Forum Activity for @jimmy

jimmyk
@jimmy
04/09/14 02:46:31PM
514 posts

Forum


Suggestions

SteveX:Brian said "Are there specific features missing from JR's forum that make it unusable for you? "If you could accurately describe the features from IPB which you think to be essential and which would improve jrForum - I'd be very interested in that too.

I wouldn't use the word unusable. It appears that the JR forum is a fully functional forum.

I really have to setup a JR instance or site and compare the two. I don't really think there's a ton of stuff to add... but I can't say that for sure because I don't have a JR site setup to make a comparison.

One of the things I use the most are usergroups on my site. I guess those could be comparable to JRs quotas. But let's say I have a sponsor quota on my JR and that same person was a specific forum mod. Would I be able to give him specific mod right to a specific forum on my JR site?

Some of the things I use a lot. Maybe some of the features already exist. I just typed up the list of features I could think of.

1. Re-direct forums.
2. Sub-forums.
3. Categories which include forums, but aren't postable.
4. User warnings and punishments based on those warning.
5. Moderators of specific forums.
6. Usergroups. I have a couple of usergroups which have different access to the forums.
7. RSS feeds which populate a forum with threads. I have an RSS feed from a news site which creates a new thread in a specific forum for each new article.
8. Bad words filters, which can replace a word with another word or prohibit a certain word.
9. Flag as spammer. When a member gets flagged they are restricted from posting AND OR all their post / threads are deleted. Maybe some sort of control if the person is posting in the main site forum or a profile forum. If a user gets out of control on a JR site and starts posting in multiple profile forums there should be some kind of control to limit / delete the persons post on the site level and the profile level.
10. Option to be anonymous on the forum when logged in.
11. Promotions based on how many posts they make. Not sure this would work with the quota system, but many members of a forum like experience levels. Newb, New Member, Members, Vet, etc. Maybe another rank outside of the quotas.
12. Restriction whether they can post HTML code or not. Some users are trusted with posting HTML and some are not. The option is there in IPB.
13. Tagging for each thread they start.
14. Option to delete or hide their topic / posts and the ability for the admin to allow or dis-allow that option based on the usergroup, not the user.
15. Option to close the topic and the ability for the admin to allow or dis-allow that option based on the usergroup, not the user.
16. Ability to create a poll inside a topic.
17. Ability to post playable media content (youtube videos, etc) not just the link.
18. Post flood control. Can only make a post every X number of seconds.
19. Ability for admin to mass move topics, mass delete topics, etc.
20. Signatures in each forum post with the option to add links, text, and banners at a specific size I set in the admin.
21. Ability to use the shared links for every post. For each post on my forum I can click a button to tweet that post if I want.
22. A link in each post when clicked links directly to that post. So, if I put a post online for this post I'm typing now it would be jamroom dot net/forum/suggestions/9763/forum(post number) and that link would take me directly to that post.
23. Ability to add an icon before each forum or category.
24. In the main forum view, total topics (JR already has), total posts, total views, etc.
25. Ability to archive threads.
26. Ability to export RSS feed for every forum.
27. Ability to link to a topic even if the name has changed. I use this a lot. Often times my site is indexed by a search engine and the link is in the search engine. Than the user changes the title of the post, but the old link still works along with the new link.
updated by @jimmy: 04/09/14 02:48:17PM
jimmyk
@jimmy
04/09/14 01:15:46PM
514 posts

Forum


Suggestions

Yea, I thought about working on the jrForum module, but there is a lot of "catching up" I need to do with the new JR and JR itself. It would take me time to get up to speed and I'm the type of person when I get into coding, everything has to be perfect - translation: it takes me a million years to finish anything because I go... "Oooo I could totally add this feature." which than pushed the timeline back another week. :)
updated by @jimmy: 04/09/14 01:16:24PM
jimmyk
@jimmy
04/09/14 11:24:27AM
514 posts

Forum


Suggestions

SteveX:Jamroom 5 has a Followers and Profiles emphasis, not a forum emphasis.

I guess that might be the biggest issue that I have about starting the community. In my experience, it's very hard to get people to build a profile. All their energy is focused on building their facebook profile and they don't want to be bothered with building another profile on another low ranked website... low ranked because it's just starting out. Getting people to content their profile is hard for any site which is based on profiles and pulling site content from those profiles. A forum, on the other hand, requires very little to start getting the new member involved.

