Well, we survived the first month at least! Yes, the new forum is now 1 month old.
Of course there have been some issues and I'm grateful that people have been patient while I worked on them. A big thank-you to everyone who's been patient, have provided useful feedback or just been willing to adapt to something new during the transition.
I've also made some improvements along the way and am fairly happy with how things are from a basic functionality and performance perspective so it's time to start looking at some of the new features I've been planning. This roadmap should give you an idea of what things will be coming down the pipe so you know what to expect. Here's what I plan on working on next:
Post count updates
Fixing final niggling issues such as incorrect user post-counts.
Social sign-up and sign-in
This will allow you to associate existing Google, Facebook, Twitter, Linked-In etc... accounts with your forum account so you'll be able to use those to sign-in. No more captcha. No more extra password to remember.
Social sharing and linking
It should be as easy as possible to share interesting topics and posts with others so I'll be adding options to share or tweet directly from the site.
Feedback on like / dislike votes
These need to be visible to allow people to give unspoken feedback on things.
Watch / marked / favourited topics
Sometimes you don't have anything to say but want to bookmark a topic to keep informed.
Better optimized mobile experience
The table / phone viewing is better than it was but still not as great as it could be. I want to optimize the views to make the best used of space on each device especially targeting iPads as they seem to be the largest user segment by far.
Auto quoting and linking between posts
When you copy and quote from someone's post it should show a little avatar and "Simon said:" label. The original post that is quoted from could also include links to the posts that quote it.
Dashboard of interesting things
This should become your one-stop dashboard to look at and show you topics that you are likely to be interested in:
- Topics you started
- Topics you participated in
- Topics you are watching
- Topics you will likely be interested in (based on activity / likes etc...)
As always, I welcome any constructive feedback or ideas and suggestions for any ways we can improve the software and make it more useful to the community. It's not the reason the community is here but hopefully any improvements will make it easier for people to take part and provide more ways to communicate through feedback etc... (beyond just 'the words we post').
