More Specific Categories Mod Database

[auto394812]

I was just looking around in your mod database and noticed what a disorganized mess it is. No offense meant. It just is what it is.

What would be nice is to have a mod database sort of like phpBB's mod database [nofollow] where everything is very nicely organized into categories rather than the current incarnation of choosing between Feature Enhancements or New Features. You may as well label them "stuff to make the forum better", or "stuff you haven't seen before."

Right now it won't sort based on date modified, name, author, downloads... anything. You can't search specifically within the mod database and ... well, like I said, it's a mess.

As more and more mods are developed, it will become even more unwieldly and users will have a much harder time finding what they desire for their forums.

Is anyone working on this? If not, I've been working on a similar mod for my own site and if you guys want, we can help improve each other's current work.

[Ben_S]

I was just looking around in your mod database and noticed what a disorganized mess it is. No offense meant. It just is what it is.

I doubt any will be taken, work is being done on the mod site to make it better, I'm sure your suggestions will be appreciated .

[Thantos]

The mod site is currently under redesign.  We do thank you for your opinions.

[auto394812]

At this point in my coding, I'm at a crossroads. I can't decide whether or not to completely integrate it within my forum where I create a new board for submissions and have child boards to designate the different categories for my member's submissions.

Code Select Expand

Category Name
|
+-News
+-Some other board
+-Submissions
   |
   +-CategoryName1
   +-CategoryName2
   +-CategoryName3


From there I insert a check from within the code to see if the forum is allows submissions (or possibly if the parent forum, I haven't decided on that yet), then instead of showing the normal button for Post New Topic, it would show a new button for uploading submissions from within the forum, then show a modified post form. Posts won't show up immediately because they will be moderated through the admin.

I made a new section of the admin section which would allow the me to change the screenshot, the name, the name of the file, whatever. If approved, a form letter saying it was approved is sent to the submitter. If the submission can't be easily fixed or I'm too lazy to try to find and fix the problem, then an email has to be sent but this time I have to fill out a form saying why I won't allow it. This is actually the first thing I finished because it is the only thing I know needed to be completed.

After a submission is approved, a new poll is made in the category it was tagged for with the submssion name as the Subject, and everything else is moved over to the topic. People could then comment or rate the submission from within the forum.

That's the beauty of it. Most of the work is done by the forum software where searches and even a good deal of sorting could be done by the forum software. The problem I have with this design is that not only does it look like the lazy man's solution, I don't like polls being the only way of rating the submission. Of course, I could combine this with the Topic Rating Mod, but I hear that it's not working with the current version of SMF.

The other way of doing it means I would need to do something similar to the Music Database Mod without the music. The idea being that submissions, categories, all of it would be stored in seperate tables from the forum and custom sorting, searching and everything would have to be made from scratch.

I'm leaning towards the lazy man's approach because it would be the fastest to develop. Which direction are you guys going in?

[Thantos]

I'm leaning towards the lazy man's approach because it would be the fastest to develop. Which direction are you guys going in?

The secret one

[auto394812]

OK, do you guys have any recommendations or problems you guys encountered I should look into before I get further along?

[Thantos]

I think time has been our major problem to date.

[Amacythe]

He means the LACK of time

[auto394812]

Here's what I got after tinkering around for another week or so on my spare time. I borrowed a line from your submission system here at smf.org [nofollow]. Hope you don't mind, but I'll probably change it later.

The admin section:
- Reviewing a submission [nofollow]
- Viewing all unapproved submissions [nofollow]

The rest like editing settings and logging works on a very basic level, but I haven't had time to pretty it up.

Again, after I approve it, it sends a form letter to the user stating whether they got rejected or accepted. I had another form that activates when the admin selects "DELETE & REJECT" to allow the admin to state their reasons for rejecting the submission, but the client I made this for didn't like the idea so... unfortunately it got scrapped.

Client Side:
- Viewing all submission categories [nofollow]
- Message Index [nofollow]
- Posting with Errors [nofollow]

As you can guess, I went with the lazy man's approach and followed phpBB's model where after a submission is approved, I create a new poll with the submission information inserted into the topic, message and attachment tables. I then rename/move the attachments to coincide with the ID_ATTACHs.

I want to release this as a mod, the problem is it doesn't seem all that tenable seeing how a lot of it relies on a bunch of assumptions for it to look correctly. For instance, I made all my submission forums children of a read-only parent to look right. Then I created a new board permission called 'submissions_only'. In this way, only the submission button (and marked read) would appear even for administrators. The polls are normal and can be edited/deleted, and this can cause trouble within the admin.
Another assumption I made was that the forum where this would reside does not allow members to delete their own accounts. My table structure isn't set up for guests because, because an old shaolin monk who taught me the ways of PHP said  that "Guest users are dirty bastards who will never reach enlightenment," ... so they don't get to do squat in any of my mods.

I would say, "If you guys would like to see my code and perhaps improve it...", but you guys have stated you'll be going a different route. Oh well, I'd like to see if anyone can improve on it or perhaps make it into a mod, but I've done so much throughout the script that the .xml file would be pretty damn large.