Future enhancements - what are your "Lust Factors"

registered · Site Admin Joined: Jun 04, 2004 Posts: 6437

Looks sort of like the Tutoriaux module I use. Can documents be submitted by users, or only by admin? Does it support multiple languages? Any thoughts / direction on future enhancements?

Thanks...

Posted: Sat Oct 25, 2008 10:01 pm

Also, have you compared Nuke Docs to Content Plus, which has pagination (not sure about table of contents, though)?

Site Admin/Owner Joined: Aug 27, 2002 Posts: 17088

Quote:

MS Analysis

Probably not as long as I am alive Wink

. It was and is a resource hog and I've had to shut down more than one site because of the server hangs.

Posted: Sun Oct 26, 2008 7:09 am

Maybe I haven't seen that kind of volume, but I haven't had problems with it. The benefits are pretty strong. Maybe we can address the resource problems and keep you alive at the same time?

Posted: Mon Oct 27, 2008 8:35 am

i think if it set to update dynamically after every page visit it probably is a resource hog, but if set to update via cron job it runs like 100 times better... Although I've never had it up and running on a public site.. I don't remember when development stopped on ms-analysis but it probably could use some more optimization and code improvements by now..

kguske wrote:

Looks sort of like the Tutoriaux module I use. Can documents be submitted by users, or only by admin? Does it support multiple languages? Any thoughts / direction on future enhancements?

Thanks...

Well it's not my module so I cant speak to direction on future enhancements although nukecoder has said he plans to continue work on the module. At this time it doesn't support multiple languages, but there are very few links in the module so wouldn't be too hard to convert to any desired language or to use lang definitions. Doc's can only be submitted by admins, but thats just fine with me... Smile

Regular Joined: Mar 14, 2005 Posts: 91

I am certainly open to suggestions for this module, but my short term plans are:
1. Fix a couple of bugs that have been reported in my forums and add language definitions
2. Add geshi for syntax highlighting (thanks guardian)
3. Profit??

Ok, #3 is a joke but any other ideas are welcome

To add to the wishlist:
Separate the business from the presentation. Smarty would be really nice Smile

Also, it would be sweet to have a class handle links. This way, we could get rid of the need for all those replace routines for ShortLinks and not have to buffer the whole page in memory. The class would handle setting the link up and you just hand it an array to build the link with.

$html->link(array('module' => 'Downloads', 'op' => 'getit', 'id' => 12));

could build the link depending on the settings.

Normal: modules.php?name=Downloads&op=getit&id=12
or
ShortLinks Enabled: downloads-getit-12.html

Posted: Tue Oct 28, 2008 8:33 am

Forgot to mention, one of my highest anticipated features for Nuke...

Dynamically generated CSS
A php class to handle this will be just about perfect, so before or after the main css content have been populated, we could add some more css code depending on the module/block/addon being loaded.

Thoughts???

Posted: Tue Oct 28, 2008 8:38 am

jestrella wrote:

Dynamically generated CSS
A php class to handle this will be just about perfect, so before or after the main css content have been populated, we could add some more css code depending on the module/block/addon being loaded.

I've thought about that, but am not sure of the benefits of loading an external file. In which scenarios would that be useful?

Posted: Tue Oct 28, 2008 8:49 am

jestrella wrote:

Forgot to mention, one of my highest anticipated features for Nuke...

Dynamically generated CSS
A php class to handle this will be just about perfect, so before or after the main css content have been populated, we could add some more css code depending on the module/block/addon being loaded.

Thoughts???

We have built in the ability to override CSS on a per module basis already in header.php

Code:




if (defined('RN_MODULE_CSS')) {


      $modCssFile = 'themes/' . $ThemeSel . '/style/' . RN_MODULE_CSS;


      if (file_exists($modCssFile)) {


         echo '<link rel="StyleSheet" href="', $modCssFile, '" type="text/css" />', "\n";


      }

I'm not sure myself whether overriding CSS at the block level would be beneficial. Blocks tend to be designed visually to blend in with a particular theme though it would be relatively easy to tweak one of the CSS driven themes to 'randomise' block colors or even use a specific color scheme for a given day or time of year etc.
It would certainly be worth looking at again if we had some method of assigning each individual block an ID, that way we can attribute a specific CSS container id based on each blocks id which would be much more flexible - also for hiding/displaying specific blocks on different criteria.

