What do you want in Question2Answer 1.7?

Question

I will be setting aside some time in a few weeks to work on Q2A some more. The few changes I already made will be part of 1.7 (instead of 1.6.4) as there is a change in the mimimum PHP version requirement (now 5.1.6).

So as with previous threads, please post the top features you wish to see in Question2Answer!

I do have a few ideas already planned, so there is no need to suggest these, unless you have a particular comment on them:

• Switch to mysqli (already done).
• Speed up loading of questions with many answers/comments.
• Upgrade to latest CKeditor (v4.3).
• Make default theme responsive (I believe Jatin will be working on this).
• More flexible custom HTML areas (e.g. something similar to my Widget Anywhere plugin).

Thanks in advance for the feedback!

Comments

I want QandA to be avaivable for godaddy shared hosting.

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To complete the list:
8. Feature Request: META description for custom pages http://www.question2answer.org/qa/35237/feature-request-meta-description-for-custom-pages
9. Make "Delete" Post procedure clear to all users - using the tooltip http://www.question2answer.org/qa/35259/make-delete-post-procedure-clear-all-users-using-the-tooltip
10. Implement the open source plugin on-site-notifications http://www.question2answer.org/qa/33712/free-plugin-notifications-facebook-stackoverflow-testing
11. Adding a date field to qa_uservotes http://www.question2answer.org/qa/35295/adding-a-date-field-to-qa_uservotes

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@Juli Fier

Did you mean provided by GoDaddy or just usable period.  I am using GD as my hosting provider and it works great.

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# little contribution. I have been searching for the language php files that contain the language but couldn't find them.
# The script is hardest and badest writing to understand. I was wondering if I can use this script for other purpose other than question and answers. I wanted to use it  for classified Ads site. just to change the languages. Any help on this?
# Also recent topic is not a good ideal for someone who has opposite categories.
Example Like math category, english category,  physics category.
And someone who is only interested in math category the home will be mess. As he will be seeing threads on recent topic that does not warrant the attention and it might it might not be topic he really don't want to see.  There for while not including subscribe to categories that should be on recent topic.
I have seen a forum that has this on user profile to select and mark from with check box.
This subscribe category will be on recent topic.
# again a more mobile friendly and easy rich test editor area, as it is currently its not good.
Invite web crawling that scan user email address book and send friend request. Hey your friend is on xxx.com you might want to try it out. Just like linkedin.
# Statistics for total guest and user currently online and their current location. Total number of user visit for each day in a data base static view in form of calendar,  mention of user id. And there user will get notifications that his name has been mention.
# sticky. Sticky of topics
# announcement, admin global and category announcement
# 'New' in hyperlink at the end on each topic to take you down to the new post of the topic since you last visited the topic.
# Simple image attach.

Answer 1

Can we have a feature to change homapage to any of the available pages like, 

1. Activity page
2. Questions page
3. Hot page
4. Unanswered page
5. Tags page
6. Categories page
7. Users page 
8. Ask a question page. 

This feature would be very helpful to a lot of people using q2a on their domains. 

Even somemore pages can be introduced like. 

1. Featured Questions page
2. Most viewed questions page
3. Questions with maximux answers and whatever other categories those can be added.

This feature will give somemore flexibility to q2a platform. 

Comments

+1. To change the default homepage was requested quite often.

Answer 2

I would suggest the following:

1) Improving the editing system : A user can edit a post, if he do so , the author receives a message show the corrections that the editor suggest ( old vs new version) . the author could approve or not the edits( the message will contain an "accept edits button") if he do so the editors earns points ( that super admin specifies in admin options).

2) having a module called "Sharer" this module will enable more social integration of q2a : this module will allow to do the following

a)authentification   b)invite friends c) share question /answer d) add "post answer to facebook/twitter/...)
 

Best regards !

