As I've mentioned in various places for some time, I'm tentatively working on a custom software solution to host community sites. The obvious motivator for it right now is for this community. If it'll be what is ultimately used, I don't know, but having been around the block with CMS software packages and always being disappointed in some way, well.... if you want something done right, do it yourself.
I'm close to having the core CMS features complete and it'll eventually be handy to have some testers. I can make my own user accounts and do things until I'm blue in the face, but it's not the same as having others interact with things their own way.
When I bring testers in, the present features will be:
User Account Self-Management
- Registration
- Forgot Password E-Mail/Reset
- Activation E-Mail Resend
- Profile Settings
Member List
Groups & Clubs
- Join (public groups)
- Request Membership (private groups)
- Leave Groups
- Notification PMs/Notification Settings (group moderators only)
Private Messages
- Send PMs
- Read PMs
- Delete PMs
- E-Mail Notification of new PMs
The obvious big missing piece there is the Forums. I'm trying to get the fundamentals down first which will go quite a long way towards making the Forums easy to add. For example, the Group memberships will dictate Forum access and the Private Message write/read logic will be largely the same. This makes the Forums a natural component of the website rather than having a detached, "different" feeling like is so common with CMS websites.
And then the Forums will be the jumping off point for news articles.
That said, this will be pretty bare bones for some time. Polls, attachments, etc. are on the roadmap, but are of secondary importance.
Now for some questions for the community members...
Are you interested in helping test the site?
It could work well out the door or you folks might blow it apart. I don't know. This is completely built from scratch using coding concepts I've developed over a decade of UI development. Some of those I'm not even sure will scale well.
WYSIWYG or BBCode Editor?
I'm honestly torn on which direction to go. I love the flexible design options of a WYSIWYG editor, but as a perfectionist, making it work just right could drive me mad. I've already spent an embarrassing amount of time on this.
Flat or Threaded Forum Views?
I've never used threaded mode in my life and would love to completely ignore its existence, but if folks actually like it, I'll explore supporting it. I have noticed it's not even an option given to users here...
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