InstantASP Community Forums / InstantForum.NET / Suggestions & Requests

Banning E-mail Domains...

southbound — Thu, 10 Jul 2008 06:19:33 GMT

How about adding the ability to ban certain e-mail domains? I have been hit by a bunch of spammers who are using disposable e-mail accounts on sites like www.mailinator.com and gaining access to an account.

I can't tell if it's one person or several because they are going through a proxy. They are using the same mail domain though and this would make it easy to just have an area where you could specify e-mail domains not allows to create accounts.

Naturally, domains like gmail, yahoo etc would not fall into this category but those accounts do require someone to set them up where as these disposable accounts do not and it's too easy for someone to just come up with an e-mail when creating an account and then checking for the confirmation message.

Thanks,

Chris

When will version 4.2 be coming out???

UReporting — Thu, 03 Jul 2008 04:43:08 GMT

Can we expect a rough time frame if you guys have already started to work on it? Also what improvements and added functionalities can we expect? My apologies for the impatience but I have been looking forward to the next Forum version since last year :)

SEO URL's and QuickResponse

Mac d'Mac — Wed, 21 May 2008 14:19:20 GMT

Hi It would be nice to see seo friendly url's as an option - ie the topic title as the url...
also a quick response option so that people do not have to follow a link everytime to make a response...
ie ajax openining... i've seen it on fireboard - joomla and it is a very nice feature.

Enhanced Forum Permissions

TheProphet — Tue, 08 Apr 2008 01:48:36 GMT

OK, I have a problem in that 99% of my users have have a default permission set "Forum User" then are assigned to different Member Groups to see different Forums. This OK and fairly standard.

BUT on the odd occasion one of the rooms needs to have "Reply to Post" as the only option, or sometimes a "Read Only" room.

Now currently a users permission is ALWAYS based on their default permissions "Forum User" UNLESS "Forum User" is over written by the forum itself. The problem is I obviously can't get some rooms "Forum User" access. So for select rooms I need to assign different permission sets.

GET 5 People

1 - Admin

2 - Forum User

- Room 2 User

3 - Forum User

- Room 3 User

4 - Forum User

- Room 2 ADMIN

- Room 3 ADMIN

5 - Forum User

Room 1: "Forum Users" can see and post new topics and replies

Room 2: "Room 2 Users" can See this room, and can ONLY reply to topics. "Room 2 Admin" can do anything

Room 3: "Room 3 Users" can see this room, and ONLY READ topics. "Room 3 Admin" can do anything

I hope that makes sense.

---

So basically.

IF Primary "USER Permission set" NOT part of Forum THEN

USER permission set of secondary permission sets.

NOT just

IF primary "user Permission set" not part of Room then

if secondary permission set exists in room SHOW room and user primary permission set.

Better avatar resizing support

Jay Adair — Fri, 04 Apr 2008 17:39:01 GMT

The current avatar resizing mechanism creates a real nasty looking avatar. There's no bicubic interpolation going on. It'd be great if this could be fixed.

C# version

bobsov — Wed, 31 Jan 2007 15:13:13 GMT

I just purchased developer licence for bundled software. I was disappointed to see that the source code was only offered in vb language. I am a C# developer and was expecting in C# or choice between two. Is there anyway, you guys can provide in C# version for InstantKB and InstantForum both?

I need to heavily customize this to fit our needs in our intranet scenario. Preferably if you have in asp.net 2.0, that would be great. Please let me know if newer version is coming out soon with asp.net 2.0 support and c# as an optional back-end language. It will be worth waiting then working on the current one.

Thank you,

Enlarge Avatar when clicked...

southbound — Thu, 01 Nov 2007 12:53:30 GMT

On my old forum, I had it where you could click on an avatar to view an enlarged version of it. A lot of my members would like this feature back. Basically when the avatar was uploaded, it would resize it to 600 pixels and then create a thumbnail to be used as the avatar view. When clicked, it would open in a new window showing the larger image.

This would be a great addition!!!

Forum and Topic Subscribing

PatD — Wed, 21 Sep 2005 12:44:42 GMT

I've noticed that when I subscribe to a thread, I stay subscribed, but with any replies I do, at the bottom it shows "Do Not Subscribe" in the drop down list. It would be nice if it defaulted to it's current setting for the user / thread.

Also, I can't find out how to subscribe to an entire forum. On my control panel it says I am not subscribed to any forums, but it would be nice if there was a more straight forward way to subscribe to the entire forum for a user.

Thanks,

Pat

Topic Subscription

rooobce — Wed, 10 Aug 2005 08:24:08 GMT

When entering a new topic a user can choose a type of subsription (or type of notification).

The default is: Do not subscribe.

It would be great if an administrator could change the default to Immediate Notification... for the whole board.