Answer 3

1. A large search box similar to the large Ask Box.  

2. Ability to reply to questions from email and have the reply append to the question.

Answer 4

Hi,

I just installed this software and it seems very nice. However I noticed it uses ini_get and ini_set, disabled in my server for security reasons. Would it be possible to have the next version working without these 2? "Assuming" register_globals is off, safe_mode 0, might not be as restrictive at it seems considering the behaviour of newer versions of php.

Thank you

Comments

As far as I can see, all calls to ini_set and ini_get are preceded by @ so they shouldn't be causing errors.

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but then the ini_set is not made and global behaviour is affected. Unless I have an official confirmation that if I comment these lines everything will work just the same, I'm not going to risk it.

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Hi sebas, sorry I missed this comment. It should be fine to comment the ini_set lines. They turn off features like register globals which has defaulted to off for many years now. Do you know which PHP version you're using?

Answer 5

Improvement request for the admin section: split plugin configuration panels across different admin pages, instead of putting then all in one page.

For example, Markdown editor plugin or FCK editor - all its configuration is related to "Posting", however it appears in "Plugins" admin page, along with dozens of other plugins of different purposes. It is very difficult for site admins to quickly find it in order to change something. It would be better if the configuration of such a plugin would appear under "Posting" section, below the core-related configuration.

This could be easily implemented by calling the plugins' admin_form() function on all admin pages (not only on "Plugins"), with a parameter representing the current section. So when the user is accessing "General" section, the core code would call admin_form('general') for all plugins. Plugins whose functionality would fall into the General category could then display (on the General page) their configuration form.

I hope this makes sense.

This is only an initial thought on this, I haven't looked at what it takes to make this change in the code; perhaps thing get complicated when trying to preserve backwards compatibility. Nevertheless, I would really think this would be of tremendous benefit for everybody at a very small effort. If you would need a help with this, I would be happy to look into it and provide a pull-request on github.

Thanks,

Alex

Answer 6

I have sent Scott my complete qa-include folder with all 30 hacks. Those hacks are simple and can be implemented fast, without security risk. @Scott: I hope you report back soon.

Some issues from the list:

1. link question title on question page → qa-app-format.php
2. allow ajax answers on just-now-closed questions, prevents lost content → qa-ajax-answer.php
3. Give similar questions suggested on ask page bulls • → qa-ajax-asktitle.php
4. option to set nofollow or not → qa-app-format.php
5. option to send HTML emails always → qa-app-mailing.php
6. better content filtering with htmLawed → qa-base.php (see also my posts here)
7. do not show closed question in unanswered lists → qa-db-selects.php
8. remove edit notices from activity page, remove $questions4 → qa-page-activity.php
9. option to reorder elements on ask page → qa-page-ask.php
10. add comment activity to main qa page → qa-page-default.php
11. do not show answer button if spam-limit exceeded → qa-page-question-view.php
12. very customized permit options for editing and closing (even depending on time spans) → qa-page-question-view.php
13. have consistent button order → qa-page-question-view.php
14. only answer form / comment form if logged in user or if requested via ?state=answer (this saves thousands of MB each day on my forum) → qa-page-question.php
15. output userid on user profile page for admin → qa-page-user.php
16. do not show user priviliges publicly → qa-page-user.php
17. anti-spam: do not show profile content if user has few activity (i.e. less than 20 points), show to admin → qa-page-user.php
18. only output profile fields if data exists → qa-page-user.php
19. option to completely disable minus points (!) → qa-page-user.php
20. option to change order of main navigation (!) → qa-page.php

Well, these were the ones I found by checking quickly my qa-include files.

As you see, with my post I am consciously not suggesting new features but rather making the existing q2a core better. If you like some of the fixes above, please comment and let Scott know what you prefer!

Thanks,
Kai

Comments

Some feature requests:
- Please sort the plugins by name in Admin>Plugins. Now they get sorted by folder name!
- let admin upload another avatar, not only remove it.

