Should I do it?

[miffy495]

Ahahaha! Well played, sir.

[toblix]

I'm so excited, I wish my forum avatar would reflect it.

[ThunderPeel2001]

ROFL. Very good

[ThunderPeel2001]

I'm so excited, I wish my forum avatar would reflect it.

Don't worry, dude. I got your back.

[toblix]

That's racist!

[Erkki]

I just got user sign-ins via OpenID implemented. Some day in the future I may add username/password login, and possibly Facebook and Twitter. Still loads of things to work out, but when I get the following done I'll try to get it up somewhere (anyone knows a good hosting provider that supports Java?):

* sign-ins (needs UI improvements and some additional features -- currently there are no fields besides 'username')

* profile editing (needs at least signature/avatar editing)

* browsing the forum list (somewhat done, needs better UI)

* browsing threads in a forum (really basic and ugly, needs work)

* posting new threads (nothing done)

* viewing posts in a thread (needs lots of tweaking, currently there's only flat [i.e. non-threaded] single-page viewing and everything gets loaded at once)

* posting replies (needs additional features, currently there's just an editor and a "post" button)

* editing posts (needs UI tweaking, and maybe adding immediate updates for people who are viewing the thread where the post appears)

* removing some HTML from posts (i.e. so that users wouldn't be able post (script)alert('Hello!');(/script) or something more malicious.

That's all I have planned for the first version, plus delete buttons for admins. It will lack a lot of things: search, admin pages, tags, BBCode (will be HTML only), profile pages, visually distinguishing unread threads and posts etc.

[Erkki]

I have a really EARLY preview up and running. A few warnings:

* it's ugly. I'm not a designer

* it's more of a series of hacks than real code currently. I've been using it to learn the Lift framework. Bugs lots there of may be. Eventually I'll refactor it and make it completely bug free, guaranteed.

* not even all of the things I listed above are done, so it's really really basic

* Google sign-in doesn't work for some reason. I haven't tried them all, but at least Wordpress.com sign-in does work. BTW others will not see where you sign in from, well, except I will if I have to go muck about in the database, but I probably won't have to look at the users table.

* sometimes you'll have to refresh the page for changes to take effect (posting a new thread, changing wysiwyg editor)

http://109.74.194.143:8180/

[edit]of course, by "I'm not a designer" I don't mean that this is how I would design a forum, but that I haven't gotten around to that yet, I'll try to get the functionality first.

[toblix]

Looks cool, but I'm unable to sign in with both Google and Yahoo! Keep us posted.

[Erkki]

Now accessible from: http://tinbullet.in/

(changed the port to 80 so the previous url doesn't work)

[Erkki]

Bug fixed. You can now login with Google and Yahoo!

The problem was missing SSL certificates for java.

[SignorSuperdouche]

I can confirm I signed in with my google credentials with no hassel at all. I even managed to post a post

At this stage I'm not sure it's worth giving detailed feedback as I'm sure you're well aware of most of what I'd have to say anyway. Excellent work so far though

Also, what does Möla mean?

[toblix]

Yup, also logged in with my Google account too, as well. Nice job so far. Really digging the post editor, however the experience is greatly marred by the topmost header not being a linked to the main page.:tdown::tdown::tdown:

[elmuerte]

I logged in with my own account ... wee...

[Erkki]

Thanks for the feedback, guys.

Also, what does Möla mean?

It's roughly banter in Estonian.

[Erkki]

I added some preliminary avatar support. But no uploading yet, it only gets the avatars via. OpenID (Attribute Exchange or Simple Registration). I know Yahoo! supports it, don't know any others.

To try it, if you didn't sign in with Yahoo! at first and have a Yahoo account, you can now link another OpenID after you've signed in with one (click the Settings link).

I will add uploading soon, and may add Gravatar and Pavatar support later.

Also do you think posts without an avatar should be indented like the ones that have an avatar?

[Erkki]

Also, I'll probably be taking a small break in development now (I haven't played any games lately, except beating Batman 3 times), so I'm not sure when the next improvements will come.

[Erkki]

So, I tried to continue developing it, but have spent the last two hours getting everything to compile. Since I was using snapshots of Scala, Lift etc., and Maven updates those pretty much automatically, everything broke (exaggeration). Yeah, Scala's backwards incompatibility problems are infamous.

Anyway, maybe I'll get it working and add a couple of features tomorrow.

[Hermie]

Great job, I love the way posts instantly appear. =) Would really love to see this go somewhere great. ^^

And I have to add to the chorus saying that the vB backend is a pain in the ass. <.<; impossible to navigate that mess. ._.

[James]

Really digging the post editor, however the experience is greatly marred by the topmost header not being a linked to the main page.:tdown::tdown::tdown:

So I think Erkki has fixed this one, but each thread could do with a link to the sub-forum it's a child of. It's fiddly to have to go back to the home page then click through to the sub-forum you were looking at.

Otherwise, cool. I posted a horrible mess.

[Erkki]

Darn... it seems I won't get it working properly until Scala and Lift are synced again (probably will happen in a month). This will give me an opportunity do some boring back-end stuff I guess.

[Ben X]

I haven't actually tried the version you shared a while back, but another thing that would be cool is if you could tag someone in your post, twitter/facebook style, so if you mention someone in a thread whom you'd like to respond, you can make sure they won't miss your post.

E.g. my post fao Nevsky in the 'plug your shit' thread - would be great if I could have typed '@Nevsky' and known he was going to get a little notification next time he logged in, or the thread would be highlighted for him or something.

[Erkki]

I haven't actually tried the version you shared a while back, but another thing that would be cool is if you could tag someone in your post, twitter/facebook style, so if you mention someone in a thread whom you'd like to respond, you can make sure they won't miss your post.

E.g. my post fao Nevsky in the 'plug your shit' thread - would be great if I could have typed '@Nevsky' and known he was going to get a little notification next time he logged in, or the thread would be highlighted for him or something.

Thanks for the idea, that sounds good. But I'm not working on it any more at the moment I may pick it up again in a few months, depending on when a thing related to it will be planned. When it comes up, I'll try to complete a 'lite' version that is actually useful.

[Snooglebum]

It doesn't seem to work for me, it's "page not found"-ing on this end.

[Erkki]

It doesn't seem to work for me, it's "page not found"-ing on this end.

I stopped paying for the hosting, and the domain I bought started pointing to someone elses IP

[Ben X]

I finally managed to read all my unread topics and get all the board icons grey on the main Idle Forums page, and it gave me another (ridiculous) idea:

Instead of just the board icons, the whole forum wallpaper (or whatever you'd call it, the header and all that) is all grey and boring if there are no unread topics, but then if you refresh and there are new topics, it's all bright and lovely and happy!

I know you're not really working on this any more, Erkki, but I thought I'd turn this into an 'internet forum wishlist' thread.