Forum feature requests and Ideas

[grubbyfox]

We can do more colours! Is there a reason why you are requesting this font? Since it does not seem to be intended for english. We also might be at the limit of fonts for the forum, since they slow things down a tad - we can swap them out, but it might mean removing a less popular font first.
If you click the "news" icon on the left it will swap you into the readability theme. - I'm aware this is not super clear and there have been requests to improve this in the past that are not forgotten ^^ - I might work on a better solution soon! 

is there a way to make it so it's only the fonts that are forced into something like, well, doesnt matter to me, arial,times new roman etc, lol. I just really want to read more posts, but some fonts are too hard for me to read. I dont want to force others to not use fonts, they should be able to if they wish    - but i just cannot read it at all.

I tried the readability theme, but it was just a bit too much for me xD I love the forum colors and overall style. 

[myrrhdoll]

Are there plans to make Melonland screen responsive, specifically support for mobile viewing? Or does the lack of a mobile responsive screen have something to do with keeping this place small and full of substance?

I greatly appreciate the average quality of posts on this forum but not its web design. Sometimes I like to read on my phone when I'm out and about and nothing particularly interesting is going on, but the experience is difficult.

[Melooon]

Or does the lack of a mobile responsive screen have something to do with keeping this place small and full of substance?

Neither! The forums main theme is a table theme dating from the early 00s, I doubt it would be possible to make it properly responsive. Modernising would basically require starting over from scratch, so we are kinda grandfathered into what we’ve got.

On mobile, I personally use WAP and the RSS feed to keep up with posts - it’s not perfect but it gets me by 

I suppose making do with imperfect things is part of the vibe too 

Can this forum software support more granular RSS feeds? I don't expect this site to do what the Discourse forum software can do, but anything more granular than just one big feed for the whole site would be an improvement. I don't want to read literally every post on here. Individual RSS feeds per board and/or per topic would be great.

Done - per board RSS feed links can now be found around the forum!

[garystu]

Done - per board RSS feed links can now be found around the forum!

i see it! awesome  I will add some to my feed now 

[dirtnap]

would it be possible to use the post censor to strip tracking information from common links? i don't know whether it can make use of regex and if not this might be impossible.

the example that made me bring this up is youtube. a few months ago, they added tracking to links. i'm not quite sure where this is coming from (probably using some kind of "share" button as opposed to copying the url in your browser) but i see youtube links with tracking everywhere now, including on this forum.

the tracking information begins with si= and is an alphanumeric string.

youtube links can carry information after this string (such as the time), so it might be best to match from si= to &, and retain the & after stripping the tracking string.

[lycoseadae]

can i request labels when hovering over the buttons for the theme switcher in the bottom left? previously it was only 1 or 2 options with icons that made it easy to tell what theme i was trying to switch to(newspaper icon for the news theme for example), but the "traffic light" buttons dont have any label or design to tell you what button activates which theme so i find myself clicking through a couple before finding the right button for the news theme

[DiffydaDude]

Suggested topics bar - it's similar to the "Similar Topics" bar in the writing page except its based on stuff in your "My Interests" section on your profile
For example, the suggested topics script has the tag "Cassette". It sees the word "cassette" in your interests section, it sees "cassette" on a forum topic, so it puts that topic in the suggested topics bar
I think it would help solve the problem of duplicate topics for the same things, or topics dying

[Memory]

Minimum word count per post (or letter + symbols). Turn Twitter and SMS upside down.

Was this ever tried out in a message board? In the comment section of Modarchive, there is a minimum length required for comments.

This might address the issue with reactive comments not offering anything to a substantial discussion. Problem: A couple of games on this message would be affected by this as well.

[Zombiethederg]

What about a search bar on the main page that functions similarly to how when you make a post you see similar topics? Maybe have it just be that on the front page, a search bar that shows similar topics? Iounno lol

[Melooon]

search bar on the main page that functions similarly to how when you make a post you see similar topics?

This is a really good idea and I'm trying to figure out how to make it possible ^^

EDIT: Done!

[ThunderPerfectWitchcraft]

Make the event board stick out a bit more!
One easy step would be to move it up in the subforum-hierarchy again, maybe in the forum hub? I already had the impression that it is overlooked by many, and the first reply here seems to confirm this ;).

[candycanearter07]

hiya! more of a minor nitpick/something to make the css look a bit nicer

so, can you make the .marquee class also add the overflow: hidden attribute? when i used it on my everyone.melonland.net site it actively went off the screen and it really bothered me.

also, are we allowed to include melonland_common_anims.css in our own sites? the <marquee> tag seems to be randomly breaking on my browser and i want a backup in case it finally gives out

[candycanearter07]

hi!

ok so a qol feature idea i had that probably would be easy to implement:

where it displays the "file structure" thing (see attachment), i think it would be nice if it displayed if there were unread messages in the section so you can click through all the unread messages easier

[GlitchyZorua]

Here is ALOT of my own ideas.

Note: ones labed as "(OPTION)" are ones basically for the Profile Settings, Look and Style, etc.


