Idle Chatter | A General Discussion Community

[Wildcat Media]

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.

Many of the addons they abandoned ended up being maintained by others, but the few holdouts I've had to find alternatives for. And there were so many mixed signals in other communcations that I eventually abandoned a theme I had put months into customizing. I wasn't about to expend more effort and suddenly have a theme pulled out from under me, like the addons.

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

Yes! I thought I had started a suggestion, or voted on one, but can't find one anywhere.

@Xon has a trending content tag addon, but since most members don't use tags, that won't work for us.

 

[Gemma]

@Xon has a trending content tag addon, but since most members don't use tags, that won't work for us.

I think it was this one I was getting mixed up with, reading some posts it appeared to be working with XF2.x but it has been pulled from the srtore now for some reason.

 

[Wildcat Media]

I think it was this one I was getting mixed up with, reading some posts it appeared to be working with XF2.x but it has been pulled from the srtore now for some reason.

I didn't think to ask if that one worked with XF2. But for Stewart's add-ons, you have to contact him directly as he vets who the add-on is sold to. His site has a lot of customizations, BTW--very interesting to see how it is designed.

 

[80sDude]

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!

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.

That sounds like a pain in the ass but you seem to enjoy working on your forum so I'm sure you'll get it done quickly.

 

[Gemma]

Finishing off my site refresh as we head towards 2024 and think about XF2.3 and beyond....

I've temporarily gone back to using the Feeds addon by Audentio/Themehouse as it was preferred by my members as a way of easily finding content. Whether we can continue using it once XF2.3 is released remains to be seen as it will need some level of support. But it is back for the time being.



I've also given the Trending addon a small polish and I've had a play around with the settings for "better" results (again it's future is up in the air)



Now the fun stuff

Posts have been given a simplied, less cluttered look...



Member cards have been tweaked...



So has the member profile header...(might have posted that last time, can't remember now )



The Badges addon has been given a new look on both the members page and the help page



And I've tweaked the thread list layout (again) for the Movie, TV, Video Game and Music Thread Starter addons...



As always, thanks for looking

 

[CedricV]

Amazing work as always Gemma. How much time do you averagely work on such updates?

 

[Gemma]

Amazing work as always Gemma. How much time do you averagely work on such updates?

Nowadays maybe just a couple of hours as the foundations are already there, things like the member cards and message post bits were only about half an hour at most. My other admin (finally) got his hands dirty with some of the above tweaks so we maybe spent two evenings at most working on stuff.

Bigger updates like the initial member profile layout or thread lists took much longer though.

Usually in the winter months when work is quiet and I have more free time I often get bored and tear layouts down just to try and improve them...those can be time consuming updates!

 

[Solari]

Outstanding work! If you don't mind, how did you build up the amount of traffic you have today? It seems amazingly busy, esp. for a non-niche site.

Thanks and props,
Ray

 

[Gemma]

If you don't mind, how did you build up the amount of traffic you have today? It seems amazingly busy, esp. for a non-niche site.

You are having a laugh, aren't you? We average between 10 and 15 members participating per day (37 messages today)...if that's amazingly busy we're all doomed.

We're a small community where membership is invitation-only nowadays so we generally know whose invited will want to participate and be interested in the site. No real method or need to generate traffic other than adding content and features that our members want, they do the rest.

 

[Solari]

You are having a laugh, aren't you? We average between 10 and 15 members participating per day (37 messages today)...if that's amazingly busy we're all doomed.

Aahhh, understood. I assumed from your forum's front page it was a busy one, my mistake. At least it looks busy for us lookie-loos which is a good thing ; )

I do appreciate you sharing your updates, always something new to learn from fellow XFers here.

Ray

 

[Gemma]

So, we did a thing or two....or three

Some changes to the forum list/thread list and various widgets to show the latest activity (up to 5 avatars)



Very pleased with how this has turned out after quite a bit of work to implement it throughout the site (due to existing template edits). Thanks @JustinHawk for providing the addon

We now have a new messenger and chat system in place, still going through all the settings and setting up for different usergroups but it is now live



Got some member profile stuff that I need to finish off too but I'll post that at as later date though I did improve the layout and CSS for member stories a little



As always, thanks for looking.

 

[Solari]

Very pleased with how this has turned out after quite a bit of work to implement it throughout the site (due to existing template edits). Thanks @JustinHawk for providing the addon

Looks great! This reminds me of Discourse. How were you able to do this??

Thanks and props,
Ray

 

[CedricV]

We now have a new messenger and chat system in place, still going through all the settings and setting up for different usergroups but it is now live

View attachment 293990 View attachment 293989 View attachment 293993



As always, thanks for looking.

