My Favourites -forum

[Kimmo]

Earlier we used YaBB -forum many, many years. Now we are using IPB but there is one thing that probably everybody misses from golden YaBB times, "My Favourites" or what was the name of it.

If you had some very interesting topics you wanted to follow easily, you just clicked "Add to my favourites" -button and this topic was 'moved' to My favourites -forum, which was at the top of all the other forums. So you had like your own forum on top of all forums and inside of it there were all most interesting topics for you, no matter in which forums they "really" were.

On large forums with lots topics/messages, many old members are not interested in all zillion forums/topics, they just come to the forum because of few most interesting topics. On our forums members keeps their "virtual diaries" and many of them are only interested in their own and their friends diary (topic).

At the moment it takes more time and more clicks to see new content of those exact topics. If there would be this 'Yabb system' in use, you just come to the front page and then open that forum and you'll see all your favourite topics.

Would this kind of system be technically impossible in IPB forum? This would be great feature, at least to us :) We know that it works and at least our 20 000 + members would just love it (again).

[Wolfie]

http://community.invisionpower.com/topic/306338-download-bottom-bar-101/

[Rikki]

Although probably not identical to what you're describing, our "Watch Forum" and "Watch Topic" features are pretty close. They allow you to subscribe to forums and topics, and it can email you a digest of recent activity, or you can just check them via your UserCP. In addition, they also display in the sidebar on the board index :)

[Kimmo]

Oh, sorry, moderator can close this one :) You asked the same thing already one year ago.

Great feature still :)

[Kimmo]

Although probably not identical to what you're describing, our "Watch Forum" and "Watch Topic" features are pretty close. They allow you to subscribe to forums and topics, and it can email you a digest of recent activity, or you can just check them via your UserCP. In addition, they also display in the sidebar on the board index :)

Yes, Watch Topic is really 'almost there', but still there is always this extra route to go via UserCP. Few more extra clicks is needed and during 10 years it makes quite a lot extra clicks :)

Watcs Forum -feature is not usable in our case, as the most interesesting forums get this 1000+ messages per day.

This sidebar thing would be good but unfortunately in our case we cannot use sidebar for that as we have ad's there. You know, we do have to eat too :)

[Tanax]

Would that be something similar to what you need?

[Kimmo]

Would that be something similar to what you need?

Yes, that really would be, but your version is very sophisticated :) More simple system would be enough for us, as we are so humble people :) I haven't thought this possibility to share collections/my favourites, as it was not possible with YaBB. We were so happy with that simple YaBB version of this, that we would be happy with that only. All another features would be nice extra of course.

[Wolfie]

You should take a look at the two topics I posted earlier. One deals with marking posts as favorites, the other is an application that gives you a bottom bar (like on facebook) and it includes a 'favorites' feature in it.

[Kimmo]

You should take a look at the two topics I posted earlier. One deals with marking posts as favorites, the other is an application that gives you a bottom bar (like on facebook) and it includes a 'favorites' feature in it.

Oh somehow I overlooked those, didn't understand that they were links to ready made hooks. Thank you, we will check them, maybe one of them will do the trick.

[Tanax]

You should take a look at the two topics I posted earlier. One deals with marking posts as favorites, the other is an application that gives you a bottom bar (like on facebook) and it includes a 'favorites' feature in it.

However, he wanted a system that would enable his users to favorite topics, not posts as your idea was. Also, he wanted to be able to follow those favorite topics. In his case, collections would be better.

That said though, I do like the idea of being able to put a specific post as a favorite. I already posted that in your topic however.

[Wolfie]

Just mark the first post of a topic as the favorite and in essence, the topic is marked as a favorite too. :)

[Tanax]

Just mark the first post of a topic as the favorite and in essence, the topic is marked as a favorite too. :)

Yea, we discussed this in the other topic and I must respectfully disagree. I'm not going to start debating this again so I will just leave it by saying that the first post should still count as a regular post and if marked as favorite it should not add the whole topic to the favorites since you some times want to mark the first post as a favorite and not the whole topic.

[Wolfie]

What you're overlooking though is that when you click to view the favorite post, it will load the topic anyway, and if it's the first post of the topic, then it is essentially the same as marking the topic as a favorite. If you hide the first post of a topic, the entire topic is hidden. It's along the same lines. :)

[Tanax]

What you're overlooking though is that when you click to view the favorite post, it will load the topic anyway, and if it's the first post of the topic, then it is essentially the same as marking the topic as a favorite. If you hide the first post of a topic, the entire topic is hidden. It's along the same lines. :)

Yep, but what you're overlooking is when you look at your "favorites list", how will you know if you marked the first post in order to fav the entire topic or if you just wanted to fav the post? I agree that when you click on the faved post you will be taken to the topic. It's just that your system - in its present state - won't make it easy for the user to be able to see the difference between if they faved a post or a topic. Because when you click your "faved post" and be taken to the topic, you won't know if you wanted to fav the topic(then you will want to go through the topic perhaps) or if you just faved the post(then you won't have to go through the replies). Sure it might be easy to remember if you only have 10 favs, but when you have 100+ favs it'll become a little more difficult :P

[Wolfie]

Which is why they should be able to comment on why they marked the post as a favorite. Their own description of it. :) I already covered that in the other topic.