Posted: Tue Oct 28, 2008 1:42 pm

Guardian2003 wrote:

We have built in the ability to override CSS on a per module basis already in header.php

I noticed this... Is there any documentation explain the use of this? or a module that uses it as an example?

and is it just me or does the code in the new header.php look broken in anyone else's editor? (line 42:65)

will the general public have access at some point to some of the notes written in code, i.e. (RN0000391) or is that just for the RN team?

Posted: Tue Oct 28, 2008 2:28 pm

In your module index page if you add

Code:




define ('RN_MODULE_CSS','custom_style.css');

the code in header will then attempt to load

Code:

themes/YOURTHEME/style/custom_style.css

I'm not seeing any broken code in header.php, it could be some visual anomaly with line wrapping in your editor?

Numbers you might see in comments like the one you mentioned are internal to our bug tracking system. It is just an additional cross reference for the Development Team to enable us to more easily identify why a specific piece of code was changed.
In fact if you look hard enough, you might even see some of those numbers in the ChangeLog.

Posted: Tue Oct 28, 2008 3:29 pm

Thanks, G. Learn something new every day!

Posted: Thu Oct 30, 2008 5:53 pm

Here are some interesting ideas from a recent release of nukeEvo that we might want to consider for RN (except for the forum mods, most have been considered).

- Cache w/ Complete Admin Panel
- Theme Management allowing admin to manage site's themes
- Auto Optimize; automatically optimizes database every week

Preinstalled Modules
- NSN News
- NSN Supporters

Preinstalled Mods
- New download module based on NSN's download module
- Change the position of the admin icons/links
- Hide or show blocks per module
- Choose to have the topic icon with or without the news article
- Version Checker

Forum Mods
- 'Advanced Username Color' Integration globally across site
- 'Advanced Username Color' Groups
- 'Smilies in Topic Titles' Integration globally across the board
- Advanced Signature Divider Control
- Auto Rank
- At a Glance Options
- At a Glance Cement
- Lock Modules
- Simply Merge Threads
- Advanced BBCode Box
- Global Announcement
- Super Quick Reply
- Report Posts
- Resize Posted Images
- Spambot Killer & Antispam
- IE PNG Fix

Posted: Thu Oct 30, 2008 7:55 pm

Anyone interested in optionally replacing the RN captcha with Only registered users can see links on this board! Get registered or login!?

Posted: Thu Oct 30, 2008 8:25 pm

I think the Advanced BBCode box should be added. Maybe add it as an option as someone said earlier because I could see how someone might want simpler bbcode. This would be very simple to add and I think would be a great addition.

PS: I think a Version Checker in the admin area would be a great idea. Also maybe have it popup in the header like Sentinel does when "closed" or "Test Mode" except only for super admins or maybe God admins only? Of course you would have to let people turn off the header thing because people may not want to upgrade.

Posted: Thu Oct 30, 2008 8:38 pm

Re: Advanced BBcode: agreed.

We have a version checker in nukeFEED that uses XMLRPC, but a few sites have had problems with this. It baffles me, really, but I think for the majority of sites it works well. It shows text with a boxover popup that gives details on the new version - very nice, though I'm biased Smile

. Anyway, I don't think it should show in the header since that would be very annoying, even if only shown to site admins (though I think it SHOULD be displayed on the admin page, sort of like on the nukeFEED page).

Posted: Thu Oct 30, 2008 11:37 pm

kguske wrote:

Anyone interested in optionally replacing the RN captcha with Only registered users can see links on this board! Get registered or login!?

Probably not. Any dependence at all from links to other sites is inviting disaster.

Posted: Fri Oct 31, 2008 4:27 am

kguske wrote:

Anyone interested in optionally replacing the RN captcha with Only registered users can see links on this board! Get registered or login!?