1. Forum Toolbar thingy

1.1. Insert More Clocks!

Lets add three more clocks in the toolbar for writing your forum posts

insert current hexclock and rgbeat! Both of these text should change by color based on what time it is, obviously.

insert current unix timestamp - as it says!

You should also make it so if I wanted to convert the Beat time/Unix Time to a nice dynamic date-time display, like what discord has.

For example:

<t:1723578600:R> would output as "1 minute ago" (relative time)
<t:1723578840:t> would output as "12:54 PM" (short time)
...etc, there is more then just relative and short time.

You can play with it in here: https://r.3v.fi/discord-timestamps/

In addition, there should be alway a way to convert beats to relative, sorta like this:

<be:@4.00:ctf> - Outputs "5 minutes"

You can also use it as a way to paste in the recommended time for the referenced beat time, like this:

<be:@1.00:re> - Outputs "AFK I'll be back in a moment!"

I could go on, about this, but i'll stop here.




1.3. More colors
At this point, You should probably add a little "+" which would open up a color wheel or something.


1.4. Insert TamaNOTchi
Self Explanatory

1.5. Insert current iMood
Self Explanatory.

1.6. Insert current status statuscafe
Also Self-explanatory

1.7. Scratch Blocks
I think it would be absolutely funny if we had the option to insert scratch blocks, if you look in the scratch forums, you'll know that there is an option to insert the good old Scratch 2.0 blocks. why not?



1.8. Insert User-Agent
Self-Explanatory

1.9. Insert Custom Symbols
Insert a symbol that isn't on your keyboard. Can be handy.

1.10. Insert GIF from Tenor, Giphy, and Gif Gallery.

1.11. Insert Icon from Pixel Sea.

1.12. Insert Texture from TextureTown.

1.13. Small code block thingies. You know. these:



1.14. Ubuntu Font would be nice. You can get that here: https://fonts.google.com/specimen/Ubuntu

1.15. Would it be possible to add these old emojis back? I think they are funny. and also, the YouTube button? not sure why that one was remove... :/



2. Main Page and Forums


2.1. Countdown until forum **temporarily** closed on mondays.

On the bottom/top, there should be a timer, telling you until the forum shut down on mondays. In addition, the shoutbox would let everyone know if there is only 1 hour left until the forum closes down due to it being mondays.

2.2. Commands for the chatbox. "/ignore <user>", ignores user, "/report <user> <reason>" to report someone, "/whois <user>" - Opens the user profile for the specific user, "/me <message>" - Self-Explanatory, "/hug <someone>" - self explanatory, "/color <hex, color name, hexclock, beattime, random>" - change color of your username in the chatbox, "/help" - shows list of commands for the chat box, "/time" - tells the full date and time, including beat time and tells you when it's going to be monday, /dice [min] [max] - roll a dice! by default, its set to 6., ets cetera, whatever command you wanna add.

2.3. (OPTION) Unsimplify Links - Usually, the chat box simplifies links by just shorting it down to just a yellow link that just says "[link]", this can get annoying sometimes, and i should be able to see the full link. This option bypasses it. You should also have the link shown only if you were to hold CTRL and hover the link to show the full link.

2.4. (OPTION) Hide the Monday Countdown timer on the bottom/top.

2.5. Because you do have the option to stay logged in temporarily, On the bottom, show how much time left I have left until I logged out on the bottom of the screen.

2.6. (OPTION) Always Show Spoiler tags.

2.7. (OPTION) Hide the Login timer on the bottom/top.

2.8. (OPTION) Do not show my IP address each on every post, even if it's private.

2.9. (OPTION) Hide all of the theme buttons on the bottom left of the screen.

2.10. (OPTION) Hide ALL buttons shown on the bottom left of the screen.



2.21. Does melonland have Two Factor Authentication?

2.23. Would be funny if there was in option to login with a Security Key.

2.24. ... or fingerprint

2.25. (OPTION) Purge Cache

2.26. Green Text?

>be me
>be happy when melon finally adds the option to post green text. like this. like in some forum that i'm not aloud to say. you get the idea.

*actually don't add this for obvious reasons



3. Accessibility
3.1. Hover over animated text to stop that text from animating. If I remember correctly, This behavior won't work with Spinning text.

3.2. (OPTION) Do not show colored text in posts. (Makes them white)

3.3. (OPTION) Do not show custom fonts in posts, force all of them to be the default.

3.4. (OPTION) Disable CSS in user account pages - This is because sometimes people like to put as much as flashing imagery as possible, for whatever reason. This trend is everywhere in spacehey, and i hate it so much.

3.5. (OPTION) Do not allow GIFs to be animated, or stop them from being animated when I hover over them.

3.6. (OPTION) Do not show emojis. Unicode Emojis will still be shown, though.

3.7. Logout Confirmation

Phew. That's all I could think of...

I can understand you don't wanna do any, some, or most of these. I was truly brainstorming.

[Cobra!]

I love most of these ideas! Especially the Scratch one. That makes me feel nostalgic for when I first used it when I first started programming in the late 2000s!

It could be encourage others here to learn, too!