A few suggestions for possible additions to the forum...

I'm running phpBB on my site (although a slightly modified version of it, I'm running the PNphpBB module with PostNuke), and i've installed a few hacks on there that have proven to be quite useful...

Some of these could be EXTREMELY useful on here given the nature of this forum's general topic (webmasters)..

First up is a couple of BBCodes.

[google]Search Phrase Goes Here[/google]

GREAT one for the Google & the other search engine forum. Ok, so it only saves a few mouse clicks & typing, but could prove to be very useful - I use it a lot on my site when referring people to search for info on a species of reptile that I've never heard of before.

It can also be just a good general tool. When somebody posts a stupid or asked-100-times-already question, instead of just saying "hit google", which they may have already done but not know exactly what to search for, a reply can simply be "try this, [google]exact term to help with the search[/google]".

More polite, and more useful. I know a lot of people, especially those new to the internet can have a real hard time using search engines (although, yes, they do seem to operate pretty obviously for me as they probably do to most of the people who've had a PC for more than 10 minutes, but there are people out there who have simply never needed to use one before).

[flash]http://url.of.flash/file.swf[/flash]

This also supports a width & height variable in the opening [flash] tag... this could be a useful one for those wanting opinions of banners, logos or whatever in the flash forum, although I could see how this one might be easily abused.

Now, this is one that I really really like (not a bbcode tag)... A "watched topics" page. This is something that's included by default in the user control panel section of vBulletin, and something I really missed in phpBB, but there is an addon available to add this feature.

The output is a little messy, so it'd take a little work to neaten it up to fit the gorgeous theme that is already running on this site, but that's a very hand feature. If somebody's posting on 50 threads a day, their E-Mail inbox can fill up pretty quickly. Can be VERY handy to just check a bunch of boxes, and remove a load of 6-month-old-yet-extremely-busy threads off your watch list.

I'm not sure of the exact URLs of these mods off-hand (although the are all mentioned somewhere on the http://www.phpbb.com or http://www.pnphpbb.com sites), I just have the files that I downloaded, but I can either send over those files to you, or hunt out the URLs so you can download them yourself if you're interested.

Opinions?

I think the two bbcodes would be great ideas. I love the google one and think it has much more functionality then just the SE forums, since UNFLUX and I like to tell everyone "did you check out google" or "GOOGLE" or something.

The flash one shortens the html required, but you can still embed flash images.

And as for the final...I don't know about database load for that, since we have had some problems with the read tracking and such, but it is a decent idea...if someone ever watches 50 posts.

My main thing about the flash tag was shortening the code required to embed flash...

It took me a few tries to get the length of text to include the flash banner in my sig to be within the limit...

[flash]http://whatever/somethin.swf[/flash]

Would make life much simpler, hehe.

Yep that can be a bit of a trick to get those flash footers to work!

i've seen the flash hack in a few different ways at other forums.
usually it ends up being something like [swf] or [flash] like you
said. But I don't think it's all the necessary at the moment
here, since not many have even bothered to post anything
flash.

I have no opinion on the other 2, that's going to be up to
Bigwebmaster to decide. Sounds fine to me.

With the flash one I'm using my site...

You can either use just [flash] (which uses a default pre-defined size) or you could do something like...

[flash width=468 height=60 loop=false]

to display the flash the exact image you desire, and whether to set it to loop or not (although, this is overriden if it's coded into the flash file to go back to frame 0 at th end of it).

Yeah, so not many people are posting flash yet, but maybe they will if this extra feature is there to make it easier to include.

And, btw, I'm saying this as somebody who has loathed flash in the biggest way since its inception, heh. It's ok for 468x60 banners (the quiet ones that don't make a sound, or that want you to "shoot the duck and win big prizes"), cartoons (Warner Bros' flash cartoons are funny, heh), and tiny lil additions to enhance a page (A spinning logo or whatever, not huge navigation systems or entire sites built in a single flash file). Other than that, I still hate it, heh.

coming from a flash designer and a flash specialist, and
considering that your banner and your experience is speaking
loudly that you have only ever experienced bad designs, that's
really unfair of you to say.

good designers make good flash -- bad designers make bad flash

I'm not saying that there is no such thing as bad flash or no such thing as good flash, and yes my banner sucks, and I know it, I never said I was a genius at flash.

I've looked at a LOT of flash, and some flash looks good at first glance.

I don't like flash. I never have. 99% of the flash out there is crap (my banner included to most other people). 99% of flash is useless, sites that are entirely written in flash are useless, you can't bookmark specific pages of content, if somebody thinks it's "neat" to have some ugly scroller in their flash site with semi-useful content, it's impossible to print it off, because all the browser sees is an image - whatever's currently on the screen at the time.

Flash has its uses. 99% of what people use it for on their sites are not amongst those uses - in my opinion.

And not just bad designers make bad flash. Those who've only ever loaded the program once or twice in their lives makes bad flash, heh. Just because somebody doesn't make outstanding flash, it doesn't mean they're absoltuely useless at design.