🏀 KuBuckets Archive

Hi guys

The site was down this morning -- realized that our provider rebooted the server overnight but there wasn't a cron job in place to restart the website on a reboot. This is done now.

This is probably a good time to list out the upcoming items for site improvement.

Items that need focus in order of apparent import are:
1) Chatroom for in game chat -- A friend and I are working on this at the moment. We hope to have an improved version of the chatroom ready for Tuesday's game.
2) Site performance monitoring -- Have a package for this that I need to install to be more aware of downtime or performance concerns on the site in real time.
3) Site styling -- We need to start thinking exactly how we want to style the site if we want to depart from the node bb themes, and build our own style package. Let's discuss in this thread (link).
4) Consider any departures from standard nodebb that are beyond stylistic -- Do we want content on the desktop home page, snippets of stories, and user generated content promoted as stories on the front page? This seems to be logical.

What do you guys think?

I would like a section for for story links, be it from KUsports.com, jayhawksslant or even espn.com. Justsome place you or us can just link to stories or even add them.
Condense all the searching the web of site jumping, just come to one place and "bam" there it is.

But man you are doing a great job, thank you

@jryman Thanks. I was thinking it would be neat if we could have a job crawling various sites for KU content and posting new stories on a particular page, so that we could then pick them up and frame them in our own posts. We'll have to see how feasible / flaky that is... but that would mean we could get the latest stories without waiting for someone to go out and find them manually, and we could map them as people pick them up and gussy them up with our framing posts.

I'm not real good at all this internet, but would RSS feeds work somehow? I guess the other site would have to offer them, but, just coming up with thoughts.

I'd like to suggest the capability of pinning a post to the top (managed by the admins) of a forum. Some of the post may have some importance, but don't receive a lot of followup comments. And without the followup comments they may drop to the bottom or slip out of sight. This way we can have all the lists to the articles in one place. Or maybe this can be part of the BLOG, and I think the blogs deserve a permanent space along side of quote of the day. And these blogs can be the articles of this site. And I'd suggest the admins manage the blogs, and have the ability to promote any post to be part of the blogs.

I'd also like to suggest one of 8 blocks on the home page is dedicated to Q&A, such as the list of smileys, how to embed photos, what HTML codes are allowed, etc. As this site grows, it will be more and more difficult to find the helpful tips from all the posters.

And I may also suggest maybe you can invite a few posters to be limited admins to manage the posts and posters. I really appreciate your effort and dedication. This site is great for us Jayhawks fans. But I hope you don't burn your self up with all the work. FOE is very appropriate in this case. :)

Thanks.

@wishawk Really like these ideas. The stuff that is more administrative (and doesn't require modify the nodebb code) we can implement right away.... The section for Q&A and changing blog to a section representing feature content should both be done immediately. I'll change Blog to Featured Stories, and I will rely on everyone with thread rights to move stories that are appropriate in (and out of) here.

Some people, yourself included, should now have thread rights at this point, because you have enough reputation. I had to set the threshold lower to get you guys included, but I am sliding the minimum value up as you guys get more reputation. It is unnatural to have thread rights at so low a threshold. I'm not entirely a fan of how rights are managed in nodebb because of this. The bright side is, I can undo anything that someone with thread rights might do, in the event of sabotage. Assuming the system of reputation is as it stands, please continue to give favourite points to people who demonstrate act of kindness, make useful points, or are otherwise awesome, so that we can have a more natural demarcation line for thread rights, or other future rights that are tied to reputation.

About the pinning of stories to top -- NodeBB already has this ability in thread rights, so people with thread rights can do this!

Will make the BLOG / Q&A changes now.

What I miss the most is being able to reply to another post and have the reply indented and right under the original post. I find it hard to follow a "thread within thread" when the replies are spread and not contiguous.

Me too!

@approxinfinity Thanks for the support. But I'm not sure about having the ability to delete or modify others' posts. I don't mind helping, but do you have the ability to bring any post back if it gets accidentally deleted?

I can, no worries.

@approxinfinity Great job on the front page! I like it now it has today's features, and also the next game scheduled. I usually dive into the BBall section or unread right away, but now I have reasons to start from the home page. It's really helpful to see all the links together.
Thanks.

PS. I'm still a little uncomfortable about being able to modifying others' posts. I think it's better you and a few limited admins have this capability. And I wonder if it's possible to implement a suggest removal button and temporarily hide a post until an admin approves it. Just a thought.

@approxinfinity What a pleasant surprise to see the front page! Verrry nice.

Thanks guys! Back to a static place to get to the stories, I think this ought to help people keep their bearings a little better.

Another suggestion. I would be nice if when you click on a link it opens in a new tab instead of replacing the current tab/page. In the first case, when you are done with link simply close the tab and you are right back where you were; in the second case, when you hit the back button, it has to reload the original page, you lose your position in the thread, and it takes longer to get back to your original position. Other forums I frequent have this feature and is very handy.

Agree completely @jayhawkfantoo have been thinking about this and plan to do it. Matter of when but hopefully soon!

@JayHawkFanToo I think it's easier to open a link in a new tab or window by right clicking it than implementing as a feature of the site unless the majority of the posters prefer it as a feature. If you are using a tablet, press and hold the link a little longer than a tap, you will get a list of options and opening the linked page in a new window should be one of the options. Just a thought.