MREInfo.com

KMan:

Can a sort feature be added to the member forums such as is in the member-list?

JFK

What kind of sort where? In the member list, you can choose to sort by username, join date, location, etc. Are you asking about sorting posts?

I'd like to see the ability to sort by:
Topics-Replies-Author-Views-Last Post
from within a forum.

That would make finding items easier among other uses.

It would add a powerful tool to the site and mimic a database.

Well, there are five columns of info on a post listing:

Topics - not sure how useful this would be - you'd probably be better off searching.

Replies - this might be useful to find the most replied-to items

Author - if you want to see all the posts by an author, you can get this via the memberlist

Views - this might be useful to see the most viewed items

Last Post - this is already the default sort

So we're really just talking about being able to sort on Replies and Views, right?

KMAN:

Having the ability to sort by replies and views would be helpful for looking at the numbers. Also, sorting by author would be a plus.

Being able to sort the topics can be useful. It's use can help avoid duplicate posts and as an additional "search" tool quick and easy.

KMan:

Any thoughts on adding additional sorting capabilities to your site?

JFK

Just FYI, this forum uses phpBB, an open source bulletin board package that's written in PHP. It's quite configurable but I don't believe it has the feature you're asking for. In theory, almost anything can be added by someone who can program PHP; however actually doing that can be a great deal of work. And, after it's done, you can no longer load phpBB updates. Instead, each one you load has to be altered all over again to support your new features. Thus, keeping up with security patches and new features becomes a real hassle.

I don't blame kman if he elects not to do the work... your best bet might be to hop over to http://www.phpbb.com/ and ask *them* to add the feature.

RoastBeastFan pretty much hit the nail on the head. We're using phpBB here so really, anything can be done. There are pre-built "mods" available that make it easier to add new features like attachments, spam prevention, etc. But you can also make any custom changes if you know a little PHP and have the time.

All these mods do make upgrading to newer versions more painful, but in the end, the mods usually add good features so they're worth it.

As for your requests for more sorting options, I don't want to say I won't do it - I'll definitely put the request on "the list". But on top of the list right now is getting a *ton* of foreign rations pages added and and I'd really like to see a lot of those done before I make any more tweaks to the forums.

But I will say...if anyone on here is phpBB-saavy and wants to do the research on a mod that'll do these sorting functions easily, I'd be happy to look over what you find and even use the mod if it's easy enough to install (some mods are only a few lines and can be done in 5 minutes while other mods are a lot more involved). This is how the YouTube-inline-viewing feature came to life - one of the members pointed it out to me and I got it installed.

KMan:

As you may already be aware phpBB has a new release of their award winning community based site feedback forum ver. 3.0.01.

This software has the forum sort feature and a cool feature which includes being able to e-mail topics. Among other cool and innovative features that were previously suggested phpBB 3.0 allows for improved image attachments.

Well worth considering.

Link
http://www.phpbb.com/about/features/?si ... fd13647a8f

I'm definitely keeping my eye on phpBB 3.0. I'm just waiting for it to stabilize a bit more. It's currently at 3.0.1 so maybe after a few more .0x versions, I'll look to start moving over. But I've done a lot of customizing on this version to it'll probably be a lot of work convert over.