Forums: subforums, ranking, private messages

This is a forum to suggest new features for mojoPortal. 

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12/17/2010 5:51:42 PM
chromebuster
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"All that is gold does not glitter, not all those who wander are lost;" --J.R.R. Tolkien

Re: Forums: subforums, ranking, private messages

The problem comes when you have a specific technology that you do not like forced on you.  That happened to me all this year in college.  The class I was taking forced us to learn a bit of Java (horrid language in my opinion, i'm loyal to MS and the .net framework forever), and not only that, but the teacher had no knowledge of the Windows OS, so I was stuck fending for myself the entire time thinking that I was going to get by with being able to just do the code on Windows.  That never happened, and it nearly drove all of my enthusiasm away.  I've decided that from now on, for learning programming, I'll stick to online courses where it's more discussion oriented rather than the "we're doing this this way" type of environment.  I'll never do that again.  

1/15/2011 9:34:29 AM
cmbyerly
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Re: Forums: subforums, ranking, private messages

I see the YAF people have already started work on this, but I thought I would throw this out there.  This is also my first post on this forum so please be gentle. laugh

I have coded a basic private messaging system specifically for mojoPortal and am in the middle of testing it with my users.  It is a little odd the way I have it setup, but I can get it together for you and submit if you are interested.  Here is what I did and why I did it this way.  I must note that I have a small user community of a couple of hundred users so it can work on smaller implementations.  I don't know how well certain features will scale though.  It was an "econo-pimp" way of accomplishing it.

Here is the problem set I needed to solve. 

1. Users wanted to be able to hit a "Contact Me" link from the forum.

2. Users wanted to be able to hit a "Contact Me" link from the user profile.

3. Users wanted the application to automatically fill in the user stuff for them.

4. Users wanted e-mail address privacy.

5. Users wanted a way to respond directly from their e-mail.

6. Users wanted to be able to respond directly from the site.

7. Users wanted to use a Silverlight Application to use as the front end.  It was the whole it is pretty deal.

8. They wanted a Sent Items bucket and a deleted items bucket as well.

Here is the way that it works.

1. When the user clicks the Contact me button, it takes them to the page with a query string of the user ID to contact.  The Silverlight application reads the query string and gets the user's display name.  It then launches a message composition tab.  The user fills out the tab and hits send.  The tab closes and commits the message to the message database (I have a max size on the databases so I had to put it in a separate database).  It sends a notification e-mail to the user with a code at the end of the subject line.

2. The receiving user can go to the site and respond to the message.

3. The user can respond from their regular e-mail client and I have a service that monitors the response e-mail address.  If it sees a response to the messaging system, then it pulls the message from the inbox and commits it the users site inbox (it keeps the users e-mails hidden at all times).  This is the features I don't think will scale very well, but I am on a budget.

I am using web services to some extend because my user base wants eventual Android and Windows Mobile integration.  I have never really done iPhone development so that is not something I will be doing.

I have also tested the messaging client on OpenSuse 11.3 and it seems to work on Linux as well.  None of my user base uses Linux though.

It is also OK to giggle at it as I am only guy developing anything for my site.  The same service also allows a response to forums as well and my users love it.

1/15/2011 10:14:09 AM
Joe Audette
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Re: Forums: subforums, ranking, private messages

Hi,

Thanks for your offer to contribute. A private message system is on our road map but work has not begun on it so if you would like to send in your code we can evaluate whether to use it or parts of it. Before sending any code though, you would need to send a signed contributor agreement, you can find a link to the agreement on this page:

http://www.mojoportal.com/contribute.aspx

If you can provide the agreement then you can zip up your code along with any notes or instructions. From what you've said probably we would not use the code as is but would refactor it and use any parts that we can.

As far as the silverlight UI,we might make that optional to use but for sure we need a way to implement private messages without requiring the silvelright plugin, so we will have to implement an alternate UI with html but maybe can still make the silverlight one also available.

The ability to reply from email is nice but obviously it is a separate thing from mojoPortal that must receive the email but if there are steps that can be instructed how to make it work then some people may be able to use that.

So, if possible please send the agreement and then send the code and we will review it. Ideally the agreement should be an original signed copy sent by mail, the code can be zipped and sent to joe dot audette at g mail dot com but I will not look at it until I receive the agreement.

Thanks,

Joe

1/15/2011 12:10:59 PM
chromebuster
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"All that is gold does not glitter, not all those who wander are lost;" --J.R.R. Tolkien

Re: Forums: subforums, ranking, private messages

Hi all,

Thanks for keeping us updated.  But Joe, I have one question for you.  What, in your opinion's wrong with Silverlight?  In mine, it's much safer than, as well as more accessible by a long shot, flash.  I love silverlight, and my goal is to one day see this CMS use more of it.  Well anyway, sorry for dropping that one in there.  I'd love to see this new piece of code used.  I love the idea, and it sounds exactly like what I along with the rest of the world wants.  Is this  C# source?  Thanks. 

1/15/2011 12:43:58 PM
cmbyerly
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Re: Forums: subforums, ranking, private messages

Thanks for the reply.  I will get it all prepped this week and mail it to you.

chomebuster, yes, it was written in C#.

1/16/2011 6:59:28 AM
Joe Audette
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Re: Forums: subforums, ranking, private messages

cymberly,

Excellent! I look forward to receiving it.

Katherine,

Don't get me wrong I like Silverlight too and we will make the Silverlight ui available and I am counting on you to let us know if there any accessibility issues with it for users of screen readers. As I understand Silverlight can be made accessible to screen readers so I expect it will work for you. However web accessibility is all about being inclusive and not leaving people out and it goes well beyond just screen reader users though that is one important group of users we want to accommodate. For example iPad users (and most mobile devices) cannot use Silverlight or Flash so we leave them out as soon as we depend on Flash or Silverlight, also linux users could use Moonlight plugin in Firefox but users of other web browsers such as Konquerer are left out as are users of Opera. The bottom line is that neither Silverlight nor Flash are web standards, the more we stick to web standards the more users we can accommodate. If I were building a line of business web app to be used inside a company Silverlight is a very compelling choice because for the limited target audience of the application we can require a specific web browser, but for public facing features it is problematic to use Silverlight for important features because it leaves people out. For public facing web sites Silverlight can reasonably be used for decorative things but if we use it for functional things we are leaving some people out unless there is an alternative way to make the functionality available, that is why I think we need an html alternative to the silverlight ui part of this feature.

Best,

Joe

1/16/2011 9:59:15 AM
chromebuster
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"All that is gold does not glitter, not all those who wander are lost;" --J.R.R. Tolkien

Re: Forums: subforums, ranking, private messages

Makes perfect sense.  I guess it's because the only two browsers I use are either IE or Firefox, so I hardly think of the folks who use other ones.  I want to thank you for the reminder. 

1/16/2011 10:44:15 AM
bob
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Re: Forums: subforums, ranking, private messages

It's a great thing if MojoPortal will have a PM system.

 

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