Additionally every user should be able to set-up default preferences in his or hers Profile.

Robert

P.S. - with this feature the unvisibity of the subscription field would be less annoying.

Grouping Search Results Under Main Topics

southbound — Tue, 02 Oct 2007 20:40:14 GMT

Is it possible to group the search results throughout the forum (search, recent post etc) under their main category?

For example.

You searched for Camera:

Main Topic - General Discussion
-- Post - Does anyone own a camera
-- Post - How do I use my camera

Main Topic - Items for sale
-- Post - Nikon D1X camera body only
-- Post - Looking to buy a camara

Does that make sense? It may already be available in a term I am not using to look for. Maybe "Nested Search Results Under Main Topic" or something????

Thanks,

Chris Couture

Private Message Delete Options

Cradz — Wed, 20 Jun 2007 17:00:49 GMT

I had this request from one of my members and added it to my system but thought I'd post it here too as it is a good suggestion.

Basically all I did was add a delete button when reading a Private Message. If the message is NOT in the deleted items folder it'll move the message to the delete items folder else it'll delete the message permanently.

I also added an option called "Delete Permanently" to the drop down menu on the page that lists messages in a private message folder... so in addition to moving messages you can select individual messages to permanently delete without having to move to delete items and then emptying the folder.

My users love these new features so just passing along a nice addition I did to my site. :D

Feedback

abomg001 — Thu, 24 May 2007 09:21:38 GMT

Just wanted to give credit to Carlos Munz on three occasions he has assisted me with my Instant Forum issues and has been able to resolve them within minutes and is always eager to help

Keep up the good work Carlos

Michael

When new users register and are required to validate their email address

James F — Mon, 14 May 2007 18:36:52 GMT

When new users register and are required to validate their email address, when they try and login, a message should tell them that they need to validate their email address before they can do so.

Help pages for users

jane — Tue, 21 Feb 2006 18:09:08 GMT

Please forgive me if this has been asked before, but does Instant Forum 4.1.3 come with any kind of user help pages? Y'know: 'How do I make a post?' 'How do I add a picture to a post?' and so on, or do I have to create these from scratch?

thanks,

Display users "Location" field in their info next to posts

Peter Jarrett — Mon, 16 Apr 2007 04:02:05 GMT

It would be a really nice touch if we could optionally display a users "location" field in the information to the right hand side of posts by their avatar.

LDAP/Active Directory Integration

auzarowski — Sat, 07 Apr 2007 10:44:45 GMT

It would be great if authentication for InstantKB integrated with Active Directory. This would help us achieve "single sign on" for our KB users when they are already signed into their account control panel on our website.

Is this possible already and I'm just missing it? Any suggestions would be great...

Thanks,

Andrew

How to stop keyloggers?

bobi15 — Mon, 02 Apr 2007 07:20:35 GMT

Hello,

I need a good software tool to stop keyloggers. I searched on Google and found an overwelming offer, some free and some paid; but I am interested in your personal suggestions, something that you use and are satisfied with! :) Also many anti spyware tools that I've found are basing on a signature database, and might not work with custom home made keyloggers or spware. Anyone knows a tool that blocks keyloggers and spyware without using a signature database?
:hehe:

Split topic suggestion for next version

Tillamawnin — Tue, 26 Dec 2006 20:21:00 GMT

I think it would be a good idea to add a split topic functionality in the next version of IF.

The Split Topic would allow moderators and administrators to move individual irrelevant or off-topic replies from a topic into a new topic. Too many times we have a good discussion gets started, but there are a few folks who will start another totally off-topic discussion inside the existing discussion.

On our forum we have different forums for different categories of discussion. For example, we do not allow any non-soccer discussion in the soccer forum. Many users have found this annoying, especially when they return at a later time and their non-soccer post is missing. I have been asked if when a post has been moved from one forum to the next, if a link could be left on the original forum (temporarily, maybe a few hours) to let users know where the post went? I think some competing product has this functionality in place. I thought it was a good idea so I have told our users I would suggest it to the developers.

Converting IF Codes in RSS Feeds

Scottie — Mon, 18 Dec 2006 05:21:13 GMT

I would like to put forward a change that converts the "[ ]" tags used in the IF Codes and replaces them with there HTML equivalent within a RSS feed

This is very useful option to have, as anyone out with the forum might not understand these tags

If this bug with the current version, then my apologies.

Scott :D

Google Sitemaps Support

jperson — Wed, 03 May 2006 08:15:18 GMT

Hey Ryan,

It would be great to have support for Google Sitemaps built into the forum. This should be straightforward enough that I'm going to try writing the code for this today. It would be a matter of writing SQL to pull all of the topics, their titles, and dates posted. If there's no objection, I'll post the VB code here or e-mail it to you. Can you contact me via e-mail to let me know?

