Topic: Recent Forum Topics on Boardindex

[Kindred]

nope.... it's not arguable...

it is, demonstrably, nearly impossible to find a specific post from a year ago on any of the systems that you mention.
I despise their layout...  I really do.
I utterly despise tapatalk and refuse to use it on any system that I admin.

However... if you must have it, there's a very nice mod, right here, to do it for you.
That's why we have mods in the first place...
that's also why SMF makes it so very easy to install mods that can completely change your functionality.

So no... we will probably never add what you ask as a default feature... but you can still get it, nice and easy, with a simple mod.

[ormuz]

nope.... it's not arguable...

it is, demonstrably, nearly impossible to find a specific post from a year ago on any of the systems that you mention.

Yes it is. The search system as nothing to do with the navigation system. What you have is an opinion. The search engines that this new guys are using are much better than smf's one...

I despise their layout...  I really do.

Another opinion, I personally like it and I think it's more user friendly. That's why I'm changing my smf foruns to that kind of layout. And I'm gonna leave the boardindex as well for the users that want to use it but as a second option.

I utterly despise tapatalk and refuse to use it on any system that I admin.

So what do you use? Is there an alternative to it?

However... if you must have it, there's a very nice mod, right here, to do it for you.
That's why we have mods in the first place...
that's also why SMF makes it so very easy to install mods that can completely change your functionality.

Yep agree, and that's what I'm trying to do. Love smf, not planning to change, would rather pay for the customization that changing platform at this moment at least.

So no... we will probably never add what you ask as a default feature... but you can still get it, nice and easy, with a simple mod.

The fact that you reply with that mindset and you have "project manager" on your badge really scares me as user of this project. What's the problem of trying new things or change things on a project that seems to be not on it's best days. Maybe some change would be nice. Try to be more open minded Kindred, saying "no" just based on your opinion, doesn't make you look good and specially SMF as a project as well.

cheers

[Kindred]

and your desire to have those things is also just an opinion.

I don't say no just because I personally dislike them...  I work in UX and hate them for UX reasons as well as person reasons.

I use a responsive theme instead of an app

[nend]

I see you have a php block, which is great. But how do I use only the block and not have the mod on my boardindex? Any fast hack?

This is great, how can I try this. I want my homepage with simpleportal to be only recent topics. This would do it I guess

see attachment, pls note the mod is beta, bugs can occur, use at own RISK!! ok i warned you enough i think. good luck and fun with the mod.

Since the attachment is beta I went ahead and pulled it. Please post your attachment in the appropriate channel. In this case it would of been the Customization Development boards.

[Pipke]

Please post your attachment in the appropriate channel. In this case it would of been the Customization Development boards.

its there already! I waited for help/contribution and got one respons from a member after 7 months, one single member from this whole community. I was back then finnally approved to post in the customization development board and then no one contributes, why is that board there anyway and why should i go on with this mod? The beta is downloaded 4 times(1 myself)? And now one year later another member posted a request to make it working. I know the mod has lots of bugs, to fix those would take weeks maybe months with testing. At this moment i see no point to give my free time to fix those bugs for 2 members, if more members reply they want this mod working ill maybe continue to fix it.

Since the attachment is beta I went ahead and pulled it.

You pulled what? Please explain what that means.

[Steve]

You pulled what? Please explain what that means.

He removed the attachment from your post since it's a beta and should have been submitted to the mod site instead.

[Paracelsus]

I most disagree with you guys. We are in a mobile world, what's the point of scrolling through pointless categories (defined by a clever illuminated guy) when you can scroll through content? That's what you were looking for in the first place. New young users won't even understand that concept, are forums dying? Or just not adapting...

