What would you like to see added to EC?

The chatroom and forums will be better integrated in due course (once my ADSL internet connection is in place) by moving the chatroom to the same server and linking it into the forum membership database. Give me a month or so.

We also want to have a site front page with links to the forum, chatroom, rules (which we need to create), list of recent threads/posts, number of people in the chatroom, website news etc. Now I have direct access to the emptyclosets.com server, this is all now possible without us having to wait for others who have more important priorities. Dave will be helping with the graphics etc too.

There is an option to allow HTML in forum posts but it is a serious security risk so will not be enabled. The forum does use BB Code which allows most of what anyone would legitimately want to do with HTML (font sizes and colours etc, links, images) without the risk.

 

Dave has been pushing for this for months in the mods area, but until recently it would have had to be done by the site owners who have higher priorities (###) and never quite got around to it. Now I have full access to the server I can start to take care of a lot of this myself.

 

Well we have a forum for longer term more permanent discussions, and a chatroom (including private chats) for instant messaging type chat. That's all this site can reasonably offer.

If specific members agree to chat on MSN/Yahoo/AIM/whatever, or phone/text/Skype each other, and exchange their contact details by PM for this, then that's up to them. But it's not the sort of thing this site can offer or have any involvement with or responsibility for.

Remember that quite a lot of our members are under 18, so we have to comply with the relevant laws for accommodating that age-group.

 

You are correct that HTML in posts could not hack the site, but it would be easy to embed code that will install crap on peoples PCs without them knowing (especially if they are using Internet Explorer). Once you have HTML enabled people can embed PHP, calls to scripts on other sites etc. We do not want to go there, so HTML will not be enabled.

Most online quizzes give the results in HTML and BBcode form, and the BBcode version can be posted here easily.

There add-ons for embedding YouTube videos etc into posts, which I will be looking into in due course. These allow specific content from specific sites to be included, rather than anything from anywhere.

 

Possibly, but we will show a few options and get people to vote first.

Initially it would be the graphics etc for the new stuff and the top of the page rather than the actual forum itself. I do want to have a full-width option for the forum though as I don't like it all squashed up in the middle.

 

I don't think there are any options in vBulletin for this, and I really don't see any need anyway.

If post counts became a big deal (which I hope they won't as they are largely irrelevant) I would just remove them from the info to the left of posts. I certainly do not want to get into discussions about whether posts are "good enough" to qualify as posts, and find that suggestion somewhat offensive to some members.