Scratch

sdg1 wrote:

Lightnin wrote:

Magnie wrote:

Lightnin: Also, how do you plan on adding Authentication from other sites ( like, if I had my own site and I wanted users to authenticate as a user from Scratch )? Will there be a special protocol ( to keep everyone's passwords, etc secure ) or will it be the plain text way where the site they are logging in from just send the username and password to the Scratch site and Scratch will reply if the username and password are correct or not (thus the Scratchers' passwords could easily be logged by the Third-Party site)?

We're not certain exactly how this will work yet. Sdg1, who is working on the back end of Scratch 2.0, is away right now but when he returns we'll definitely talk about this. It might be best to implement an open-source established protocol, like openid or something. But really sdg is the one who knows about this stuff - It's really beyond my expertise.

But the reason I'd like to use a protocol that someone else has thought through already is that there are many many bright minds working out all the security issues related to that platform. If you roll your own, then it's up to you to imagine all the zillion different ways it can be attacked (and patch them). That can quickly get overwhelming.

I'm currently looking at CAS (http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Central_Authentication_Service) as a possible candidate for this kind of system. Other options include OpenID and OAuth, but at the moment CAS seems to be the most simple mechanism which meets our requirements.

Ok then.

For planning, lets discuss what features we want in the forums.

ScratchBB Forum Software
- Categories
- Sub (sub, sub, etc) categories/boards
- Topics ( Titles, Descriptions?, Icons? )
- Posting ( Titles, Icons? )
- BBCode ( Decorating posts with Bold, Colors, etc, quotes )
- Smileys
- Modification of Topic titles, descriptions?, and icons?
- Topic Previews of first post
- Modification of Posts titles, content, icons?
- Previous post versions will be view-able
- Deletion of posts
- Users
- User Groups
- User Permissions ( Global or board specific permissions )
- Authentication/Account Creation through Scratch
- Avatars? (should it be optional for the forum admins to enable or disable avatars?)
- Signatures
- User Profiles?
- Skins/Themes, Custom Skins/Themes ( with CSS? )
- Admin Panel
. Ability to Create, Modify, or Delete boards/categories
. Ability to add custom BBCode
. Ability to add, modify, or delete User Group Permissions
- Moderator Options and Panel?
- Post backups?
- Allow mods to see a deleted post and if needed, be able to recover it
- http://scratch.mit.edu/forums/viewtopic … 1#p1080221 / Stickies Section
- Allow Stickies Section to be collapsible
- Quotes summaries/Scroll Bar/Single Line Summary
- Quote Summaries can be expanded to full post
- Forced Sticky Read? ( I kind of go against this, but whatever )
- Thread following, favourite threads, Favourite Threads section under the Stickies Section
. Basically Official Sticky Section, User Sticky Section
- Markers to mark what "state" your topic is in ( Example: [SOLVED] How do you get a signature? )
- Show My Topics/Posts
- Watching a topic ( you get an email when it's posted in )
- User Profile
- Customizable user-profile
. User-profiles use the CSS/Theme/Skin the user is using to browse the forums?

ScratchBB Site/Forum
- Split AT into Advanced Scratching, Scratch Mods, Programming/Coding
- Topic icons will be
. Gray for closed
. Black for not being posted in over a month
. Blue for last post by a user
. Green for last post by a Mod or Admin
- Scratch Cat Smileys
- Topic title change time limit increased to 1 hour
- Allow "New Scratchers" to delete their post within 3 minutes
- No Avatars
- An "Everything" Category

Just as a quick basic list to start from. Don't leave anything out (add question marks for possibilities).

We really do want to discuss each and every single feature we want in the forums so we know exactly what to add. 

Should we have this as the "Official List" or would we like to put it somewhere else?

Last edited by Magnie (2012-01-07 15:38:05)

There is certainly a lot to discuss and I think a list would be a good idea. Perhaps I shall transport Magnie and sci's list to the first post? I probably need to edit that to be a little less tentative now anyway 

Here's an idea I've quickly HTML'd together as a solution to stickies. I think whilst I-Topics save space, those important threads actually aren't seen much so with this method we can sort of compromise by saving more space than stickies did but getting more views than I-Topics did.


link to image

Since, for stickies, views, comments and last replies aren't hugely required as first-view stats, this could perhaps be included in the <title> and <alt> tags so when you hover over the sticky link, the stats are shown there?

This technique only takes a little space compared to the current list of stickies because of the two rows. If we removed the names from next to the titles we could probably get three rows in.

This brings me on to an idea I have from another forum I saw. When you hover over a thread link, the first 500 characters or so of the first post appear in a box (title/alt tag) so you get an idea of what the thread is about. This would be especially helpful in areas like misc where people tend to post things like "ummm...." or "read this!" as thread titles.


link to image

P.S. This is why I love Firebug! You can just live-edit any page to change how it looks! 

Last edited by sparks (2012-01-05 07:08:20)

Magnie wrote:

scimonster: I meant in the technical aspect. If we want to be able to put (install, unzip) it on multiple websites and allow people to easily change the boards and categories, then the ideas for how the boards are organized (and anything customize-able) then most of your ideas will probably be used for our forum.

sparks: I actually really like your idea for the stickies. That could fix many, many problems. It also keeps our forums original, since I know of *very* few forums that do that.

Hmm. Good way of install method.

