Sphene Community Tools

Our client really likes the sphene forum functionality. I'll be able to give you a link to the site in a few days when the forums are fully functioning. In order to get that going they've requested a few more features. Here's the list:

* edit post needs to be time limited to 15 mins
* email me should not be defaulted
* jump to functionality (template tag that gets cat list)
* hidden posts elements are still viewable when logged out

The first two are behaviour changes that do make sense (to me, anyway :)).

The user shouldn't be allowed to go back at any time and edit their own posts. That could cause real problems with future references to the post. We need to limit the time that the user can go back and edit their post to 10 minutes.

Also, the system defaults to true for "Notify me by email on new posts in this thread." if the user hasn't specified in his/her profile. They would like it to default to false.

The third requires a bit of explanation. The client would like a dropdown list of all categories and the ability to jump to any other category from a thread. All that would require is a template tag that provides a list of all categories in the system. The rest is template work. This is a "normal" forum feature. In other words, it's found on many forum apps.

And the fourth also needs explaining. When the client requested the post hiding functionality they failed to mention that they wanted the entire post to disappear and only be visible to admins. Again, all we really need is for it to add a "hidden" class or something so that we can check it in the template and act accordingly.

We're trying to avoid modifying your codebase so that we can stay up-to-date with your trunk. Otherwise we would make some of these changes ourselves. Thanks a lot for helping us out, Herbert!

This is a VERY large site I'm working on. Currently there are almost 220,000 users. The site requires Akami caching just to keep up with demand. This may end up being the highest profile Django site in existence! Cool, huh? :)

that would be cool ;) would love to see how your site's looking ;)

Daniel Ellison said @ 2007-09-17 15:53:13:

* edit post needs to be time limited to 15 mins
* email me should not be defaulted
* jump to functionality (template tag that gets cat list)
* hidden posts elements are still viewable when logged out

These features sound quite useful ... and shouldn't be hard to implement ..

two questions about the last two features:
the third: all that is needed is an inclusion template tag which you can use to display the list of all categories ? - recursively i guess .. ?

the fouth: this should already be posible - you could copy templates/sphene/sphboard/showThreads.html into your project's template folder and adapt it ..

there is a {% if post.is_annotated %} - if you simply add a check if the user is logged in and an admin it should work fine already .. - although i have to admit that it makes sense that admins always see all posts..

(although ... admins could already see them by clicking the 'edit' link ;) - even for hidden posts)

Daniel Ellison said @ 2007-09-17 15:53:13:

We're trying to avoid modifying your codebase so that we can stay up-to-date with your trunk. Otherwise we would make some of these changes ourselves.

makes sense, good to see that it is usable as it is ;)

Daniel Ellison said @ 2007-09-17 15:53:13:

This is a VERY large site I'm working on. Currently there are almost 220,000 users. The site requires Akami caching just to keep up with demand. This may end up being the highest profile Django site in existence! Cool, huh? :)

very impressive ;)
would be cool if it could contain a 'technical background' page explaining how it is done ... and mentioning SCT ;)

(btw. i have never heard about akami caching - is it similar to memcached ? or is it something unrelated with django itself ?)

looking forward to see your website !


one thing: i'm currently on holiday in the US - so i probably won't be able to add those changes in the next two weeks ... hope it's enough if you get it in 14-15 days ;)

Hi,

I'd like to say that I *don't* like the idea of a time limit for post editing. Could this be a Sphene setting (with, say 0 for unlimited)?

Thanks!

sure, i would have used a config setting anyway .. having 0 or something for unlimited makes total sense ..

hmm.. i think i have misunderstood that point ..

do you mean the post should be hidden completely without any sign that it actually ever exited ?? (for all users except admins and probably the author ?) - ie. it shouldn't be counted in the number of replies / last post, etc. ?

1 and 2 are now done: (as SPH_SETTINGS)

    # Defines if the 'Notify Me' checkbox should be selected by default.
    'board_default_notifyme': True,

    # How long a user is allowed to edit his post in seconds.
    # -1: forever,
    # 0: never
    'board_edit_timeout': -1, #30 * 60,

Thanks so much, Herbert! I've been extremely busy so I haven't been able to check in here for a while. I appreciate your efforts very much, however.

Yes, that's exactly it. No trace of the post on the boards, except by admins.

well.. that's kind of a problem.. i cache the number of posts of a thread in the
\ThreadInformation object.. ie. i won't count it differenty for admins or users..

would you mind if last post and post count will NEVER keep track of such annotated posts.. (not even the admins)

and btw. should the user see his own post ? i guess he should, otherwise it wouldn't make any sense to 'annotate' the post, instead of deleting it ?