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What to do... What to do...?
My desk is currently filled with Sticky notes with stuff I have to do. All of them are regarding LE*. I figured I could organize them and put up my own personal kanban board next to my PC, but I feel I need to share all of this information with you. I would also like to ensure you can keep track of what happens with feedback and what the outcome is.
So, I've created a public Trello board: https://trello.com/b/Qa80tKpE/lowendnetwork. It is accessible to everybody. It is editable by members. Right now, I'm the only member. I can imagine adding more members to it in the future.
What I will do, is add things I have to do or would like to do to the board. When I am doing something, I will add the card to the 'Doing' column. According to kanban principles, I can do only two things at a time. I need to move those on to the next column before I can start a new thing. This ensures things get done and don't stay somewhere for too long.
The 'Testing/Feedback' column is one I could use for things were feedback is required. I'll see how I gather that feedback, but it's an important column regardless.
Comments
Sounds a like a good idea to me. I will check it regularly and offer my help wherever I can.
@mpkossen:
What's wrong with Vanilla? At risk of posting something that is subject to off topic material, I'm still going to ask you what you may have in mind as for alternatives to it? I'm just curious since I am somewhat fond of Vanilla myself...
I've put some details on the Trello card. You can see them if you click it.
My primary concerns these days is that the focus of the developers doesn't lie with improving the Open Source version but rather with the commercial version. I don't judge them, I mean, it's their choice. But development for the OS version is simply very, very slow and we lack some tools that would make our lives a lot easier. I don't see those tools coming to Vanilla soon, not in the core or with plugins.
An alternative I think is viable, though with enough tweaks, etc. is IP.Board.
I think IP.Board would perfect for LE*, it would offer a more robust alternative than vanilla, and of course.. more features in a way... There are a few themes & addons(mods) for IP.board that can make it seem as easy as vanilla.
I like the simplicity of Vanilla. IP is too feature bloated.
I agree with @Jono20201 however I also think that due to the very nature of vanilla the LET community is now too bloated for it to function effectively.
IP may be bloated with features but you have the option of tuning it to a more minimal set if you wanted.
I love the feel of Vanilla however it is not fluid enough for a large community now, to many threads simply get buried due to no other reason than not being on the first page any more which is not great for hosts either as offers sink off the first page sometimes within a matter of a few hours.
Seems like a nice system Maarten.
If you ever need help/feedback/advice I know there are some helpful people here (including myself) who you can reach out to.
Good luck with the projects
Have you checked out XenForo? Beats the pants off the bloated and stuck-in-the-past IPBoard and VBulletin both, IMO.
Likewise. I would probably be fine with a different board software, assuming the simplicity is unchanged.
@mpkossen: Good ideas so far.
Probably take a few conversions between forum software (Vanilla > PHPBB > OTHER) that would probably be the easier route on converting it.
yea have heard XenForo is good.. A very popular indian forum i am a part of migrated to xenforo from vbulletin and i like it.
One of biggest forum in Indonesia, www.diskusiwebhosting.com, have been moved to XenForo a few days ago.
I'd have to agree with XenForo, it's hella tweakable, and can be as lightweight as you want it to be - while still offering a fully featured forum software.
If you need help with things LE* wise, my offer of assistance answering helpdesk things is still valid
LET without Vanilla it's not LET. My suggestion is hire programmer to fix most of the issues.
I agree.
Honestly, Vanilla makes it stand out from others. I find it much easier to find content then on other forum software. Thinking about LET on anything else makes me sick..
I think I am with you boss.
What are the top 5 issues Vanilla faces right now in the minds of everyone? At last check we're actually running an unreleased version of the OSS package.
+1
The finicky quote formatting. The return/new line formatting (loads of breaks everywhere looks dumb). Maarten pointed out the moderation limitations and user banning not being very easy to manage.
EDIT: Also, the fact that if you just so much as type a letter in the comment box but then change your mind, it saves it as a draft with no way as far as I can see to clear it lol.
Disqus would be the best choice ( http://www.disqus.com/ )
Mandrill ( http://www.mandrill.com/ )
ArcticDesk has REST API. It would be really easy to get those stats.
+1 to this, Disqus is great.
On the frontpage there's a "My drafts" button IIRC
not really.
torrentfreak.com uses it and everytime i scroll down to the comments it keeps saying that Disqus is loading the comments
i have to refresh a page atleast 2 times to make it apear.
Ah fair enough. I've never had any problems.
What you want in Vanilla can be easily done by a good PHP developer. I have been using IP.Board for over one year and I am a IP.Board Modifications Developer, but I would not recommend you to use it here in Low End Talk. However, if you want to, I recommend you to wait for its next version, 4.0.
i really love this current forum system, maybe it has a few bugs but its still acceptable..
if it really bothers you all so much then you always can hire a freelancer to fix some code.
but even if you do that, i still think looking for a backup (alternative) forum system is always a good thing.
Well, from the top of my head, these are the issue in my face (not everyone's I guess):
I realize most of these are issues with the backend, which is where I spend quite some time. The absence of these features makes it harder and more time-consuming to do you jobs.
I agree that Vanilla makes us stand out. We could fork the current version of Vanilla we're using and make it a community effort to improve it? It's a couple of click on GH and we can use all the brains in this community to make it even better.
Alright, here we go: https://github.com/LowEndNetwork/Garden
Yes and no. Yes, it would give you insight into the queue (there's 162 open tickets, 6 in progress, 1 awaiting reply, and 780 closed ones) but it wouldn't let you know what kind of offers are in the queue. Even if we include the titles, it's going to tell you much. Most of the tickets have horrible subjects like '[companyname] Linux VPS Openvz', 'VPS offer', 'My VPS offer', or '[COMPANYNAME]'. A good subject would be: '[COMPANYNAME] - $5.95/M (2GB RAM) VPS Offer'.
These are all actual ticket subjects, with company names removed.