Awesome, is that 021's Real-Time Chat add on?

 

[Gemma]

Looks great! This reminds me of Discourse. How were you able to do this??

Some super talented people make addons that I can then adapt to my own needs and vision for my site This particular addon was by @JustinHawk

Awesome, is that 021's Real-Time Chat add on?

Yes, it is. It is an excellent piece of kit. Also added his Messenger addon.

 

[CedricV]

Some super talented people make addons that I can then adapt to my own needs and vision for my site This particular addon was by @JustinHawk


Yes, it is. It is an excellent piece of kit. Also added his Messenger addon.

I've been thinking about it, but it contains a lot of js and I believe 021 said it won't be updated for 2.3. So I'm a little hesitant to purchase it seeing the price. Cool add on though.

 

[Gemma]

I've been thinking about it, but it contains a lot of js and I believe 021 said it won't be updated for 2.3. So I'm a little hesitant to purchase it seeing the price. Cool add on though.

Yeah, it is a gamble. Someone might make an addon that works around the JS changes coming in 2.3 (a lot of people might not upgrade or face losing some key addons otherwise). Personally, I want to upgrade but it may not be possible due to the amount of work and/or potential lose of site functionality.

We'll see what happens.

 

[Gemma]

Off work ill just now so tweaked some bits and pieces of Idle Chatter to ease my boredom....

Firstly, I add an Advanced Statistics addon. I saw it on another site and liked the idea...that's about it really, except I tweaked it a little.



Made some little changes to my thread info section...



It is now a wee bar below the thread title, tags etc and tells you the date, thread starter, last poster, last post date, number of replies, views and first post likes....and who has participated in the thread. Still a work in progress.

I'm encouraging members to use bookmarks and bookmarking links to various widgets and the ability to bookmark from the thread list...



As well as adding bookmarking to my feeds lists, you can now also see who has replied to a thread by clicking on the reply count



I've added some custom post fields to my movie threads section, this is another work in progress but it allows members to say where they have seen a movie or not, if it is on their watchlist, when they watched it, rating and whether it is a favourite or not. I might actually just see about funding this and getting it implemented in the addon



Added some extra eye candy to the custom fields in my recipe section



And finally, another work in progress....a wee timewaster for my members as the winter months approach



And thanks to all my members for their continued support and activity we are about 6 posts short of hitting 30K - we're still minnows but we are happy minnows

 

[oO5 Dynasty]

Oops, small update

Something requested by some of my members was the ability to remove/hide certain widgets. This has now been implemented on the forum index

View attachment 281782 View attachment 281783

This is amazing, I would like to utilize this function. Love giving the user the ability to customize the look and feel of the site.

 

[Gemma]

This is amazing, I would like to utilize this function. Love giving the user the ability to customize the look and feel of the site.

I'll use "new posts" widget as an example

Create a new custom user field

1. Give the field ID a name and remember it, you need it later - ie removeNewPosts
2. Give it an appropriate title and description -
Title: Remove New Posts Widget
Description: Do you want to remove this widget from the index page?
3. Display Location: Preferences
4. Field Type: Check Boxes
5. Options for User Fields
Value: 1
Text: Check to remove the New Posts forum widget
6. General Options - check User Editable

Create or go to your existing widget

1. In the Display Condition text box add the conditional - !$xf.visitor.Profile.custom_fields.removeNewPosts - as you can see the removeNewPosts part is the corresponding fieldID from step 1 above - this must be exact.



Repeat the process for any widgets you want to give your users the option to remove.

On the User Preferences page members will see a list of options to remove the widgets based on the custom user fields you created

 

[oO5 Dynasty]

I'll use "new posts" widget as an example

Create a new custom user field

1. Give the field ID a name and remember it, you need it later - ie removeNewPosts
2. Give it an appropriate title and description -
Title: Remove New Posts Widget
Description: Do you want to remove this widget from the index page?
3. Display Location: Preferences
4. Field Type: Check Boxes
5. Options for User Fields
Value: 1
Text: Check to remove the New Posts forum widget
6. General Options - check User Editable

Create or go to your existing widget

1. In the Display Condition text box add the conditional - !$xf.visitor.Profile.custom_fields.removeNewPosts - as you can see the removeNewPosts part is the corresponding fieldID from step 1 above - this must be exact.

View attachment 295234

Repeat the process for any widgets you want to give your users the option to remove.

On the User Preferences page members will see a list of options to remove the widgets based on the custom user fields you created

View attachment 295235

wow thank you for sharing! You are amazing