IMHO, with the talent that is reading this post, a full featured forum could probably be easily created for Jamroom and marketed as one of the best forums online... even better than IPB. It could probably bring a lot of exposure for the JR software suite if you had a whole batch of new users using the JR forum and once their forum was developed moving into more of a profile based website.

SteveX:Final thought is that you need to base your decision on
1. your available resources (skill, time and/or money),
2. whether or not you can bring your existing communities to the new site (that doesn't involve features or cms's, it's purely down to your skill in moving your users from one of your sites to another and what you say to them to achieve that),
3. Which has the closest feature set to what you require as a forum? (JR or IPB)?
4. Your personal preference - which one is more interesting to you? (JR or IPB?)

1. I can develop on either piece of software. I got plenty of time. Money... well I'm not going to be taking out a full page ad in the NY Times advertising my website.
2. I can bring my existing forum members to my new website if that site was a forum. If it was setup as a profile based website, I would get some lookers but probably wouldn't get too many members building profiles. The target audience is completely different.
4. Both are quality scripts. IPB is written very well and has a lot of features. But their template system is a wreck. There aren't even template files which I can modify outside the admin interface. Basically, I have to copy code out of the admin interface, create a template file structure matching what is in the admin area, build my site, and then copy the code back into the admin area replacing what is there for each template file. This is one of the reasons why there aren't a ton of templates / themes for IPB... and the ones that are out there look a lot like the stock theme which is provided with the software. IPB is the first script I've run across that doesn't have a set of template files which I could modify, not including the scripts out there where the PHP and HTML are mixed. As far as the more interesting script... JR. You can really do anything with JR... that's interesting.

I really don't want to bridge. It would require me to theme two scripts. Members who see one theme for the forum and one theme for the main site. IPB has a content module which I can build anything I want to build with the module. Visit invision power dot com they built the main site with the content module. You can pull all kinds of content from the forum into the content module.

michael:I agree, it would be good to be able to add jamroom to existing community forum systems as there are a lot of communities that already focus around a forum.

I've started a bunch of websites in my lifetime and none of them have had any measure of success. The only site which was somewhat successful was a video sharing style website I made a few years ago. I added most of the video content to the website. It was ranked ok... not super successful by any means. But no one added content or even took the time to develop their profiles. Plenty of comments about the videos... comments weren't a problem.

It wasn't until I started a forum and actually spent time building the forum did I have a successful website. My forum is currently ranked around 12K on alexa. It's not hard to get people to talk. I'm at the point with my forum where I could offer more and I wish I had the features of JR to take that site to the next level.

In my opinion forums are huge. I bet if JR had a full featured forum to compete with all the other big forums you would have people setting up forums using the JR forum. Once their site started taking off... they could start using the full power of JR getting those members to build profiles.

I would love to start adding videos to my existing forum website. But IPB isn't built in a way to make it easy to do that without making a new thread for each video I wanted to add. Let's say I was using the "new JR super forum". Well, I could start using the features of JR to build a video section with all the rankings and features of JR. That would be another reason for my forum members to stay online and maybe add a video or two to the video section.

At this point on my forum, it would also be great to have the profile features of JR to be able to break some of the sub-communities off the main forum and onto their own forum inside my website. I could link to their profile forum for the main forum and re-direct the discussion to that forum for their specific topics. At the same time I could basically give them all the features of a full featured forums right from their profile. Once that happened, they would see all the other features available and start using and paying for those extra features.

brian:This is unlikely to happen - forums like IPB are designed to have every bell and whistle imaginable, and JR's focus is a bit of the opposite - make it as simple and easy to use as possible.

I don't think that every bell and whistle would be necessary in a full featured forum. A forum is a forum. I don't have a JR site setup right now to compare the differences between IPB and JR, but I can't imaging that you would have to add 100 new features to match IPB. I'll tell you though, if you could integrate the features of JR into a forum, you'd be the only one out there and every person wanting to set up a forum would look long and hard at using JR before IPB or VB. That's a very large group of users.

