Home›Notes›Orca Forum Improvements

DeeEmm

729 days ago in 
Tags: deeemm, orca, forum, improvement, modification, update, dolphin
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Orca Forum Improvements

I've finally managed to clear my desk and have started to chip away at all of the small Dolphin related things that i wanted to achieve. This is mostly converting old mods that I have carried out on my site, into a more useful format so that I can post them up - both for free and for sale.

One of the bigger mods that I wanted to expand on before posting it, was to update Orca into something more usable.

Now before everyone chimes in about simply getting rid of it and replacing it with IVPB or phpBB or whatever, I believe that with a bit of time invested, it can be made more functional, in my opinion a native forum is much better than an add-on one.

Now I'm not talking about a complete re-write - just improvements - things like improved admin controls, layout tweaks, added functionality. For example - here's a screen-shot of my old D6 Site - i created post view counts and post counts for the forum and main forum indexes

http://www.deeemm.com/images/screenshots/1275016844397.png

i already have a few mods for it, but wanted to hear your opinions on how you think it can be improved - what would YOU like to see in Orca?

/DM

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Nathan Paton
Nathan Paton•729 days ago
 
You're late to the party. I've been working on improving Orca, as well. I've achieved this by taking Dolphin 7 and stripping everything away until only the bare minimum to run Orca is left. I've also kept the membership levels in for the sake of creating moderators. I've found that by basing off of Dolphin 7 and not stand-alone Orca, there is more that can be done to improve it. I'm still hard at work with improving Orca and making it a usable forum. I'll keep people posted, and I hope you do the see more same.
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DeeEmm
DeeEmm•729 days ago
 
You got a URL?

/DM
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DeeEmm
DeeEmm•729 days ago
 
OK - In no particular order, here's the stuff I've been working on...

unsticky posts
move threads

post views + topics / posts

mark posts as read
mark forums as read

view unread posts
view unanswered posts
view new posts
view active topics

latest post author
link to latest post

first / latest post hover preview

post reply button at bottom
return to top links
forum jump

online users
Bookmark topic
rss feed

stats block at bottom of forum?
user stats
Forward to see more post after posted
forum signatures

I have about half of these done.

/DM
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DeeEmm
DeeEmm•729 days ago
 
This is just my list of notes and may not necessarily make a lot of sense (they do to me - lol)

/DM
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Nathan Paton
Nathan Paton•729 days ago
 
@DeeEmm: I've been working offline, mostly for convenience. For my next milestone, I'll see about uploading my work online to my labs web site. I've been doing some similar work, but I'll be interested in seeing how you implement them.
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houstonlively
houstonlively•729 days ago
 
I refuse to ever use Orca, but for those that do use it:

Sub Forums

Lose the Ajax

Convert post filtering to HTMLPurifier... like the rest of the site

Inline Moderation

Ability to assign moderators

Soft Delete

Inline moving of threads

Bad word filter

Attachment Uploading
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Nathan Paton
Nathan Paton•729 days ago
 
@houstonlively: I'm looking in to implementing HTMLPurifier, and making sure some things are still allowed to be posted. As for moderators and other forms of administration, since I am branching off from Dolphin 7 and not stand-alone Orca, I am able to have such features already implemented. Essentially, this is a very stripped version of Dolphin 7, where only the bare-minimum is still there. I've even gone as far as to remove unnecessary files, directories, and even SQL queries. If it's not needed see more by the forum, it's removed.
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DeeEmm
DeeEmm•729 days ago
 
I was doing this to put it together as a premium mod, so currently it's all in mod format - ie changes here and there. Nowhere near as extensive as you seem to have gone tho. Not sure at this stage if I will keep it in this format, or simply serve up a complete module (probably best bet).

Could even be issued as a derivative work and make it completely separate / different beast to Orca - not really thought that far ahead yet - just wanted to get the mods done and worry about packaging it later

I see more did have the mods I had already completed running on my D6 site, but then I DOWNGRADED it to D7.01 (Grrrrrr). I will get them back up and running on D7 next week.

Found some more notes... (some doubles from above)

- list user posts
- Return to post after posted
- Image browser
- BB tags
- email post notifications,
- hide private forums from being aggregated in the RSS (front page) feed, and also from being shown in the forum spy.
- added post view counts to the forums, a jump to top link, the ability to move threads, the ability to 'Un-sticky' threads and forum signatures.
- changed the text 'flagged topics' to 'watched topics', just to make it more user friendly
- Being forwarded to post after posting
- Forum quick jump
- Automated link, video and image posting
- BBCode
- Forum ranks
- Image browser for inserting images (have already implemented this for some admin functions)
- Video browser for inserting videos
- Ability to make users moderators + advanced post moderation functions
- User control panel for forums settings
1. Small Link Or Stats Block For Members Letting Them Know How Many They Have Not Read
2. Mark Read and/or Mark All Read
3. Configure Notifications.
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DeeEmm
DeeEmm•729 days ago
 
HL - File uploading is already handled by Files module

JFYI - The TinyMCE Browser mod I have also handles File uploads.

Would probably include this as part of overall mod too.

/DM
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DeeEmm
DeeEmm•729 days ago
 
Ok - there's my cards on the table - Whatchoogot Gladys?

;)

/DM
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Nathan Paton
Nathan Paton•729 days ago
 
@DeeEmm: It seems we're using two different approaches to reach the same goal. It will be interesting to see each other's end result. As for my work, I am planning on creating a new installer and releasing my work freely under an equal license to that of Dolphin (Creative Commons).
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DeeEmm
DeeEmm•729 days ago
 
Yeah - there's a big hole in Dolphin - and it's called orca - it's like the missing link - lol.

Long had the idea to improve it - but it's just getting enough free time to do something about it, hopefully I can get something back up and running next week. Will shoot you a link when it's running.

