[HoundDawg]

Forums have [obviously] been installed and configured. They haven't been custom skinned (may hold off on this for a little bit). It's pretty basic with only 1 main forum, and the breakout forum for Project Phoenix. I'm really loving all of the cool features, although we need to decide on which ones to disable. So, here's a list that still need to be addressed:

1. Have a private UA Staff area, just for volunteers?
   
2. Have a separate feedback forum?
   
3. What security groups do we need?
   
4. Allow OpenID Logins?

I'll setup the archived forum later. Getting the new UA stuff up is a higher priority.

[Banana]

well at least some private UA Director area.

For staff.. well let the time decide. perhaps we only need private for the projects.

ewww. why has the avatar size changed ;-)

[HoundDawg]

Added... "Allow OpenID Logins?" to the list.

[Banana]

HoundDawg, on 24 May 2009 - 02:16 PM, said:

Added... "Allow OpenID Logins?" to the list.

well it would be a nice feature. Since a lot of ppl use it.

but not me. I'm too much into security to use this ;-)

[BonziSamuri]

Private forums: On the old forum we had a "Staff General" forum. I think we should have a similar area. This way teams can discuss common issues, management can post internal announcements, and volunteers on different teams would get to know each other better.

Feedback: Very few users ever posted in the old feedback forum; of those that did, 99.9% of the posts there were junk.

Groups: Let's keep it small. We would need groups to grant the following two admin roles: Full forum admin, and Moderator; then groups to grant volunteers access to each of their projects. BTW, can this version of IPB support multi-group membership? Because I can foresee volunteers working on more then one project at a time.

OpenID: I too am worried about the security of using OpenID. But for the few end users that have them and want to use it, then it might be a nice feature. One thing to consider though, should we require volunteers to have regular logons (for security reasons)? If so, how hard (if at all possible) is it to switch between a regular account and one that uses OpenID?

[HoundDawg]

Thanks for the feedback!

BonziSamuri, on 24 May 2009 - 06:00 PM, said:

Private forums: On the old forum we had a "Staff General" forum. I think we should have a similar area. This way teams can discuss common issues, management can post internal announcements, and volunteers on different teams would get to know each other better.

Yeah, even though one crowd of 100% open community proponents won't care for this, it has been a good benefit in the past. So, I setup this area last night.

Quote

Feedback: Very few users ever posted in the old feedback forum; of those that did, 99.9% of the posts there were junk.

I've been remembering more about this one too. We used to have a LOT of topic moving out of this "feedback" forum. Maybe we'll just take feedback quotes and post them on the website somewhere. They'll be read-only.

Quote

Groups: Let's keep it small. We would need groups to grant the following two admin roles: Full forum admin, and Moderator; then groups to grant volunteers access to each of their projects. BTW, can this version of IPB support multi-group membership? Because I can foresee volunteers working on more then one project at a time.

Yeah, let's see how well and long we can go with just Members, Staff, and Administrators. Yes, IPB supports multi-groups (it did before as well). Without an AC project, we really don't have sensitive information projects to warrant having more security groups though. If a team wanted a private channel, I don't see why all Staff+ should be blocked from it. We'll have to take it on a case-by-case basis I think.

Quote

OpenID: I too am worried about the security of using OpenID. But for the few end users that have them and want to use it, then it might be a nice feature. One thing to consider though, should we require volunteers to have regular logons (for security reasons)? If so, how hard (if at all possible) is it to switch between a regular account and one that uses OpenID?

From what I understand, the OpenID is mainly for the username/password logon. It's just another option, rather than having the forums store that username/password info, they are able to re-use a common one. I'll read up a little more on how IPB implemented it and if it's what I'm thinking, I'll enable it.

[Banana]

BonziSamuri, on 25 May 2009 - 02:00 AM, said:

Feedback: Very few users ever posted in the old feedback forum; of those that did, 99.9% of the posts there were junk.

Groups: Let's keep it small. We would need groups to grant the following two admin roles: Full forum admin, and Moderator; then groups to grant volunteers access to each of their projects. BTW, can this version of IPB support multi-group membership? Because I can foresee volunteers working on more then one project at a time.

@feedback.
yep I think so too. It looks nice to have some sort of it, but it was never used. So forget this. perhaps we can get some "What users say" page on the website ?
@Groups
Well I would careful about the forums admins group. Give it only to ppl you can trust. Since it could happen that this account will be hacked and then we are doomed....
So a staff group and Moderators group will be enough for me at first. Then we can splitt it up.
But I agree that we limit this. at the old forums there were way too much groups and even more permission masks....

[HoundDawg]

Banana, can you setup the Moderators group and permission mask please? Bonzi and netzi should both be bumped to moderators. Thanks!

[Banana]

HoundDawg, on 25 May 2009 - 07:17 AM, said:

Banana, can you setup the Moderators group and permission mask please? Bonzi and netzi should both be bumped to moderators. Thanks!

done

[HoundDawg]

Ok, one thing that would be cool, is to create an IPB addon that integrates with Steam. Every user would enter their Steam ID into their profile, which will then show their status on their posts, similar to how TF2Maps.net did it here:
http://forums.tf2map...read.php?t=6554

From the little research I've done, it appears that you can pull XML data from the steam website like:
http://steamcommunit...HoundDawg?xml=1

But, I'm not sure how to pull it based on Steam ID. TF2Maps call another one of their files, which build the HTML we see in the forums (via an IFrame):
http://forums.tf2map...EAM_0:1:1159253

It's great to see that Steam is not just Valve games anymore, since we're wanting to branch out to multiple game support as well, because it means that we can do Steam integration features like this, which will fit UA really nice.


UPDATE: Digging further, I found these sites, which explain how to pull a player's steam profile based on their Steam ID:

• http://www.teamfortr...amid-20020.aspx
  
• http://forums.allied...ead.php?t=60899
  
• http://userscripts.o...ipts/show/33889
  
• http://utilitymill.com/utility/SCID

[HoundDawg]

Thanks everyone, the forums have come a long way since the default installation. We have a solid foundation for growth.