Idle Chatter | A General Discussion Community

[Gemma]

And we've added two new addons - Audio Library



and @Bob excellent Review Management System (finally)

 

[Mr Lucky]

Audio library looks good, but how do you get potential around copyright issues? If you are in the UK I found the MCPS LOML works well.

 

[Gemma]

Audio library looks good, but how do you get potential around copyright issues? If you are in the UK I found the MCPS LOML works well.

The audio content is just embedded code from Spotify/iTunes/YouTube, much the same as bbcode in posts. We don't host any files so I'm not sure we'll have any copyright issues but it's something I will look into more.

 

[Lee]

Amazing as always Gemma. You have a unique look on things that is just amazing, great job. I like the subtle changes you make, like with the profile comments.

 

[JMPRockFm]

Fantastic work you have done Gemma. Definitely unique forums, and I'm sure your member's love every single update and greatly appreciate of it.
I love reading the update's you've made, keep up the good work.

 

[Gemma]

Amazing as always Gemma. You have a unique look on things that is just amazing, great job. I like the subtle changes you make, like with the profile comments.

Thanks Lee, I'm definitely more creatively than technically minded. The little changes are sometimes the best, imo

Fantastic work you have done Gemma. Definitely unique forums, and I'm sure your member's love every single update and greatly appreciate of it.
I love reading the update's you've made, keep up the good work.

Thank you! Some updates can be a little hit and miss but I believe that's all part of being a forum owner. Also I strongly believe in trying to be unique...no point in having the same design, users and posts as every other forum but sadly that seems to be the way a lot of sites are heading nowadays.

 

[Lee]

Do you use flex box or css grid for your layouts, or a combination?

 

[Gemma]

Do you use flex box or css grid for your layouts, or a combination?

Mostly css grid. When I did the TV, movie, music and game thread starter layouts it was all done using the css grid model.

I've never really used flex box before and I've never really had the time to look at that method (I'd need a while for if to sink in ).

 

[Gemma]

A wee batch of updates today as I sit at my computer worrying whether my house is going to float away with all this rain (thanks Storm Babet )

Finished off some widgets and looked back to how they looked before I customized them

Latest Threads/Posts


This is actually using DBTech Info Panels, the widgets automatically update to show new entries without having to refresh the page.

I've also used the same customization for most of my other post/threads widgets - hottest posts, trending posts, golden threads and a tabbed widget. Hovering over the asterisk icon displays a tooltip with the number of posts you've made in a thread. The different colours on the left border indicate the usergroup of thread starter belongs to. Prefixes have tooltips as an indicator.



Also a bit of customization to the forum stats widget



And we've a couple of user widgets, one on the forum index which shows some user stats, profile status update box and also information relating to referrals, there are alsolinks to conversations, user accounts, alerts, preferences and privacy.


I've also moved a lot of the information out of the header on member profiles and made a sidebar widget with the stats and buttons

Elsewhere, alerts and conversation alerts now show different colours (as do admin/moderator alerts)



I've made small changes to the forum index and our recipes page and improved the css code



And finally, the Audio Library addon (which I mentioned in the last post) is now available to all my members after some testing with just a selected few usergroups. Excellent addon which I'm sure will be very popular on my site.



Thanks for looking, if my house hasn't floated away I'll be back with more updates in the near future although I'm winding things down as XF 2.3 and 3.0 approach.

 

[Jay™]

Looking good as always @Gemma

 

[btmgreg]

Looks great. How does one get an invite?

 

[Gemma]

Looks great. How does one get an invite?

Sent you a link

 

[Gemma]

Some more small updates, improvements to layouts and member requests if you like....

Some minor layout changes to the "trending content" thread list, basically to make it look neater than the default design - to be honest, I'm not sure if I'll keep this addon as it isn't supported and I'm not even sure if it calculates properly!



Also some slight changes to the thread comments layout, again to make things "neater"



I've also tidied up the AI bot threads/posts



Keeping in line with other areas of the site I've added tooltips for media items that have descriptions



As requested by one of my members, I've added a bookmark option to my recipes section so recipes can quickly be bookmarked - I also updated the featured recipe widget with tooltip descriptions that I'd somehow missed before



And finally, tidied up a couple of widgets on the forum index page...

 

[Gemma]

So once you've updated one layout, you might as well update them all. Right?

Changes applied to the recipe section have now been applied to all other addons by @Bob (except Classifieds) along with a few other little tweaks.

 

[80sDude]

So once you've updated one layout, you might as well update them all. Right?

Changes applied to the recipe section have now been applied to all other addons by @Bob (except Classifieds) along with a few other little tweaks.

As usual it looks great! I wish I had the patience, skills and imagination to do edits like that.

 

[VBX Co]

@Gemma site looks great - where do you find the time?

 

[Gemma]

As usual it looks great! I wish I had the patience, skills and imagination to do edits like that.

@Gemma site looks great - where do you find the time?

Thank you! I think I spend less time online now than ever but most of what I do is really basic stuff and made easier by the core software, an excellent style and style framework and some well-coded addons.

The real test of skills and patience will come when it's time to upgrade to XF 2.3 or 3

 

[80sDude]

Thank you! I think I spend less time online now than ever but most of what I do is really basic stuff and made easier by the core software, an excellent style and style framework and some well-coded addons.

The real test of skills and patience will come when it's time to upgrade to XF 2.3 or 3

Im sure you’ll be fine.

 

[Wildcat Media]

Longtime listener; first time caller.

Some minor layout changes to the "trending content" thread list, basically to make it look neater than the default design - to be honest, I'm not sure if I'll keep this addon as it isn't supported and I'm not even sure if it calculates properly!

I wonder if that's the same Trending add-on I'm using (as it's the only one I know of and yes, it is mostly unsupported). What I don't like is that too few of the parameters are adjustable. Different forums have different activity levels, so "trending" on one site could be an annoyance on another. It also doesn't limit the number of trending threads per forum--if one forum is very busy compared to others, it dominates the list. (One workaround was to create Trending widgets for a handful of forum areas, but that eats up the entire sidebar.)

I keep hoping for XF to add it to the "What's new" tabs, or for someone to create a better Trending add-on.

 

[Gemma]

Im sure you’ll be fine.

I think it will need to be a complete rebuild, keeping some parts of my current layout then adapting whichever style I use (if any, maybe in XF3 the default style will be suffice). It will keep me busy if nothing else!

I wonder if that's the same Trending add-on I'm using (as it's the only one I know of and yes, it is mostly unsupported).

One by Themehouse, I thought Xon had one too but I must have been mistaking. Sadly, the Themehouse one is lacking. Like many of their addons the idea was excellent but always felt unfinished to me then they buggered off. I've reverted the algorithm setting back to "Replies per minute" to see if it gives a truer reflection of what is currently trending.

Some sort of trending content addon/core fuction would be welcome.