Thanks and InstantForum rocks! My customers love it (http://www.geoframeworks.com/forum)

Jon

Free Internet Filter, WEPAL

hennessyd — Sun, 19 Nov 2006 07:16:52 GMT

Wepal is a free Internet filter. It blocks access to unwanted or objectionable Internet content. The software is ideal for use in the home, small business, schools and libraries.

Wepal was developed for the benefit of children, families and organizations who do not have the funds to purchase Internet filtering software.

VISIT: WWW.WEPAL.ORG

Discussion: Forum Archiving

Mark Christianson — Wed, 14 Dec 2005 06:36:34 GMT

I would like to open the discussion on how IF can best handle archiving of old posts/data etc.

I have a forum that currently holds a few years of data and frankly at 450-500mb its time to put my active topics/posts on a diet.

First, I think that much like the Snitz forum of which I had previous experience I liked that the archive function pushed data from a date the admin would choose back. to a matching set of tables [tablename]_archive. This allowed the users to still have access to the old data via search (advanced search provides a checkbox button to search active and archive or just one or the other).

The advantages should be clear... less table data in the primary tables leads to greater performance since there is less data to cull.

Since I know others have been using other forums I would like to know what other strategies you think would be good for archiving in IF

Show a user they are subscribed or not subscribed to a forum

PatD — Sat, 23 Sep 2006 22:29:14 GMT

I have a some suggestions about subscribing:

If the forum could display that a person is subscribed when they view the topics, such as putting "You are subscribed to this forum for immediate notice." or "You are not subscribed to this forum, click Options to subscribe." it would be more intutitve.
It's not obvious that Options is used to subscribe.
If you subscribe again, the user interface shows no indication that you are already subscribed. It's like you were never there.

Thanks,

Pat

Calendars assigned to Forums

Felicity — Sun, 08 Oct 2006 20:56:02 GMT

Having a universal calendar is pretty much useless for a large forum. Calendars should be Forum specific. It would not be difficult at all to add a ForumID column in events table and work it from there.

Automation/Integration via Web Services

MikeSchinkel — Sun, 17 Jul 2005 19:13:40 GMT

I'd really like to see a set of web services provided that would allow us to automate aspects of the forum, and even use it somewhat as a platform for a mini work-flow system. Things like the ability to submit a post programatically and request to be notified via either a webserver or an email when a post is answered. Ability to add a new user, and ability to be notified when a user changes their profile. And so on.

Ideally the web services would be both simple XML over HTTP via GET/POST as well as more complex SOAP web services.

The nice thing about this is it could be a mostly seperate independent code base from InstantForum.NET itself.

Custom Personal Detail Fields

Felicity — Sun, 08 Oct 2006 21:00:44 GMT

Now that forums are essentially mini-communities, it would be nice to add more fields instead of the usual ones.

Moderators Can Move Topics

tyeodle — Fri, 22 Apr 2005 15:43:09 GMT

Consider adding the ability for moderators to move topics from one forum to another. Many times when moderating forums, you find that people are making posts in the wrong places. Besides just deleting and editing topics, having the ability to move topics to their proper location is a necessity for well organized forums.

Move 'Remember me' login box closer to where the password is entered

PatD — Sat, 23 Sep 2006 22:24:40 GMT

I'm constantly telling users to check the Remember Me box on login. It's in the next section and they don't see it on login. If it was moved up into the same area as the login, more would see it.

Topic Descriptions

Bare — Thu, 14 Apr 2005 22:58:32 GMT

The following is strictly my opinion, but I thought I'd post it & see if anyone else agrees..

When creating a new topic, you can provide a "subject" and a "description".

If you do not provide a description, the first characters of the message text, shows up in the description area, when view the list of topics within a forum. If no description was provided, I'd rather see that line blank.

This would allow that particular table row to be a little shorter in height, which I definitely prefer (and I think it would look cleaner... Most of the time, the first 50 characters of a message don't make much sense on their own)

Also, when the subject and description are displayed when viewing the topics of a forum & you resize your browser (make it narrower), when the title column text starts to wrap, it really makes for some table rows that have a large height value... (especially if that topic has been rated and has more than 1 page of replies)

I realize this is all personal opinion, but I thought I would just throw it out there...

Show Poll Votes as a reply in the reply tally

PatD — Sat, 23 Sep 2006 22:44:34 GMT

When a user looks at a poll, there can be many votes, but 0 replies. It looks like no one has voted unless they look at the results and that will affect their vote.

Can you increment the replies so that it looks like people are participating?

