Forum Tip Even More New Features

Turtle · Oct 20, 2015

We've added a Birthday Calendar that shows, well, people's birthdays. Just click the Members tab and then the Birthday Calendar tab and the calendar will show up. It defaults to the current day and month, but you can select another month to view.

Similar Threads

Show a list of similar threads when a member is creating a new thread
Show a list of similar threads when a user (registered or guest) is viewing a thread

It only searches thread titles and not the posts themselves, but it can give you a headsup if creating multiple new threads when an already existing one may suffice, and it helps those see similar threads instead of having to use the Search Function.

The Similar Threads list will show up below the Quick Reply box on existing threads, and below the new Thread Title when creating a new thread.

The way it works is...

Get new thread title
Remove common words
Remove words less than five characters
Remove punctuation
From remaining words select first two words and see if other threads contain these keywords

Keywords will match other thread titles in this priority:

Both words
first word
second word

... so you could get some really weird listings at times. Just go with it.

Forum Moderators
Your forum Moderators are now showing up in several places. That way you'll know for sure who to contact with any questions or problems with a particular forum.

- There is a link below each Forum Description on the main Forums page that gives you the Moderators for that forum. Clicking the "Moderators" link gets you a popup listing, and clicking a name in the listing gets you the popup Member Card with a link to start a Conversation.

\

- There is the actual listing of Moderators at the top of each Forum. Clicking a name gets you the popup Member Card.

- On the Members tab there is a Moderators tab. Clicking a name or avatar gets you the Member Card popup. Clicking a forum name will take you to that forum.

Also note the "..." to the far right of of the "New Status Updates" tab. Clicking that gets you any unseen tabs that won't fit on the menu. Currently, it only has "Notable Members" listed, but clicking the Members tab defaults to Notable Members, anyway.

Turtle · Oct 21, 2015

In addition, a new set of Mood Icons have been uploaded. There's like 195 of them. There's actually 242 in the pack, but a bunch of them were done for explicit adult sites and really don't have any place here.

The old Mood Icons were overwritten, so if you noticed your mood has changed, that's why.

Ragman · Oct 21, 2015

Oh great, more features I have to try to figure out..

jelliott · Oct 21, 2015

Surprised the WTF one is on the list....

Turtle · Oct 24, 2015

I debated with myself on the WTF one, since it's in such ubiquitous use on the Net. But it's gone now.

Ftransit · Oct 24, 2015

Still need un-like button!

Turtle · Oct 24, 2015

Ftransit said:
Still need un-like button!

Expressing negative opinions is fine, but that's not really what most forums strive for, EO in particular. There will be a percentage of users who will be offended when their posts are disliked, which just leads to bad feelings and a negative tone towards the whole experience. Not to mention, it's usually abused. It's very easy to do "drive-by disliking", so it's better to actually post a comment to say or explain your objection, rather than a "you wrote something I don't like" button.

There is a Thread Rating system that can be implemented. In the listing of the treads, it shows a 5-star system that looks like this:

If there is any interest on this let me know.

There is a post/user rating system that can be added which gives a wide range (unlimited, actually) of options beyond mere "Likes," such as Thanks, Optimistic, Disagree, Agree, Helpful, Informative, Useful, Friendly, Winner, Dumb, Bad Spelling, whatever.

Or with labels...

But that particular function costs real money ($30.63) so there would have to be a really lot of interest in it for me to fork over the money for it.