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

My website is still in beta.  I plan to give ownership to contributors.  I realize there may be no surefire way to stop the gaming of a reward system, but I'd like to work toward that goal, and would appreciate any helpful ideas anyone may have.

Just now, I'm trying to figure out how to measure contribution quality in a non-gameable way.  It might help to have a page that shows a list of top 50 - 100 contributors with (1) number of answers, and (2) relative rank of each answer based on number of votes.  Any thoughts?

 

Comments

There are many variables for points in Admin>Points, so it's up to you to decide what is most important. You could give extra points for posting each answer. If you have suggestions for new metrics then go ahead and list them.

One example might be "points per number of days on the site", although that is probably outside the scope of Q2A core and should be done with a plugin. If you need to measure quality manually then you'll need to develop something yourself I think.

Answer 2

Nice !

Maybe so little option 

• Wall showing only for user selected by onwer
• Hide Address IP from Administrator for all (Moderator and User)
• Hide Adress IP from Moderator for all user
• Protect access to the showing the user profile to the external user without connexion
• Block register to use some username like : admin,administrator,moderateur (maybe better to attribut some color for Admin, moderator, Expert, Redactor) than the user will be know who are real level. 
• terms and conditions on register page (solved)

update on 2-9-2014

Thank you Scott

Comments

Hi, for #5 you can make your own plugin very easily: http://www.question2answer.org/qa/27723/dont-allow-people-to-register-with-some-usernames-like-admin

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Thank you Scott,

correct me if i'm wrong, i just add some extra if is possible ?

function filter_handle( &$handle, $olduser )
{
  // allow admins to have whatever name they like
  if ( qa_get_logged_in_level() > QA_USER_LEVEL_ADMIN )
    return null;

  if ( preg_match('/admin|sitename|administrator|moderator|expert/i', $handle) )
     return 'Sorry, that username is not allowed.';

  return null;
}

Answer 3

I have already said about notifcation feature in my previous answer, but can there be something related to updates.

We should be informed if there is any change or update in any of the themes or plugins we are using so that our sites can always remain upto date. If any changes are made in any plugin or theme then we could be getting some informations about that on our website, like in wordpress.

Comments

Correct me if I'm wrong but there is a notice in the Admin -> Plugins section that let's you know if there exists a more up to date version of the plugin to download, right? Isn't that enough? What would you expect to happen when a new update is found? And also, most importantly, what EVENT performed by the user would fire the check for the plugin update that might fire a notification?

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But how q2a get to know that there is a more updated version of plugin available. Actually I haven't got any notice yet about any update and that maybe because there has been no update for the plugins that I am using. But still I want to know that how q2a gets to know if there is an update available. And if by chance that notice is because of Github then what about those plugins those are not available on Github at present.

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Ok, those are valid questions (with no question mark :P). Currently, when you go to the admin stats section (that is the event) your browser queries http://www.question2answer.org/question2answer-latest.php to get the latest version html link and then updates the page with that.

A similar approach is followed with plugins. Plugins can be configured to respond to similar requests. The core checks for certain information in the plugin code and then updates the plugin version so that you can see there is an update. In order for the core to check this, the plugin must be programmed in a way to allow this (it is just adding a few lines in the qa-plugin.php file). Also the file containing that header need to be publicly accessed (such as github).

Knowing this, can you clarify your request?

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Thanks for clearing this out @pupi1985, if this feature is already available then its all good.

Answer 4

Answer by very First person will be given extra points like Yahoo Answers

Comments

This is something for a plug-in. Not everyone will agree for this, and not all website will have such a goal.

Answer 5

1. A new fuction to Theme-Layer which is called in default theme from qa_register_core_modules() in qa-base.php, so themes will be able to load q2a modules(such as events, modules, ...) without needing plugins.

2. in DocType() function in Theme-Layer, replace

<!DOCTYPE HTML PUBLIC "-//W3C//DTD HTML 4.01 Transitional//EN" "http://www.w3.org/TR/html4/loose.dtd">

with

<!DOCTYPE HTML>

it's HTML5 Standard.

3. maybe you can use some other HTML5 tags in theme-base.php (Head: for header, Nav: for navigation, Aside: for sidebar, Article: for Question item and list, Footer: for Q2A footer)

4. add a priority field to layers, so themes and plugins can set it to a desirable number and a plugin can easily change that number.

 

Comments

+1 for HTML5. Also I want structured data like:
- http://schema.org/AskAction
- http://schema.org/ReplyAction
- http://schema.org/CommentAction
- http://schema.org/Rating

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I'm not sure any of those schemas are appropriate for Q2A. The rating one is for reviews. The action ones appear to be JavaScipt-only, and I don't see any actual benefit to using them.

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@QAthemes can you explain what the priority field would be for? Do you mean showing questions higher in the list (e.g. sticky posts)?

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in qa-base.php, modules and overrides are called. there, their order can be changed to let plugins determine their order. only thing that needs to be done is to add a "priority" field to plugins and sort them before module initializing.

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Do you have any examples of plugins where the order is important? I've seen a couple of people mention it but haven't had the problem myself. I think it may be a problem with the plugins themselves.

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1. About base theme

Base theme that user wants to use varies. In addition, the partial change of the HTML code is not realistic. I think that we should add HTML5 base theme to conventional HTML4 base theme. It is so good that we can select base theme in Admin > General like language and design theme.