/DM
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houstonlively
houstonlively•729 days ago
 
Ughhh.... BBCode. The only reason BBcode exists, is because forums were invented before HTMLPurifier. I was going to say, that a forum that did NOT use bbcode, and used htmlpurifier instead, would be unique in the marketplace, if it had all the right features. It might even make Orca a viable standalone commercial product.
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houstonlively
houstonlively•729 days ago
 
RE "HL - File uploading is already handled by Files module"

I was referring to the feature that real forum software like IPB and vBulletin has, and that is the ability to attach files to individual posts. I guess you have to be familiar with IPB or vBulletin to understand.
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DeeEmm
DeeEmm•729 days ago
 
LOL @ Real forum software.

I amuses me that Orca upsets you so much - lol.

It's funny - when I migrated some old users to dolphin from phpBB - they all said the same - the forum is crap - but they all still post there, and no one really misses the extra garnish that a lot of these other products have, after all the main idea is simply to communicate and Orca achieves this adequately. It's not what the forum DOES - it's more a case of what it CONTAINS.

But I know what you mean about file see more attachments, just don't want to replicate too much. Dolphins main issue is that it does not link the two together - posting images + the gallery / posting file attachments + the file module.

However, The TinyMCE browser mods handles it nicely enough.

The HTMLPurifier might be an idea worth looking into. The BB code idea was simply to accommodate those who are familiar with it - it's an addition to the editor - you can either use the TinyMCE controls, OR type BB code directly into the editor - it's just legacy support for those migrating from other platforms.

Change is hard enough for most people, making the transition smoother is the key.

/DM
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tomakali
tomakali•729 days ago
 
Someone go and raid boonex office to get a copy of whats there in trident forums and work on it.
its good to dump orca...
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houstonlively
houstonlively•729 days ago
 
DE... Orca just stresses me out because I go back a long way with vBulletin and IPB. I have no problem with Orca for really light duty use. I actually prefer it for the groups and events forums. For the main forums, I sure like how IPB looks on my site. Besides, with IPB integrated, I easily added the IPB arcade mod (Free). Being able to add IPB apps is very attractive to me.

HTMLPurifer is the way to go. The only reason it's not in Orca in D7, is because Boonex was too lazy to put it in see more there. I think what they still use, is a derivative of safehtml.... created by some now deseased Russian guy. There is no documentation for it, and white listing will be a big headache. HTMLPurifer in Orca will make your life a lot easier when users start demanding the ability to embed videos from sites other than youtube.

As far as BBCode goes, I don't see how it's possible to implement that in a true sense, without giving up a lot of existing html formatting features... I could be wrong on that though.

I really believe that the lack of BBCode, and the inclusion of the usual mainstream features, are the things that could make a standalone Orca a viable commercial product
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DeeEmm
DeeEmm•729 days ago
 
HL I too have been a long time user of phpBB, and I agree with orca being suitable for light use - on my site it slots in quite nicely - this is because on my site the main focus is the blogs, photos & video sections; the forum is simply a bonus, and in reality little used. But on a site where the focus is more on the forum, this is obviously a different issue, especially when you consider that it would be in direct competition with other forum based sites in the same niche - sites using phpBB see more / IPB / etc.

The things I like most about orca is that it is a native module, and it is visually DIFFERENT to other forums - it's a lot cleaner looking. In the web, sometimes it's being different that gives you the edge, otherwise it's simply ANOTHER phpBB / IPB / whatever integration with a different colour skin. These other forums are so well known, they are instantly recognisable by their layout, and in my opinion look like they added on as an afterthought, rather than looking like they are supposed to be there.

Re not improving orca in D7 being laziness - If you look at the codebase for orca and compare it against D6 - orca is actually a LOT more advanced - IMHO D7 has now been brought up to speed with orca. The main changes to orca for D7 were simply to improve the integration - there's only one instance now - instead of two - one for groups and one for the normal forum. I think orca was not touched in D7 simply because it was already at the level it was required to be at and there was more work to do on the rest of the site. IMHO D7 was really a codebase update - not really a feature update, D7 does not really do too much more than D6 did, it just does it differently.

cont...
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DeeEmm
DeeEmm•729 days ago
 
It would not have surprised me if orca would have been next on the cards to get updated, but with the current status of the main code, I cannot see this happening in the near future, there is simply too much work to do with current bugfixes.

RE BBcode - It is actually a lot easier to implement than you think - you simply parse the submitted content through a bunch of regex replace statements - one for each tag. I used this method to create my own templating system for my CMS, which includes some see more special tags available to the user, in much the same way as BBtags are. The only real issue is deciding how to present the option to the user. Adding an additional interface may be a bit clunky, not having an interface and still parsing BBtags that are typed in directly is good as it's transparent to other users, but perhaps having some options for users to decide themselves is the best choice - after all - what you and I want is really not important - it's what the users want that keeps them coming back.

Regarding mainstream features - it's pretty much imperative that the forum can safely post all current video formats, and easily accommodate more as they appear, and with the advent of HTML5 this is now easily possible using the video tag - this basically works the same way as the img tag does, the only issue, is that it is supported in every browser except explorer - trust Microsoft to continually hold back the web.

cont...
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DeeEmm
DeeEmm•729 days ago
 
I think that forums in general are set for a revolution pretty soon - they are still in the same 10 year old format, pretty soon someone will come up with a better way of displaying this kind of info - the technology is now there - someone just needs to implement it. Despite orca's failings, it is actually an attempt to take some of this technology (AJAX) and apply it in improving the user experience, obviously this has not been completely successful, for a number of reasons, some things are great see more - such as the forum spy, but other things suck - like the AJAX post submission.

/DM
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