The time has nearly come to switch over to the new forum software. Of course it's not completely finished yet (and never will be) but I think it's good enough to go live with and probably already better than the current one. I'll give you a quick overview of what to expect and post more detail about the changeover process later.
Cloud Platform
The main technical change is that it will now be running on the cloud, using Google App Engine, instead of a self-managed server. The benefits of this is that the site no longer runs on a single server that needs to be managed, secured and upgraded on a regular basis which frees me to spend more time working on developing the app features instead of running it. The service scales automatically to adjust for the traffic and is always going to be more reliable and secure than a self-managed server. Google know their stuff after all.
Responsive Frontend
While I was re-writing the server software I took the opportunity to revamp the front-end so that it uses some newer client technology and frameworks. The most obvious changes should be a responsive design that works better on tablets and mobile devices with clearer fonts and better readability. There will be some pain involved as many of the technologies themselves had dropped support for older browsers (mostly IE versions). The payback is simpler and faster code for everyone else - I don't think there is any excuse anymore not to update to Chrome or FireFox at least.
Posting Rules
There are new and clearer posting rules / guidelines with the ability for anyone to flag content that violates them. Right now this feeds through to the moderators to action but the aim is to put the responsibility for moderating into the hands of the community so that unwanted content can be removed quickly to prevent it ruining people's enjoyment of the site. Content that violates the guidelines may be removed entirely or suppressed (e.g. you need to click if you want to see it).
Like / Dislike
There's also the ability to 'like' or 'dislike' content so that the best stuff can be promoted. Right now it only captures the votes but that will feed into content ratings and user reputations. It should be possible to find the most interesting content and best comments, not just the topics with the most replies.
Sorting / Browsing
It's still useful to sort and browse though and that's been expanded so that you can view topics in order of date started, date last updated or number of replies. These views work across the entire forum (like the Active topics) as well as for any subject area. For instance, if you view the Watchtower area (http://www.jehovahs-witness.net/watchtower) then you can sort the topics within it or you can drill down into a child subject area and view just those topics (http://www.jehovahs-witness.net/watchtower/beliefs) with the same sorting options. You can also view any members topic history in the same way as well as look at their posting stream.
I hope to add some additional filtering options to allow focusing on certain years / months etc... to help people find the content they are looking for and also have more work to do on the search feature.
Image Resizing & Snapshots
Some other things I like - the forum grabs a snapshot of and embedded images so that they can be optimized and resized based on the viewer. This means that a huge image included by someone else won't hammer your mobile data plan and will load just what it needs to look good on your screen, whatever that is. It also provides valuable privacy protection by acting as a firewall between you and the image - no one can embed an image and harvest IP addresses. It also protects agains valuable content being lost over time if the source images become unavailable or the childish practice of people switching previously included images with porn or other unsavoury content.
Other Features
The other bits-n-bobs that have changed:
- Customized page-sizing - chose what makes sense for your display
- Latest 3 replies shown on listing (makes recognizing new content easier)
- Better embedded video handling and responsive resizing.
- Display 'snippets' of topics in summery (preference of how much to show)
- Links to other similar topics (still needs improvement)
- Protection against confusing names too similar to other members (e.g. 5imon)
- Nicer and simpler HTML editor
- Lazy loading of images for faster browsing (off-screen images load as you scroll down)
- Emojis support (see http://www.emoji-cheat-sheet.com/)
Future Changes / Work in Progress
The software will continue to develop over the coming weeks and months to put more polish on things (e.g. more optimization for the mobile version) and to add new features. Not everything that the software is capable of is turned on right now but here are a few of the things that should arrive soon:
User Profiles
Profile editing and avatar upload or gravatar refresh (first thing to finish!)
User dashboard
I'd like to have a dashboard where people can quickly see:
- Topics they started
- Topics they participated in
- Topics they are watching
- Topics that are busy / rated high
Post versioning / longer editing
Every post is version-controlled and I intend to make it possible to view the diffs of what has changed between versions. This will make it possible to extend the post-editing time which is there to protect against people playing games (e.g. posting insults then removing them and claiming innocence) without limiting everyone else.
Social Sign-in
Use existing accounts (Google, Facebook, Twitter etc...) to sign-in so you don't have to remember another email and password. NOTE: will only be used for authentication, will not reveal your identity on the forum.
Topic participants and filtering
View who has participated in a topic and filter to include or exclude certain people. Very useful for zooming in to a discussion between a few people on a larger topic or for reviewing one person's comments.
User achievements / rewards
These are intended to be fun and will be recognize helpful / humorous or other content as well as the most wordy posters, frequent editors etc...
Native app (?)
There will be an API to allow hooking in to some of the forum UI's available for mobile devices or I may end up writing my own.