Download Zip

Upload files

Go to install/install.php

Setup Databases and first user account.

Hmm.

Magnie wrote:

- BBCode ( Decorating posts with Bold, Colors, etc, quotes )

I recommend adding [h] (for headers, bold and slightly larger font size)

- Avatars?

I vote no: just signatures should be fine.

- Skins/Themes, Custom Skins/Themes ( with CSS? )

CSS would be best.

scimonster wrote:

I think we should use the same board structure as we currently have, but actually, maybe we could have sub-boards. So, for example, AT could be split into "Advanced Scratching", "Mods", "Web coding", "Other coding".

We should probably have a special 'all' category which lists the topics in all sub-boards.

Posting I think we should try to duplicate.

I think we should use an AJAX-based system which only ever fetches content and uses the new history API to update the borwser's history accordingly. It the user didn't have JS enabled, the links would still work, but the entire page would refresh.

All current BBCode (except [blocks], which we would use JSO's new parser for)

Did you mean me? I can write a compatibility-mode parser so existing topics with [blocks] don't break

and also several suggestions, such as changing font face and size (reasonably), adding background color, text alignment, and strike-through.

Background color might not play well with themes, but text alignment is a good idea. I think we should stick with BBCode that represents (mostly) the content, not the presentation (the theme would have control over that). For example, the user could define a heading (maybe levels 1-6 like HTML), but the theme would control how that heading was rendered (e.g., in a serif font and/or larger font size, with a line below, or in a different color)

Post editing would work pretty much the same as currently, though I think you could check a box that allows the previous version to be viewable instead.

I think it should always keep old revisions, but only make them public (i.e., viewable to all users, not just moderators) if a checkbox is checked.

Last edited by nXIII (2012-01-05 11:52:11)

Oh, we should also make the stickies section collapsible, so it's open by default but if you have read the topics and don't want it taking up space, you can hide it.

TRocket wrote:

long quotes should only show first x lines then have a show all button to show the rest of the post

x being a user set value

Maybe a scroll bar? Great idea! 

nXIII wrote:

Magnie wrote:

- BBCode ( Decorating posts with Bold, Colors, etc, quotes )

I recommend adding [h] (for headers, bold and slightly larger font size)
Yeah, forgot that one. 

- Avatars?

I vote no: just signatures should be fine.
Perhaps it could be one of those optional feature.

- Skins/Themes, Custom Skins/Themes ( with CSS? )

CSS would be best.

scimonster wrote:

I think we should use the same board structure as we currently have, but actually, maybe we could have sub-boards. So, for example, AT could be split into "Advanced Scratching", "Mods", "Web coding", "Other coding".

We should probably have a special 'all' category which lists the topics in all sub-boards.
Yeah, that's right. 

Posting I think we should try to duplicate.

I think we should use an AJAX-based system which only ever fetches content and uses the new history API to update the borwser's history accordingly. It the user didn't have JS enabled, the links would still work, but the entire page would refresh.
Sorry, forgot the AJAX discussion. 

All current BBCode (except [blocks], which we would use JSO's new parser for)

Did you mean me? I can write a compatibility-mode parser so existing topics with [blocks] don't break
No, JSO's Block Plugin. And someone could simply mod it for compatibility mode.

and also several suggestions, such as changing font face and size (reasonably), adding background color, text alignment, and strike-through.

Background color might not play well with themes, but text alignment is a good idea. I think we should stick with BBCode that represents (mostly) the content, not the presentation (the theme would have control over that). For example, the user could define a heading (maybe levels 1-6 like HTML), but the theme would control how that heading was rendered (e.g., in a serif font and/or larger font size, with a line below, or in a different color)

Post editing would work pretty much the same as currently, though I think you could check a box that allows the previous version to be viewable instead.

I think it should always keep old revisions, but only make them public (i.e., viewable to all users, not just moderators) if a checkbox is checked.
That's what I said.

nXIII wrote:

MathWizz wrote:

TRocket wrote:

long quotes should only show first x lines then have a show all button to show the rest of the post
x being a user set value

Maybe a scroll bar? Great idea! 

I think we should use a single-line box with a disclosure arrow that you can click to show the full quote.

Maybe show like 5 lines.

nXIII wrote:

Oh, we should also make the stickies section collapsible, so it's open by default but if you have read the topics and don't want it taking up space, you can hide it.

It should default open if there are unread stickies, and closed if there aren't. 

Last edited by scimonster (2012-01-05 13:33:07)

While your on the topic of stickies, I think each user should be able to choose their own favourite threads to sticky so that the only stickied threads shown are ones of which the scratcher has chose. 

Okay, I've updated the list a little bit. I think BBCode will just be all the stuff suggested, I don't want to waste time adding every single BBCode feature to the list. 

gbear605 wrote:

For BBCode, I think we should remember to add a feature of the admin panel where you can easily add BBCode: you put in the tag (ex. [b]) then put in the replacement HTML code (ex. <b>)

TRocket wrote:

Daffy22 wrote:

gbear605 wrote:

For BBCode, I think we should remember to add a feature of the admin panel where you can easily add BBCode: you put in the tag (ex. [b]) then put in the replacement HTML code (ex. <b>)

I agree!

Also, on the user stickies maybe they should be called "pinned" topics

Possibly. I've added the custom Admin BBCode idea to the list.