RPTools.net

Every time I log on and see Developer Notes highlighted I get all excited, thinking we have news/updates on the next release, then I come in and find that it is people speaking some crazy language.

Dreams crushed
Spirit shattered
Smile turned upside down
Boo

Zandari

Tell ya what, I'll go post an update to the dev progress right now

he brings up a good point, though, is it possible for non interested parties to block out a certain subforum, so they dont receive the light bulbs?

Not that I've been able to find.

I usually start at the top of the forum and click the "Vew New Posts" link, then scroll through the list until I find ones I want to read. Of course, this sometimes means that I'm not reading stuff that perhaps a moderator should be reading (!) but I don't particularly care about the LFG/LFP forums or the Living forums... (Which is why if people see spam or other forum abuse they need to let me know by clicking the "Report this Post" button.)

I know at least on vBulletin, you can create "User groups" and set forum view permissions by group.

I'm sure this can be done here as well.

The neat thing on vB is that you can make groups "User Opt-In"

Meaning a user goes to their UCP, selects the group, and clicks "Join this group"

This is used on another forum I'm on, one specifically for a miniatures wargame.

There is a "Games and Roleplay" forum (with subforums).
Recognizing that these things
A: Generate a LOT of new posts and
B: Are not of interest to most people

They made access to it contingent on being part of a user group.
And then you have to opt in to that group.

Works extremely well, and is entirely user-administered - no work for the admins beyond the initial permission settings.

Okay, I think I see where you're going with that...

Each forum would become accessible only to a particular group and the user would opt-in to the group to see the forum? If this were true, they would at least need to be able to see the forum heading if they couldn't see the posts inside the forum...

That could be extended to apply to all of the forums on the site, although probably just starting with the second-level ones (the top level ones are General, Tools, and Other) such as User Creations and MapTool.

That sounds like a newcomer wouldn't see most of the posts though because they wouldn't be opted in yet. I suppose someone newly registered could be automatically added to all groups and let them opt-out instead. Hmm, the more I think about it the more I like the opt-out instead of opt-in approach.

You don't need any posts in the forum visible.

You just need a public post somewhere explaining how to access the opt-in groups.

One of the "Read Me" stickies is the logical place.

And you don't have to lock/set permissions for all forums. Just ones that would be considered "narrow" or "specific"

This forum is a good example. So would the game-specific subforums in LFG.
If I'm not looking for or following a D&D game, then I can choose to hide the D&D forum.

Same for Running Campaigns.

I see that phpBB has a groups feature, found here: ucp.php?i=groups&mode=membership

Just set some groups to "Open Membership" and that should do it.

If you want, make a test forum, lock it to members of "TestGroup" and make it open membership. Then let some people know how to join the group, and voila.

I put the "opt-in" information in the forum description. We'll see how many people actually find it.

If this little test works out, I'll start a larger scale roll-out of this in the next few weeks.

Thanks for the help, palmer.

Took me a moment, but only because I can't read.




It is my deepest shame.

Argh, it's not working as properly desired...

So I wasn't opted in.

However, I still saw the "New Posts" icon for Dev Notes. I go in, and I see the Java forum, marked as new posts... but no new posts in the main forum.

Clicking through to the Java forum, I get the message I need permissions.

I haven't tested this with the "View New Posts" function (I never use it), but it is still tricking me just like the OP - Dev Notes appears to have new posts, but it's not true (in the way I want to be true).

The way the OP and I want it is that the Java forum is completely invisible until we join, which would require instructions in a sticky in a public forum.
I'd say General Discussion, and the sticky elaborates on all the groups

Final Verdict: Test run is working, but it does not solve the OP's problem.

Okay, I changed another setting (something about displaying the subforum in the parent forum's post listing). When I view the forum as you for testing purposes... nope, I can't be sure it's showing me the right thing. I'll let you take a look and tell me.

If it still doesn't work, we'll go back to putting it like it used to be and I'll check the phpBB3 forums some time this week to see what is needed to accomplish this...

Not sure this is working how you want it to work.
I still saw that there was a new post in the developer notes forums, and then the sub forum when I clicked on the developer notes forum even though I was not subscribed to the group.

Yeah, sounds like it's not working the way we'd hoped. Or I just haven't set it up properly (which is quite possible too!).

I'm leaving it like it is for now and I'll go visit the phpBB3 documentation site and start reading later this week...

We're running on themost current version pf phpBB then, so the docs are accurate?