I've been running a very successful board for over ten years now (yay!), but have recently made some changes and would like to be able to add in some features my members have requested more than once.
Some of these are available as 3rd party mods through the package manager, but I avoid using those, as I never know when they're going be overwritten by the next update, or be incompatible for someone, somewhere, or when they will stop working because the author has stopped updating them.
I'd like to see, as part of the official release:
-- A facebook style "like" button. Not only does this allow my regular members to express their ideas of a post without having to make another, separate post, but it also gives trolls and spammers a bit less excuse for single word hit-n-run posts that can be used to raise their post count.
-- An "alert user" mod like some of the other forum systems have. It's a little menu that shows that someone liked a post, and also allows a poster to alert another member they've mentioned in a post (usually with @username).
--The ability to limit the number of topics guests and regular members can read at once. I've recently switched to a subscription model, but left the boards open for everyone to read because I don't want to lose the SE rankings. However, that's really not working. I need to encourage people to register, and hopefully to subscribe. So a tiered system would work best for me. Something like:
"Hello, guest, you have read two topics without registering for an account; please register to be able to read three more.'
"Hello, new member, you may only read three more topics without a subscription. Subscribe today to remove all limits."
or something like that.
-- A more modern, et of larger smileys
-- A custom notepad/blog application for members who run our contests and such to keep track of memos and random thoughts, and for our contestants and subscribed members to keep a running commentary about their daily activities that relate to our forum (unlike a regular blog where someone might talk about every aspect of their lives)
Are these things doable?