Thanks,

Pat

Browser Text Size

DD8388 — Thu, 21 Sep 2006 05:44:37 GMT

I'm sure it's something that can be done at our end, but I'd like to see it included as standard. :D

Sorry, wearing my accessibility hat.

Last Viewed

shjag — Thu, 14 Sep 2006 08:40:03 GMT

AL posted about this feature suggestion back in April, and I just wanted to second it. We moved from dotnetbb this summer, and everyone's loved the new mb, except for the loack of this feature -- which they mention nearly every day. I've copied AL's post below. Thanks.

[quote]Instead of a "Last Post" link that automatically puts you at the very end of a busy thread you may not have read for a few days, provide a "Last Viewed" link that puts you right at the last point you viewed the topic.

This is a huuuuge time saver and a great feature.
[/quote]

Optimized the Truncate function

Zyo — Fri, 08 Sep 2006 08:05:13 GMT

In my personal optimization crusade I found the function Truncate called many times and slow.

Here is a way to fully remove the double for loop, multiple array, split and concatenation issue. Simple and working.

Public Shared Function Truncate(ByVal Input As String, ByVal intMaxLen As Int32) As String

If Input Is Nothing Then
Return String.Empty
End If

If Input.Length <= intMaxLen Then
' no need to truncate
Return Input
End If

' search for last space before max lenght
Dim iCutAt As Integer = Input.LastIndexOf(" "c, intMaxLen)

Dim inputCut As String
If iCutAt = -1 Then
' there is no space so cut anywhere
inputCut = Input.Substring(0, intMaxLen)
Else
inputCut = Input.Substring(0, iCutAt)
End If

Return inputCut + "..."

End Function

I haven't done any benchmark but it's probably 100 times faster for both long and short input string.

Calendar Email Notification

lilredjetta — Wed, 06 Sep 2006 11:25:12 GMT

It would be great if there was an option when adding and editing calendar items, to send an email to specific groups or users to notify them of the event or update. Feel free to slap me if this is already possible...

;)

quick-reply function

masu — Sun, 20 Aug 2006 12:53:23 GMT

Is there a way to use quick-reply function with this forum?

ability to login with username and not just with the e-mail adress

masu — Sat, 12 Aug 2006 04:37:18 GMT

Hello

there should be an option to login with username and not just with the e-mail adress

Flush The Mail Queue

PatD — Thu, 13 Apr 2006 13:36:25 GMT

I've got an instance where the mail just sits in the queue. Though the ticket is being worked on, it would be nice to have a button to force the mail to the server. There's a delete button, but no button to at least kick off the next set of emails.

I realize this would only help people in the future. :-)

Thanks.

Quick Edit & Reply

Kristophe — Fri, 04 Nov 2005 09:40:57 GMT

I believe a good feature to be implimented would be Quick Edit, it's one thing that this BBS is lacking, not major but handy none-the-less. If you can do It, I suggest you do :D A few other forum services which will remain nameless have this feature so this BBS should too :w00t:

Awaiting Activation list

dstoltz — Fri, 07 Jul 2006 07:17:11 GMT

On our forum, we require activation. If the user doesn't activate their account within 30 days, we delete their account.

When using the "Awaiting Activation" list option in the admin control panel, it's annoying that once you delete an account from this list, the screen refreshes with the "User List" - not the Awaiting Activation list.

So for each user you have to click Awaiting Activation, delete account, click Awaiting Activation, delete account, etc...

If I'm looking at the Awaiting Activation list, it should come back to this list after I delete an account.

InstantASP Community Forums / InstantForum.NET / Suggestions & Requests

Banning E-mail Domains...

When will version 4.2 be coming out???

SEO URL's and QuickResponse

Enhanced Forum Permissions

Better avatar resizing support

C# version

Enlarge Avatar when clicked...

Forum and Topic Subscribing

Topic Subscription

Grouping Search Results Under Main Topics

Tag Clouds

Private Message Delete Options

Feedback

When new users register and are required to validate their email address

Help pages for users

Display users "Location" field in their info next to posts

LDAP/Active Directory Integration

How to stop keyloggers?

Split topic suggestion for next version

Converting IF Codes in RSS Feeds

Google Sitemaps Support

Free Internet Filter, WEPAL

Discussion: Forum Archiving

Show a user they are subscribed or not subscribed to a forum

Calendars assigned to Forums

Automation/Integration via Web Services

Custom Personal Detail Fields

Moderators Can Move Topics

Move 'Remember me' login box closer to where the password is entered

Topic Descriptions

Show Poll Votes as a reply in the reply tally

Browser Text Size

Last Viewed

Optimized the Truncate function

Calendar Email Notification

quick-reply function

ability to login with username and not just with the e-mail adress

Flush The Mail Queue

Quick Edit & Reply

Awaiting Activation list