You guys are right and everyone else is wrong? Think about the new kids on the block, tapatalk, discourse, flarum, nodebb, etc. Not to mention facebooks and twitters and so on.

btw, someone trying to do this on elkarte... pretty cool stuff imho
http://www.elkarte.net/community/index.php?topic=4010.0

just the two cents of someone desperately trying to make this happen for his humble smf forum

Speaking as someone who spent considerable time on a 1+ million post forum that was on Discourse and now NodeBB, and find it much harder to navigate to find where to post anything, or where to find anything... if you're a regular and keep up with all the current content, sure, it works great. If you're not - and most forums users are not - they tend to be harder to navigate.

Just because they do it doesn't make it right. You talk about Facebook... try finding a post from 2014 on there. It's all geared to the latest content which if you only care about the latest content, is fine. But plenty of users and plenty of forums are not about the latest, and plenty of them are not about rapid response, where replies can take hours or days, where you can then find your topic long gone if you can't readily find it amongst a category structure.

That's arguable, very. Once again, think about the current reality, with navigation through the updated content + push notifications, it's a breezy to be aware of what is going on. Let's face it, platforms like smf without native apps can't really compete with facebook groups for instance.

And I do think the users that make a community alive are the regulars, always a small percentage of the user base. And we should build interfaces for them. Not the sporadic user that stumble upon your community by searching for something, luckily you can make that new user a regular. But if your community is designed for a 15 years ago reality, you are just making your life as an admin harder. And without new users your community just dies eventually.

I really like what tapatalk is doing. It's way nicer to navigate to that updated list of content and have push notifications to the content you are interested in, than once again the typical and old categories list... It's just not a fair fight and if our old mindset doesn't change nothing good is coming for the future. Just look to smf 2.1, not released yet and it's already outdated by 5 years

And don't get me wrong, I love smf and I think it's one of the more stable platforms out there. I just release a major redesign on a big forum. But I just feel that I'm not getting the tools that I need to fight my competition and sadly I don't see that changing.

I agree with much of what is written here, although I believe that it is possible to have a well balanced system that promotes more interaction without having to go to extremes like tapatalk and others. I've already started it in our forum long time ago, the landing page hasn't changed that much yet, but they can right now see Unread PMs, Mentions and Alerts of Quoted/New Subscribed Posts or Topics the whole time. This gives the forum and its users a new dimension when it comes to interaction (and they've noticed it already). Even the featured topic for the "blog"-like board is meant to put highlight featured content more accessible to users instead of just organizing it, which is in short what we are talking about here.

Other ideas: to put before the categories a list of 5 or 6 topics which are "latest" and another with the "hottest" (meaning more replies in y amount of hours) a bit like nodebb has with the "popular"; get the mentions and PM tab to open a dropdown list like the Alerts do instead of opening in a new page; give search a real boost with more focus and better layout.

P.S.: It's possible to put the latest topics on boardindex using SSI, it has to be worked for you to get exactly the elements you want with the layout you want, but it's possible.

[MULITRI]

Thanks a lot Pipke for this fantastic Mod, it's just what i wanted and it fits perfectly in my non-default Theme.

But i would like to ask you something which maybe is estupid from my part, but as i'm less than a newbie in coding, i don't know if it's possibe, but i could imagine isn't it.

The first screenshot i've attached below, is how it looks all the forums with a custom icon.

This is the look i had in my old IPB forum, and i would like to get it the same with this SMF v2.0.13 i'm installing.

To the icons look as it shown, i've had to add them into the title field, in this way:

Code: [Select]

<img src="https://url-to-image.jpg"> Title

As the icons are 48x48 pixels, and the Mod catch all content from title field, the icon shows as well as i have attached in the second screenshot.

My stupid question is if there is a way that the icon don't show close to title in the Recent Topics, i suppose no, but as you guys are masters, maybe know the trick if there is one.


Anyway, i have another question that is not stupid hehe... if it can be shown the avatar of the poster like this Mod does:
http://custom.simplemachines.org/mods/index.php?mod=4107

As it's your Mod, i can figure it's possible.

Again Thanks for this great Mod and even Thanks in advance for your help.

[MULITRI]

Another question i got about this Mod is more important, at least for me, i hope to get some help for this.

