This Forum Was Built From Scratch!

As the topic says... This isn't an off-the-shelf forum solution like we've used in the past (such as Invision Power Board, phpBB etc). I've built this completely from scratch for this website and it's fully integrated into the rest of the system.

Some features might not be working fully (although I have personally tested it extensively) and there may be things in other forums you're used to seeing which I haven't built in yet, so let me know if you spot any bugs or anything which you think can be improved.

A few things that may be added in the near future:

• Uploading images to use in your posts. Currently you must hotlink an image from somewhere else on the web.
• Direct / Private messaging to other members
• Creating polls
• Automatically embedding Tweets if users post links to them
• Spoiler tags (BBCode)
• Live chat room (development already in progress)
• Notification system so you'll be alerted if someone replies to one of your posts
• Post reporting so users can report spam or offensive / rule breaking posts which admins can review 

If anyone else has any requests or feedback, let me know!

I'm going to update this post with a list of everything that has been added as functionality to the forums:

Forum Index

• Categories (e.g. General Discussion, GTA VI)
• Categories can specify which user groups can View, Reply and Post New Topics within them.
• Categories can have an unlimited number of child / sub-categories (e.g. GTA VI -> Online -> Crews)
• The category icon will be highlighted if there are unread topics in a specific category.
• Recent posts
• This shows the 5 most recently updated topics applicable to your user group. If you're a guest, you won't see any Members Only topics here for example.
• Forum Stats
• Showing the total number of posts, topics and the most recent new member.
• Mark Forum As Read
• A button has been added to the top of the main forum index which allows users to mark all topics as read. This means only posts made after this button is clicked will be highlighted as unread.
• Online Users
• A count of the total users online in the last 30 mins, number of members and number of guests.
• A list of all users who have been online in this time period. Users who are private are not shown here.

Specific Forum

• Shows any sub-forums (if applicable)
• Lists all topics with pagination.
• Pinned topics always show first in the list, otherwise topics are ordered by the most recent post first.
• Topics track the last time you viewed them and will show if there have been new any posts since your last view.

Topics

• Posts inside topics are also broken across multiple pages where necessary.
• Topics can be locked, which essentially makes them read only and no users can reply.
• Topics can be moved by an admin to a different forum if they've been created in the wrong place.
• Topics can be deleted by an admin which will delete all posts within them.

Posts

• Posts can be made using forum-standard BBCode. Not all BBCode functionality is implemented yet but more will be added over time.
• Users can reply to another post. Rather than quoting the post content directly into their reply, the system tracks the original post and includes it inside their reply, meaning if an admin had to delete or update the original post, it would automatically be updated for the reply.
• Users can edit their posts and provide a reason for their edit.
• Users can Like other people's posts. Clicking on the heart displays a list of the users who have liked a post.
• These likes will be used in the future to generate a type of reputation system.
• Users can Report posts if they feel they are offensive or break the forum rules.
• When a post is reported, an admin will either take action on the post (edit or delete) or they will mark the post as approved, which will prevent the post from being reported again in the future.
• Users can include images in their posts:
• By hotlinking a hosted image from somewere on the web
• Upload images from their device directly to this website (restrictions will apply)
• Browse their uploaded images and choose one to add to their post
• Browse all images from the website image gallery and choose one to add to their post

Profile Settings

• Modify your signature
• Setting: Disable all signatures (This will speed up the forum and make it less cluttered)
• Setting: Private Account - Hides some advanced information from your profile (such as date last seen online, location, bio), you won't show as online.

Need a way to show new posts at the forum level similar to IPB. Maybe light the ring around the image like a highlight? Hopefully a simple change of the image class.

Yeah I'm thinking either highlight the ring, make it semi-transparent if there are no new posts, or even just have a 'NEW' icon next to it if there are new posts. I'll play around with it and see what works best.

Update

All done. On the forum index, the category images have 50% opacity and a greyscale filter applied if they have no unread posts. If they do have unread posts, they have a colored border, show in colour and are 100% opacity.

I'll take it. No colored ring for the dark theme, though. Works on daylight.

There's a second style sheet I need to update for the dark theme. I'll make similar changes there and it should work the same way.

Update

Should be working properly now.

I've added functionality for users to add a "Main Image" to their topic. They can leave it as the default (website logo) or use an image from a URL, an uploaded image or an image from the website gallery. The image they choose will be used as the thumbnail on the topic listing and will also be used as the preview image if they share a link to their topic on social media or on whatsapp etc. Here's an example

When you create a topic (or edit the first post of an existing topic), you'll find new options to create a poll. You can set a question and up to 10 answers. You can also specify if users can have multiple answers or just one and optionally specify a time for the poll to automatically close. Only logged in members can view poll results and vote on polls. A feature coming soon will also allow the poll creator to allow members to reset their vote so they can change to something else.

And a multiple choice one...

The user notification system is live. You'll see a little red icon at the top right of the screen if you have any new notifications.

Your notifications page will show:

• Any likes on your posts
• Any replies to your posts
• Any votes on your polls

New notifications will be added as new features are added to the forum.

I've tweaked some of the back end code with regards to images posted on the forum. The system will try to determine the width and height of your images whenever you create or edit a post with images. By adding the width and height to the image in the HTML it means the browser knows exactly how much space to allocate for it, so when you're scrolling a topic the page won't keep moving every time a new image loads.

This does mean there might be a slight delay when you create or edit a post, especially if there's lots of images, so please be patient.

Let me know if you have any problems with images going forward as it could be related to this change.