CTA Featured Threads & Portal [Paid] 2.17.0

[FredC]

I don't know that i'll be using Automatic Featuring anytime soon,, But wanted to comment on how much i liked seeing the ability to automatically strip BB code from the snippets.. Good stuff

 

[Paul B]

BB Code was stripped by default originally, until several releases ago when I made it an option to include it.

 

[Mr Lucky]

That makes no sense.

It's the same page, just set as the index page.

I think you don't really understand how the index page route function works.
All it does is set a specific page as the landing/home page.

You can't have two separate, different instances of the same page.
It's just not possible.

I know it's not possible, but that isn't what I'm asking. I want the same info (FT) on two different pages - one as a home page plus extra text, the other as a dedicated FT page.

IMHO I don't really think that two pages are needed. Is it really going to bother members that they see the 'extra gubbins' in the custom templates and the sidebar? I think that's probably very unlikely. It's probably unlikely that many members will actually look at the Home page anyway, or the Featured Threads page come to that, going by past experience. That's the whole point of the Featured Threads blocks at the top of the forum page, thread view and new/recent posts pages - to catch those regular members who bypass these pages as they have bookmarked the forum page to get straight into the discussion.

Yes! you've got what I'm trying to say.

Currently I have the extra gubbins at the top of the page, it seems right to have the welcome message there at the top of the home page.

But if someone clicks on the featured threads link, they go to the home page and may miss the featured threads lower down, so they say "hang on a minute, I thought this was a featured threads page, why am i suddenly on the home page, I didn't click the home page link???"

 

[Paul B]

It's not possible.

It's the same page.
You can't use the same page and route to show different content depending on where someone clicked into it from.

 

[drastic]

This automation trick is hella nice!! Work smarter, not harder!!!

 

[Mr Lucky]

It's not possible.

It's the same page.
You can't use the same page and route to show different content depending on where someone clicked into it from.

Thanks, yes I realise it's the same page currently, just pointing out the useability issue that you might take into account when developing updates. I'd be happy to pay pay towards this.

Alternatively being able to display FT in a widget would work (along with Widget Framework) but I know this is also not possible right now because I asked before.

 

[Paul B]

So if I've got this right...

If the home page option isn't used then the featured threads page should be: www.mysite.com/threads/featured
And appear just as it does now.

If the home page option is used, the home page should be: www.mysite.com/threads/featured
But it will just appear as www.mysite.com due to the index page route functionality.

In that case, the Featured Threads link under the Forums tab should link to a completely separate page, something like: www.mysite.com/threads/featured2
Which contains all the same featured threads as www.mysite.com/threads/featured, but doesn't have the sidebar.

Is that correct?

 

[Coop1979]

Bravo, @Brogan. You just super-sized this add-on and made it irresistible to try. Thank you for your hard work and dedication to this add-on.

 

[Neal]

I'm having a slight issue. I've updated the add-on and rebuilt caches but a thread I set to featured indefinitely keeps expiring. Also, the featured threads keep appearing at the top of the forum even when i've dismissed them.

 

[Paul B]

I'm not able to reproduce either of those problems and it's not something which has been reported previously.

Can you provide a few more details including the option settings and how and when the thread is expiring/reappearing?

 

[System0]

Love the new option of automatically making certain threads featured.

When you set up threads to be featured after X amount of views, when will they be shown. Will they be shown instantly, or is there a cron job every night?

Additionally, wha phrase do I need to change for Featured Threads. With this new feature, I think "Popular Threads" would be more appropriate

 

[Paul B]

It's an hourly cron which runs at 25 minutes past the hour.

You can increase the frequency of that by manually editing the cron.

Which instance of the phrase do you want to change?

 

[System0]

Thanks for clarifying.

The link in the nav states "Featured Threads". It's not a big deal to be honest. I can keep it as featured as some threads will be made featured manually. Though for future reference, it could be good to change that to something like "Recommended Threads" or "Popular Threads".

 

[Paul B]

Edit the phrase: cta_ft_featured_threads

 

[thumped]

So I enabled automatic featuring, I set the minimum views and replies options to a fairly high threshold, and ended up with hundreds of featured threads going as far back as 1999. Any chance of an "only automatically feature threads if they are less than X days old" option?

 

[Paul B]

I did post on the thread several times during development, asking if there were any other criteria people were interested in having.

 

[thumped]

oops

 

[Paul B]

I have added thread date and last post date to the list.

 

[thumped]

i love you man

 

[System0]

Great suggestion @thumped. It is not something that causes me any problems just now, but in time, it would be frustrating to see irrelevant threads listed as featured