Huge List of New Features & Improvements!

KiD[ReD] · #1 (**permalink**) 05-06-2008, 10:35 PM

PokerForums.org has been upgraded with a plethora or new features and improvements. While not all of the following have been enabled, most of them have and should go a long way to improving the forum.

Inline Spam Management and Prevention Tools

Deleting spam and banning spammers has always been an arduous task for moderators and administers. While it only takes about 30-40 seconds to ban a spammer and delete the thread, when staff wake up to a dozen spammed threads, it can quickly become tiresome.

Fortunately, this is now much faster and simpler:

For staff, threads and posts can be selected in the usual inline moderation fashion, and then the new 'Delete Threads/Posts as Spam' command can be selected which will load the spam management interface. This contains options on a single page for removing the spam posts and threads, banning the spammers and finding other spam they may have posted.

As the screenshot below illustrates, staff can now delete multiple spammers and delete multiple threads in the same area. It will also only ban the member who created the spammed thread, so if legitiate members replied to the thread, they won't be banned.

Staff can now delete spammed threads and ban the members in a fraction of the time it took previously.

Thread Tagging

Note: I have currently disabled this feature as I do not think it would be used.

A new way to facilitate searching and grouping of threads, it is now possible for users to add tags to threads they post or read.

Tags can be added when creating a new thread, or to an existing thread by any user (with appropriate permissions).

Any users who then click on these tags will not only find all thread that have the same tag as the one clicked, but will also contribute to the building of a search tag cloud, which gives users a quick guide as to what has been searched for recently and most frequently.

Thread Prefixes

You may have seen this feature on other forums: threads can now have administrator-defined prefixes to their titles.

Thread prefixes are divided into groups by the administrator (me!), allowing different prefixes to be available in different forums.

I have added Thread Prefixes to two forums: Ring Hand Analysis and SNG & MTT Hand Analysis. For example, in Ring Hand Analysis, you can now choose 25NL or 100NL as thread prefixes.

What's great about this, aside from making browsing threads easier, is that you can also search (or set the display options) with these prefixes.
Therefore, if you want to look at hand analysis threads from only PLO25, you can do so without having to weed through unrelated threads!

Reciprocal Friendships Between Users

As part of our new social networking system, users can now request that people on their buddy list confirm their friendship, after which time a person's list of confirmed friends will be viewable to other users.

Public Messaging

Members can now communicate publicly via their profile pages with our new public messaging system. It works similar to The Wall on Facebook:

User Picture Galleries

Members can now create albums and upload pictures to their account! No more need for Flickr or 3rd-party image hosts:

The ability to view these albums and pictures can be limited by the user to just board staff and people on their buddy list if they want privacy.

I've created a sample album here as an example. Please don't mock my lame screenshots - they are really old and embarrassing...

You can easily organize your photos by creating folders and moving them back and forth. And, of course, all the photos you upload are easily added into posts with a simple BBCODE URL that is located at the bottom of each photo.

Members can also comment on your photos!

User-Created Social Groups

To further social cohesion between users and to encourage people to make friends, members can now create their own social/interest groups.

These groups are enhanced by having their own public messaging system, and the ability to add pictures to the group from user albums.

I created a sample user group here.

New Member Profile Page

The member profile page has been completely redesigned from the ground up.

The new page presents information in a far cleaner and more logical manner, while dividing up information into manageable chunks using a tabbed interface.

Individual profile field categories can be displayed alone in blocks in the right column, in addition to appearing by default in the 'About Me' tab.

Member Customization of Profile Page

Members can now use the profile page customization tool, which allows the altering of fonts, colors, background and borders etc. of the profile page in order to create a more personalized look.

Inline Editing of Profile Field Values

Note: There is a currently a bug with this feature that should be fixed by tomorrow.

The 'About Me' tab of each member's profile page has edit controls, allowing them to quickly change values without leaving their profile page.

Attachment Viewing Lightbox

Clicking on an attached image will now open a lightbox rather than open a new window, with the image scaled to fit the browser viewport. A click on the image in the lightbox will open it in a new window as before.

Post Edit History

It is now possible to log all edits to posts and then review the changes at a later date.

Inline Moderation Enhanced Authentication

Note: This has been disabled due to whining from the moderators

When performing inline moderation actions, board staff will now be required to re-authenticate themselves if they have not done so in their browsing session.

This prevents the possibility of unauthorized parties acting as a moderator on a public computer where a board staff member has accidentally ticked the 'remember me' box.

Navbar Notices

Custom notifications will now appear underneath the navbar when users fulfill specified criteria.

For example, there is now a message displayed to members who have registered but never posted, encouraging them to post!

New Human Verification Systems

I had a custom plugin that did this previously, but it's always better to have built-in features when possible, and eliminate 3rd-party plugins.

Basically, this new feature lets the administrator (me) choose what type of spam-protection to use against bots that automatically try to register and post on the site.

User Change History

In order to track changes made to users' profiles by staff, a change log is now kept for various user profile fields including username, usergroup etc.

Social Bookmarking of Threads

Note: I have disabled this feature as I don't think that anyone would use it, and to be honest, I don't think that many threads would be accepted on the Social Bookmark sites.

I hope you enjoy all the new features and improvements!