CycloneFanatic v4.0 - New Features Explained

[Jeremy]

Below are some of the new features being worked on for CycloneFanatic.com. While a brief description has been given for each of the features, they can't truley be explained in words and thus you'll have to sit tight and wait for the roll-out of the new features themselves:)

Thread Tagging

A new way to facilitate searching and grouping of threads, it is now possible for users to add tags to threads they post or read. Tags can be added when creating a new thread, or to an existing thread by any user (with appropriate permissions).

Thread Prefixes

Long requested by users, threads can now have administrator-defined prefixes to their titles. Thread prefixes are divided into groups by the administrator, allowing different prefixes to be available in different forums. (i.e. "FS:" as a prefix in the ticket exchange forum when an item is "For Sale")

Reciprocal Friendships Between Users

As part of our new social networking system, users can now request that people on their buddy list confirm their friendship, after which time a person's list of confirmed friends will be viewable to other users.

Public Messaging

While private messages between users have been on CF since the start, the new version introduces the public messaging system, allowing users to communicate publicly via their profile pages.

User Picture Galleries

Users can now create albums and upload pictures to their account. The ability to view these albums and pictures can be limited by the user to just board staff and people on their buddy list if they want privacy.

User-Created Social Groups

To further social cohesion between users and to encourage people to make friends, CF will now include a facility to allow users to create their own social/interest groups. These groups are enhanced by having their own public messaging system, and the ability to add pictures to the group from user albums.

New Member Profile Page

In order to accomodate all the new features in CF v4.0, the member profile page has been completely redesigned from the ground up. The new page presents information in a far cleaner and more logical manner, while dividing up information into manageable chunks using a tabbed interface. Individual profile field categories can be displayed alone in blocks in the right column, in addition to appearing by default in the 'About Me' tab.

Member Customization of Profile Page

We may allow members to use the profile page customization tool, which allows users to alter fonts, colors, background and borders etc. of their profile page in order to create a more personalized look.

Inline Editing of Profile Field Values

The 'About Me' tab of each member's profile page has edit controls, allowing them to quickly change values without leaving their profile page.

Attachment Viewing Lightbox

Clicking on an attached image will now open a lightbox rather than open a new window, with the image scaled to fit the browser viewport. A click on the image in the lightbox will open it in a new window as before.

Navbar Notices

Moderators can now set up custom notifications that will appear underneath the navbar when visiting users fulfil specified criteria. For example, we may set a notice about a new prize or contest, or to show a congratulatory message when a user has posted their 1,000th post etc.

Social Bookmarking of Threads

We can now define a list of our favorite social bookmarking sites and have them available for use on the showthread page for bookmarking threads.

Here is a brief list of some of the other features:

Visitor tracking on profile pages
Automatic resizing of attached images to match filesize or pixel dimensions
Enhancements to custom bbcode system
Custom icons per forum
ATOM support for RSS Poster Robot
Hooks to allow attachments to be passed through a virus scanner

NOTE: Some of the features have been self-created and some are based on the framework that the site runs on. I'm working on compatibility issues between the two and hope to have the new site features rolled out within a couple weeks.

[jumbopackage]

It would seem to me that tagging and prefixes are kinda the same thing.

Will you be able to filter through posts by clicking on the tag as well? i.e. a "recruiting" tag in will filter only recruiting threads for a forum?

[Jeremy]

They are somewhat redundant but only to a certain extent. Prefixes, which won't be required and we can set per forum, help one easily identify a thread as OT for Off Topic or FS for For Sale, etc. Tags on the other-hand will make it so members can add several key phrases to a post or thread and those will then go into the database and it'll create a "cloud" where the most popular tags are shown in order of most used. This will make it so one could easily see what topics are being talked about the most and what threads they might be interested in.

In the beginning it'll be somewhat hard to understand but once they're in place, I think the vast majority of members will enjoy them vary much.

[jumbopackage]

They are somewhat redundant but only to a certain extent. Prefixes, which won't be required and we can set per forum, help one easily identify a thread as OT for Off Topic or FS for For Sale, etc. Tags on the other-hand will make it so members can add several key phrases to a post or thread and those will then go into the database and it'll create a "cloud" where the most popular tags are shown in order of most used. This will make it so one could easily see what topics are being talked about the most and what threads they might be interested in.

In the beginning it'll be somewhat hard to understand but once they're in place, I think the vast majority of members will enjoy them vary much.

Cool beans.
I'd make a suggestion, though, for that "tag sorting" capability. You might even be able to collapse all the "ISU" forums into one forum that way, and just sort based on "BBall", "Football", "Wrestling" etc. I know I'd probably prefer that instead of trying to click through 4 or 5 different forums. Plus it makes a place for a little less "well travelled" sports like Cross Country, Soccer, Swimming etc. without being relegated to the "general" forum, where they could be hard to find.

[Cyclonepride]

I think I speak for a lot of non-computer literate people when I ask- could you try that again, in English? Just kidding