Now that my forum is growing in messages and after have set topics to display to 10, i see those 10 are to be shown in front page, but it paginates all the last messages in the forum, for what the number of pages could be infinite.

I would like to show only the last 10 messages, no more, no pagination.

Please, i need help with this, Thank you.

[Pipke]

@MULITRI
Simpleway is edit this on RecentForumTopics.template.php
find

Code: [Select]

<div class="pagesection">
<div class="pagelinks floatleft">', $txt['pages'], ': ', $context['page_index'], '</div>';
replace by

Code: [Select]

<div class="pagesection">';


[MULITRI]

It did work that trick Pipke, Thanks.

However I will wait to change it definitely because actualy i have a big error reading messages in my forum, and we have stopped to post until it can be solved.

I will tell you how it goes after solve this problem, Thanks.

[dekatria]

I just want to note that the file on the mod page is the old version and does not match the description for the new version.
http://custom.simplemachines.org/mods/index.php?mod=3856

I found the new version at smfhacks

[Pipke]

I found the new version at smfhacks

That download is a copy of the mod wich i posted here, this mod (update) is beta and is not finished product, bugs can occur and you will get no support.

[dekatria]

Nice and useful mod - thanks.
The problem is that all the info, even the "last updated date" in the mod page are wrong, if it is for the old file (1.0)

[Parmaster]

Hi Pipke,

I have the same problem as Gryzor here (https://www.simplemachines.org/community/index.php?topic=522114.msg3806871#msg3806871) and did what you said the post after (https://www.simplemachines.org/community/index.php?topic=522114.msg3806914#msg3806914).

But then it won't show it when in desktop mode and it looks very weird and ugly.

So what do I need to change that it looks ok on mobile and desktop?

[Pipke]

@Parmaster can you post link to your site, so i can take a look, if you dont want to post it public here you can pm me the site url.

[Pipke]

@Parmaster this should fix it to response(your theme, my mod).

in RecentForumTopics.template.php

Code: (find) [Select]

<th scope="col" class="first_th" width="8%" colspan="2">&nbsp;</th>';
Replace with:

Code: (replace by) [Select]

<th scope="col" class="first_th hidden-xs hidden-sm" width="8%" colspan="2">&nbsp;</th>';


Code: (find) [Select]

<th scope="col" width="15%">', $txt['replies'], ' / ', $txt['views'], '</th>


Code: (replace by) [Select]

<th scope="col" width="15%" class="hidden-xs hidden-sm">', $txt['replies'], ' / ', $txt['views'], '</th>


Code: (find) [Select]

<th scope="col" class="lefttext last_th" width="24%">', $txt['last_post'], '</th>';


Code: (replace by) [Select]

<th scope="col" class="lefttext last_th hidden-xs" width="24%">', $txt['last_post'], '</th>';


[Parmaster]

Thanks!

Will test it directly!


EDIT:

changed the code and it works perfectly!

Thanks for your very quick help! 

[Rock Lee]

Very good modification, I'm trying and I like it a lot. I also leave the translation into Spanish Latin


Regards!

[minimono]

iam this error
https://.../index.php?action=forum;start=%1
2: A non-numeric value encountered
D:/.../Sources/RecentForumTopics.php
Line: 170

Code: [Select]

167: $query_this_board = '{query_wanna_see_board}' . (!empty($modSettings['recycle_enable']) && $modSettings['recycle_board'] > 0 ? '
168: AND b.id_board != {int:recycle_board}' : ''). '
169: AND m.id_msg >= {int:max_id_msg}';
==>170: $query_parameters['max_id_msg'] = max(0, $modSettings['maxMsgID'] - 100 - $_REQUEST['start'] * 6);
171: $query_parameters['recycle_board'] = $modSettings['recycle_board'];
172:
173: $context['page_index'] = constructPageIndex($scripturl . '?action=forum', $_REQUEST['start'], min(100, $modSettings['totalTopics']), $rft_per_page, false);
174: }
How to fix it.

SMF 2.0.15 , PHP 7.1.15