[Tanax]

Which is why they should be able to comment on why they marked the post as a favorite. Their own description of it. :) I already covered that in the other topic.

Alright, that can be useful.

But wouldn't it be better if it was there automatically? Let's say we go with your system that the posts is what is being faved. How about having 2 buttons? 1 button to fav the post and 1 button to fav the topic(preferably at the top of the topic page). When clicking the "Mark topic as favorite" rather than "Mark post as favorite", it will still fav the first post of the topic, but the generated list at the user-end will be able to distinguish between a faved topic and a faved post automatically. Perhaps with a simple prefix "Post:" and "Topic:".

That way it's still a favorite posts system like you want, only that it automatically provides the functionality to distinguish between fav post and fav topic :) Easier for the user aswell, both when favorizing and when searching the favorites list.

Oh, and when favorizing the first post(rather than favorizing the topic), the user will probably be given a choice as to what prefix to give the faved item, either "Topic:" or "Post:".
And then via the comment field they can comment about the faved item(either post or topic), like "The contest ends at 30th of May" if they were faving a topic about a contest.

[Kimmo]

I believe that if we ask too much, we get nothing. Then again, some people believe that you really have to ask everything, so even you'll not get it, you'll get at least something and those who are asking very little, do get nothing :)

All those features you are talking about are fine and I believe that our members would like them, but do it have to be so fine/complicated system? When I think about that YaBB kind of a solution, it was so simple that everybody learn how to use it and I remember that over 80% of our members used that. At the same time less than 50% of our members ever goes to their own control panel after registration to change their personal settings.

From those linked topics I read that instead of having this kind of a forum favourites system people could use browsers My Favourites system instead. Some do, but it's not the same thing. Our members are all adults and they are using our forum from the work and they cannot save 20 our topics to their work stations browser favourites, as our forum has nothing to do with their jobs. Also, how can you see from browser favs if there is a new messages in those topics?

You cannot order email notication from the forum as in that forum there is like 200 topics but you are only interested in 5 of them. Most of our members do not want email notifications from all the separate topics, as already now there is so much all kind of junk emails coming to everybodys boxes.

In our case the most simple way would be the best and enough. Admin has in ACP place to put this function on/off. In YaBB if I remember correctly admin can also choose how many topics members can put to their My Favourites -forum. And that's it from admins part.

In every topic there is button "Add to My Favourites" and when member clicks that, it'll go to My Favourites -forum, which will be seen on top of all another forums. And thats it.

After that when ever you come to the forums, you can immediately see from the front page if there will be new messages in that forum. If not, you can go away. If yes, you need only one click and you'll see immediately all your favourite topics and if they have new messages and which ones of them. All this needs only one click, I think it's unbeatable amount. No any separate 'outside' section (like personal control panel) so they'll be on forum all the time and will see another categories/forum ads all the time. Fast and simple and users really loves it, at least on big boards/lots of topics/long time members.

[Wolfie]

All those features you are talking about are fine and I believe that our members would like them, but do it have to be so fine/complicated system? When I think about that YaBB kind of a solution, it was so simple that everybody learn how to use it and I remember that over 80% of our members used that. At the same time less than 50% of our members ever goes to their own control panel after registration to change their personal settings.

The idea of all those features is to have it be an evolved system. However, it's understandable that it may start off as a very simple tool that does nothing more than bookmarks the posts.

With tagging a post, when viewing your favorites, the board could always report back when the topic has a new post that you haven't read yet. Could be that you are only interested in that one post and don't care about the topic as a whole, or could be that you want to keep up with what is said. The idea though is being able to read on what you've marked as a favorite, why (if you add a note to it), possibly organize it into folders, possibly share it with others, etc. Also when you are posting something, you could always refer to a favorite and have it included in your post easily. This would be extremely useful for those who have saved helpful posts and make reference to those posts often, especially in an environment that focuses on providing support to its visitors.

[Josh]

All those features you are talking about are fine and I believe that our members would like them, but do it have to be so fine/complicated system? When I think about that YaBB kind of a solution, it was so simple that everybody learn how to use it and I remember that over 80% of our members used that. At the same time less than 50% of our members ever goes to their own control panel after registration to change their personal settings.

Personally, I agree with what you are saying here. More often than not, complexity just gets in the way of a good feature. Some features by their nature are going to have a lot of complexity associated with them, but something like a favorite topic system isn't one of those features.

As far as including this feature, I don't know if we will do that or not. If the watched topic system was used as a base, it would probably not be a difficult modification to create. The mod could add a special forum to the board index, that looked just like a forum, but listed all of your watched topics. For that matter, if the main issue with using Watched Topics is that it's hidden away in the User CP, you could modify the template to include a link to that page in a more prominent place.

[Kimmo]

The mod could add a special forum to the board index, that looked just like a forum, but listed all of your watched topics.

Yes, this is it.