Yes because I looked at this a while ago and it was pretty good although on rare occassions it was a tad slow as the look-up is remote.

Posted: Fri Oct 31, 2008 4:35 am

That's exactly why it has to be optional. I wouldn't want to permanently tie the site's operation to a remote server - even though it's Carnegie Mellon.

After playing with it for a while, there is another issue: size. It won't fit into a block or small space where it might be commonly used in RN. Yes, you can use a custom theme and CSS, but it's not a simple option to use a smaller size screen. It should be.

Posted: Fri Oct 31, 2008 4:38 am

Not had a chance to look at Evo's theme management yet but I suspect they are using Smarty based on the fact that AJANuke is using Smarty and AJANuke is based on Evo.

One thing I intend to look at shortly for my own needs, is some sort of debug helper to generate customised error messages instead of the stock PHP ones. I would like to incorporate both SQL and PHP error handling possibly with a pop-up type box or other mechanism so I can see errors in real-time rather than having to open a log file (although I would like to have that as an option).

Posted: Fri Oct 31, 2008 4:42 am

Makes sense.

Also, I wasn't suggesting we start adding a bunch of forum mods to the existing phpBB2 - just pointing out that these are there so we can consider the functionality for the future.

Posted: Tue Nov 04, 2008 1:45 am

Did a more thorough review of the change log on a 2007 version of Evo, and found some other interesting things:
- fixes to the included NSN Groups and Mailing List mods
- drag and drop block admin, navigation block, user block
- collapsing blocks (I have this working on one site, based on something a theme designer did, but it requires simple classes in the themes)
- "automatic SQL optimization" (I'd really like to know what that means)
- XData merged with CNBYA

More fun...

Posted: Tue Nov 04, 2008 3:19 am

Definitely some interesting stuff there!

Posted: Sun Nov 09, 2008 11:53 pm

How about some even more interesting stuff?

I've been reviewing social sites (not just bookmarking, but a lot more). I came across an interesting service call Only registered users can see links on this board! Get registered or login! which allows comments to be stored separately from the site using a common account (rather than your site user account).

This approach might have significant benefits, but I'm not sure what the impact will be on SEO. There is a Only registered users can see links on this board! Get registered or login! "being polished" for this.

Another issue is relying on a third party, which could affect performance.

Still, it's already been Only registered users can see links on this board! Get registered or login! by most of the major blogs (including B2Evolution) as well as Joomla.

Thoughts?

Involved Joined: Apr 06, 2008 Posts: 484

What about some simple enhancements for the developers and coders e.g.

A lot of info displayed is via a table normally 2 columns and multiple rows so we could have some simple functions to increase productivity, Ive used this before and love it, here's an e.g.

The function

Code:




function AddTwoColumnRow($key, $value, $id = null)


{


      global $tmpl;


      if ($key == "")


            $key = "&nbsp;";


      if ($value == "")


            $value = "&nbsp;";


      if ($id == "")


            $id = "DoubleRowVal";


      $tmpl['AddTwoColumnRow']['key'] = $key;


      $tmpl['AddTwoColumnRow']['value'] = $value;


      $tmpl['AddTwoColumnRow']['id'] = $id;


      echo '<hr />';


      echo '<li class="LineLeft">' . $tmpl['AddTwoColumnRow']['key'] . '</li>';


      echo '<li class="LineRight" id="' . $tmpl['AddTwoColumnRow']['id'] . '">' . $tmpl['AddTwoColumnRow']['value'] .


            '</li>';


}

The css

Code:




li.LineRight {


  min-height: 16px;   z-index: 11;


  margin: 0px 0px 0px 0px;    


  padding: 4px 4px 4px 4px;


  background: #7A756F;


  list-style: none;


}


li.LineLeft {


  width: 180px;   min-height: 16px;   z-index: 10;


  margin: 0px 0px 0px 0px;    


  padding: 4px 4px 4px 4px;


  float: left;


  list-style: none;


}

Code:







AddTwoColumnRow('_LABEL', $value);