify things let's say we have an about page on wordpress with a page id of 78. Then the routing will go for incrementally until it finds one that exists;
about.php -> page-about.php -> page-78.php -> page.php. Similarly for a blog entry with post type 'post' it'll go for single-post.php and single.php. I think this is far from great considered ipc's current templating system where you should identify where you're for the most part. (Okay we can bind templates to listing, view and archieve but what if we'd like to support custom category and taxonomy templates?)

Post Tags

Again something that i like most with the wordpress is, the post-tags feature. In ipb we should be going for ie., $record[$data['special']['image'].'_value' ]}, {$record['record_link']}. Yes we can actually implement our site with this stuff but i can't understand such a complex-naming scheme, where wordpress for example uses a very easy & user-friendly one like the_title(), the_content(), the_excerpt() and even with implementing one in functions.php in your wordpress template you can go for the_image().

Again wordpress allows you to access the $wp_query,$wp, $post and so you can fine tune the wordpress's query and responses, where AFAIK in ipc we can't go even for a custom query (like the wordpress's wp_query() function). Not letting the developer to make his own queries is a very limiting-future, if someone wants to run his own queries for his own-dedicated needs (of databases) (-ie; querying a tag and rendering all valid article-database entries for the tag) that means he's actually limited a lot.

Post(Article) Plugins

First of all i've developed my own middle-scale ipb plugin before, the system quites work-well as long as you're used the plugin API. I've nothing to say there as plugins most of time are a design-concept and i can understand ipb's strict naming & file schemes. The problem is that IPC should also allow simple-plugins, which are only dependent on hooks & filters (like wordpress ones). Still this is a relatively small issue compared to above ones.

Final Words
I already saw similar posts from the community on topic and wanted to share my own experience. Actually what i talked about here is completely dependent on the IP's plans on ipcontent. If they one want to make it a great content-creation suite they's should be listening to community, but if ipc is just a complementary  product i guess they'll be not going for extra work.

Anyway thanks for taking your time.

$matt = new Mecham(array('male', 'white'));

AmgedOsman, on 24 October 2010 - 06:16 PM, said:

Incorrect, I was created with:

$matt = new Mecham('male');

Well as someone that isn't part of the staff, developers or cheering section but has ran both systems...  I will say without a doubt IPB.

For me, it's more, much more than the software itself.  It's the community that is behind it and supports it.   If it were JUST about the script, then you can get them for free, but with those there is no support, or lacking in support.

With IPB I can safely know my site will be up and running and if there is a problem I will have help fixing it.   Since January when I downloaded the script I have used these forum and ticket support for a lot of things and each one of them has been answered.   I have been only with IPB since April and I love it, my members love it and my SEO ranking loves it.

Weigh all that with the cost to run this system vs vB can it's easily to see, that without a doubt, without a second thought IPB wins over the others hands down.

Jamie
ok, so maybe I am part of the cheering section...  

Collin - fyi, if you add

define( 'IPS_ENFORCE_ACCESS', TRUE );

into your application's coreVariables.php file, it will enforce that the page/application is accessible even if board is offline or the user is banned.  That is, assuming you are making an application/module/etc. to show the impressum, as opposed to allowing the admin to define an external link.

Enkidu, on 13 August 2010 - 08:41 AM, said:

Having just IPBoard would take away the comedy value of the design in the first place

bfarber, on 30 September 2010 - 08:56 PM, said:

For "normal" images with the good ol' <img>-tag, things are really easy. I'm working on a "suggester" right now that downloads pages as a guest/googlebot and gives suggestions.
Should be easy enough for everyone and works with all skins.



You won't get all images, but getting 50% of the images is still better than nothing. And you can always add more manually.

CSS-images on the other hand are hard/time consuming to eliminate. I've added advanced settings so you can indeed eliminate almost all CSS-images, but it requires knowledge and time. You need to right align, left align, add margins, and sometimes repeat images. You also need to add image specific CSS-code. But the benefits can be worth it.

Michael, on 25 September 2010 - 11:45 AM, said:

It depends on how you implement CSS sprites. You are in for trouble if you have to edit the skin files, that would be a nightmare. But there is a better solution!

Look at my implementation above. It is more of an output filter. All you have to do is to list all images you want in the CSS sprite, and push a button! If you change an image, just push the button again and everything will be fine. Super-easy! You will never touch the skin files. As a bonus, this method also add width and height parameters to the <img>-tags, completing the DOM-tree and slightly improves the rendering time.

Google has also said they use site speed as a factor in determining Search Engine Result Placement (SERP). "Novices may get confused", really doesn't cut it any more. IPS needs to get serious about improving site speed, reducing page size.

It would be a bit more substantial than a few milliseconds.  Since most browsers only download two things at a time, for every 20 images at 100ms a pop you'll gain roughly 1 second back in network time.  Now, since not every has really fast connections and most people don't have a CDN, network times for an image will probably range 100-300ms depending on where in the country  you are.  From the east coast US to the West coast US you'll see anywhere from 100-200ms latency.

Sprites would definitely be a great optional feature. It would for sure make the load time a bit snappier.

Would even be nice if they just included the avatar as a template variable in the forumIndexTemplate file so skinners could add it themselves if they wanted to. I've been wanting this for a long time but as far as I know this isn't possible using only skin modifications.