Site language: English (US)
Site base theme: HTML4 / HTML5 / HTML6(?)  <<<<<<<
Site theme: Classic

Reference:
http://www.question2answer.org/qa/31510/new-plugin-base-theme-changer

2. About plugin enable flag and execution order (weight/priority)

We should add checkbox for enable/disable and textbox for plugin weight on each plugin in Admin > Plugins.

Reference:
http://www.question2answer.org/qa/29187
http://www.question2answer.org/qa/23788
http://bugs.modx.com/issues/6144
http://wordpress.org/support/topic/how-to-change-plugins-load-order
https://drupal.org/node/110238

Answer 6

Recently I started working with Q2A and I found that avatars are stored into database with no option to change this. I know, storing avatars into DB makes it easy to manage them (and dynamically change size), but in my opinion, performance is most important thing. Showing avatars from MySQL, rather than filesystem, require a huge of memory and time for processing (for each displayed image, the server will send an additional SQL query and PHP should process image).

I don’t know why you choose to store images in DB, but for version 1.7 I want an option which will change this behavior. So, what is the probability that this will come true? Wait for a new version or I shliud try to change it yourself?

Thanks.

Comments

Tips: http://www.question2answer.org/qa/24390

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Hi  sama55,
Thank you for reply and useful tip. But this option anyway doesn’t improve performance — avatars are still processed by PHP and the app continues to send SQL queries to database. At this moment I’m analysing how it works and if I’ll found a better solution, I’ll share it with Q2A community.

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Yes.　I am concerned about performance, too. If performance improves by core / plugin, Q2A will be more better.

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I developed a plugin to fix this (but I think, there should be a more efficient way to do this). See my plugin here http://www.question2answer.org/qa/31627/new-plugin-filesystem-avatars

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Nice charenge. Because there are few developers in this community, I am glad.

Answer 7

Thank you Scott, Appreciate your support on Q2A!

Please consider below features for 1.7.

1. Featured questions, admin should be able to mark any question as featured and it should be displayed as top question in questions list. If user answers featured question he should get double points or points decided by admin for that question.

2. Terms and conditions checkbox on registeration page(provide checkbox and link to terms and conditions page).

3. WYSIWYG editor to edit pages(there is plugin but it will be good to have part of core).

4. Better search.(now only QA are searched, add pages to search)

5. Follow users option, like twitter.

6. User reputation system like stackoverflow.

7. Poll system

8. Signin using Google, twitter and openid(part of core)

9. One click upgrade option to new version of Q2A.

 

Ordered by priority

 

Comments

The follow user option is currently available by clicking the star at user page.

Answer 8

1 - Terms and conditions checkbox at registrations!!!

2 - Admin can delete users wall post ( most of users can use swear words! And we cant delete :(

3 - Registration form shows strength of a password during registration

4 - i see this in the pahlawandevisa's answer and i really like it ;

Comments

Here's a related resource that might help:  http://www.question2answer.org/qa/27723/dont-allow-people-to-register-with-some-usernames-like-admin

Answer 9

• support for Facebook opengraph
• retrieve correct IP for anonymous posts when using Cloudflare (see here)
• option to turn a comment into an answer (some people keep posting good answers as comments)
• Q2A widget (with functional search for related questions) to be embedded in other web sites so that people can search and ask without leaving the original web site

Thanks!

 

PS, I forgot one more thing: I often notice that people use Q2A for announcements (like a new theme or plugin) and then the question - answer structure is actually turned upside down: People post their questions as "answers". So you could also add a new post type "announcements" or similar about which other people can ask questions.

Comments

Regarding your last part, we do have the "ask related question" function, which people have used many times on here.

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You mean by last part the "PS", or the "widget"? Maybe this link makes the suggestion with embedding in external pages clearer: https://www.uservoice.com/widget/ Not exactly the same but similar.

Answer 10

On delete of a post, also delete related words in qa_words table.

Answer 11

• ability to sort answers by vote date active

• ability to search tags

• ability to search users

• notification system

• open pages that have two tag like stack  :  http://stackoverflow.com/questions/tagged/objective-c+iphone

• better user page http://stackoverflow.com/users/480231/1110

• add option to increase answer's maximum character

Comments

For your last request, have you seen this?
http://www.question2answer.org/qa/8870/how-to-change-max-8000-length-in-asking-questions

It's just two changes so should be quite straightforward.

Answer 12

Here's some of my own. I'd rather see new features for users than for admins.

1. Notifications. A symbol showing the amount of new notifications and a page describing the updates.
   • Example: Your answer got 2 votes | +20 points.

2. Bounty. Offer an additional reward to a question and have it featured in the main page. SE feature.

3. Promote question. Limited to 5 questions at the same time. The user pays a sum of points to have a question featured in the main page untill it reaches a number of views. Quora feature.

4. Ask to answer. Similar to bounty but in this case you offer a reward for a specific person to answer. Users with the most points in the categories/tags are displayed first. Also, users can set a specific price for being asked to answer. Quora feature.

5. Mark question as unread. A feature common in e-mails and RSS services. Opening a page marks a question as read but you can also "mark as unread" to easily find it in the future.

6. Justify flag. Not everyone comment before flagging. A small field to justify the flag is very useful for moderators.

7. Edit history built in design. Users with privileges to edit can see all previous versions.

8. Moderator log. Contains every action performed by anyone, including Super Admin, with an undo button.

Comments

I voted up for the bounty idea only.  The others not so sure about.