Just take this one example: I'm looking at Micheal's profile on this site right now. Two blog posts, both from 2013. Two Documentation entries and one youtube video. Yet he has 694 forum posts. What is he using the most on this website? I realize he is part of the JR team and the JR site might not be the site for max use of a profile. But I'm just using the example as a simple example. He is creating all his content in the forum and not his profile. There are a ton of people out there who will content the crap out of a forum and put everything else on Facebook. Once a forum bring a site a lot of content and helps rank the site better, than moving to profiles and users posting more than forum posts is a natural progression because they've already invested their time posting all the comments in the forums and thus they've invested enough time into the website to start using more than a forum.
jimmyk
@jimmy
04/08/14 11:01:40AM
514 posts

Login on JR website


Using Jamroom

Yep, as soon as I added the https everything returned back to normal. Thanks!
jimmyk
@jimmy
04/08/14 10:01:32AM
514 posts

Login on JR website


Using Jamroom

I don't know if this is an issue or not, maybe I need to clear my cookies or something.

I use to be able to come to this site and I would be logged in. Now when I come to this site I'm not logged in and when I click the login link at the top of the site, it just auto logs me in... doesn't send me to a login page where I can enter my info. I'm a standard site login, not a connected login.

Just an FYI. Maybe something has changed I just thought it was weird that it wouldn't send me to a login page but rather is would just log me in when I clicked the login link at the top of the site.

updated by @jimmy: 05/10/14 09:07:24PM
jimmyk
@jimmy
04/08/14 09:56:33AM
514 posts

Forum


Suggestions

I have a new site idea I want to start and I'm having a hard time deciding what software to go with. I currently run a forum using IPB, but I would love to use JR instead because of all the features.

Here is my problem. I really need to start the new site out as a forum. I have no users and I need to get people onto the site and talking. The quickest way I can see to do that would be a forum. Once there are people talking on the forum, having the features of JR would move the site to the next level where users focused on there profiles. In my experiences it's very hard to get users to setup a profile, but it's not hard to get them interacting on a forum: making post and making friends. Once they feel comfortable with the forum and have used the site they would be more inclined to populate their profile with information.

I have the same problem with IPB. Users don't want to content their profiles on my existing forum. Only the users who've posted many posts and started to get involved with the website started using their profiles.

I guess I'm asking for more of a feature set to the existing forum for JR. I don't have a list of features in front of me right now, but creating a full featured forum for Jamroom would help me in going with JR to start vs. setting up another IP Board website.

I like using IPB but there template system is horrible. I would much rather be using JR and be able to design the site with ease and tap into all the features JR provides. IPB is slated to release their new community suite in Q2. They're moving into a CMS style system where you don't even need to use the forum to build an IPS website.

I'm just having a hard time figuring out what to do. I'm a big JR supporter... I love the quality of the programming, updates, feature set, but on the same hand I need something I can setup right away and add threads to get people talking. Basically I need the feature set of IP Board forum in JR's forum.

I do realize that there are some bridges available to link to existing forum software and I could start out the site using my profile forum as the main page of the site. I really don't want to have a bridged forum.

It's my opinion that forums really build a community. I know when I come to this site one of the first things I hit is the forum. I'm sure new users who check out JR end up looking around the forum. Throwing some time into adding features to the forum would help me out more than you could imagine.

Thoughts?
updated by @jimmy: 05/10/14 05:09:11PM
jimmyk
@jimmy
11/26/13 07:27:21PM
514 posts

Payment Question


Using Jamroom

Excellent. I'll take a look at that. I finally got a server and will be able to finally install JR.

Thanks again!
jimmyk
@jimmy
11/26/13 04:18:06AM
514 posts

Payment Question


Using Jamroom

michael:
Its the service module you want. Make a site like fiverr.com

* someone buys a service,
* you do the service,
* deliver the service
* mark that order as closed.

Here's a screenshot. We're going to put that up on jamroom.net too for users to offer JR related services sometime in the near future.

Yea, that it! Sell the service. The only thing I believe is missing is the ability to enter custom fields which must be filled as a condition before the order is placed.

For my example... the person has to fill out what they want in the html page. So, before they pay, they would be prompted to enter what they want. And I should be able to determine conditions of that information. Fillin a checkbox, enter text input, etc.
jimmyk
@jimmy
11/26/13 02:11:30AM
514 posts

Payment Question


Using Jamroom

customer order > customer pay > create finished product > deliver > available to member on site as purchased product
jimmyk
@jimmy
11/26/13 02:09:33AM
514 posts

Payment Question


Using Jamroom

Yea, but the service would have to have a return result after the purchase. I wouldn't be a closed ended service. They would order and pay and the delivery would be delivered after I finished the project.

I hope I'm explaining this correctly.
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