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Hi Kai, thanks for this. I just wanted to reply to a few of your points. In your list here you say "option to [do something]" but none of the changes are actually options, so they can't be "implemented fast". I'll reply to them in order:

1. This has been done on the dev branch.
2. Your change always allows answers on closed questions so this is insecure.
3. I moved the HTML for that into the theme, so it can be overridden. The default is a standard list.
4. Your change seems to remove nofollow entirely which is bad for spam. You can remove nofollow in the theme, and do it conditionally, too.
5. This would require an admin option to use HTML email, and also the ability to put in custom code for each type of email.
6. I'll check into this but it seems you've restricted the elements too much.
7. That appears to be already done in 1.6.
8. Again, a better solution would be to have admin options for what types of changes are shown.
9. Not sure that's necessary, and can be done with themes anyway.
10. Why? That's what the All Activity page is for.
11. IMO this may be more confusing. Better to show them a notice when they click answer.
12. Most of this is doable via filter plugins. When a post is edited, check the details according to your own rules.
13. The button order is consistent already as far as I can tell.
14. Unless I am not understanding your point, this is already the case. The answer form is not on the page if the visitor is not logged in.
15. That's quite a useful idea.
16. Good idea, but your change hides it entirely. I may set it to hide for logged out users.
17. Will probably implement the idea mentioned by others, to hide users from the users page if they have no points.
18. Don't think this matters.
19. Nice idea, again it would need an actual admin option. (It should be possible to do it in your theme as well, I did at one point.)
20. Yes this makes sense. I'm looking into options to fully disabled selected pages (e.g. the users page) so this would go along with that.

Hope that's useful! You have some good ideas here. By the way, a lot of your core hacks can be done in plugins, so you should look into that - it would make upgrading much easier :)

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Hi Scott, thx for coming back to my changes:

5. option would be nice
6. can't we have this as admin option too, for advanced users?
8. agreed
12. Will try to port the rules to a filter plugin, thanks for the hint!

13. Nope, button order is not consistent. See http://www.question2answer.org/qa/27283/change-order-of-buttons-in-core-for-next-q2a-version

14. No, not what I meant. (answer form / comment form loading). Please see http://www.question2answer.org/qa/27681/how-to-load-ckeditor-only-if-clicked-button-answer-or-comment

19. + 20. would be glad if you implement this as well :)

Answer 7

Ability  in default configuration for the user to choose to sort alphabetically on the  question title  or perhaps on an

optional sort field provided for that purpose  [ The application would be a Q2A site devoted to answering problems from a

particular textbook, in which case it is useful for the student looking for help on a particular problem in the book. ]

Answer 8

I plugin to add advertisements in the sidebar or below the answers etc...

Also, a plugin to enable us to have a single signon with other opensource softwares like Osclass for users to login.

Answer 9

I was testing private message feature on my website. But I couldn't figure out where to look if I get a private message. I have seen whole profile but there is nothing where I can see messages. So if you can at least make a page in profile that is dedicated for private messaging only.
Private message is a nice feature that q2a offers and if it is made visible to everyone in their own profile then it can prove a great benefit to all.

Answer 10

I expect a better integration with Wordpress, i.e.

• user database (user profile picture, wall post, top user,...)
• able to embed certain part of Q2A, e.g. ask a question page, top question, top users... in wordpress page.

Other:

• Comment with G+, Fb...?
• Share/like buttons for social services, I can use Addthis, no big deal but...it's third-party anyway.

Cheers,

Answer 11

Sorry for my english 

Please do so as prevent the user banned and who showed reasons for the ban. Moderators no reason confines users do not know who banned

Answer 12

Thanks. You can find out the release date of this release?

Ordered by my priority.

1. Edit Avatar. 50х50 crop size

2. Social. Choose a male or female and choose your date of birth, year.  If you can see the statistics through the admin panel as percent of registered males and females.

3. Notification. If my follow user asks a question, answer, leave a comment on my e-mail message arrives.