Roadmap question2answer 1.8+ Your requests for upcoming core features in 2018

Question

The beauty of a roadmap is that you know what to expect. 

I cannot find Scott's roadmap post, so here are the most important things that I would like to see in the core: 

1. Userids in user URLs instead of only username URLs (stackoverflow is using userids by a reason, no confusion anymore with changed usernames, that got stored in the database etc.): /userid/handle

2. List of Comments for each user (requested so many times also as issue on github)

3. Complete move to Jquery, removing all onclick and inline javascript

-----

4. Possibility to define flexible theme options in admin panel (instead of hard-coding them in qa-theme.php)

5. Base Theme functions for "Ask" page

6. HTML Emails

7. Sitemap splitting if 50k+ entries (sitemap index file) → Done by Ultimate SEO Plugin

8. Reasons for flagging (very often requested, here and on other forums) → Meanwhile I have developed a plugin for this: https://github.com/q2apro/q2apro-flag-reasons

9. Option to disable hotness calculation / hot page

Version 1.8.0 was already a big step! And there is more cool things to be implemented that make life easier :)

Comments

I liked your idea of consolidating feature at one place or use specific tag, which are required for future version of Q2A.

---

User groups and private group categories would be nice.

---

I think that user should be able to block each others, so when blocked, a user cant send mps, answer questions, voting, etc.

Answer 1

1) I don't think it's a good idea. based on profile view counts, db optimization won't make a great difference. and username in urls looks better that userIDs.

2, 3, 6, 8, 9) all good ideas.

4 & 5) because of compatibility with older products it's best to apply it in a bigger version release, such as Q2A V2.0. it's even a good idea to switch to a theme framework instead of using a theme class.

7) Ultimate SEO Plugin already provides this feature.

---

I think the best feature that can be added is Content Recommendation for users. it's quite resource consuming but as you can see in cases like Quora, it's quite worth it. This is how it works: a widget(or popup for new users) will ask user's favorite topics(tags) and allows user to follow them. then through "clustering" of user votes and "collaborative filtering" of user's favorite topics and followed users, we can provide a customized and engaging home page for users.

Comments

Thanks for your feedback! :)

1) It will be /user/1234/username like stackoverflow. This is totally necessary to avoid problems with users changing their names. With my big communities it causes a lot of problems.

4/5) Yes, wished we had a theme framework already...

7) Thanks for pointing out, I will check it later ;)

x) Content recommendation: I think I should fork the q2apro-follow-questions to "q2apro-follow-tags", this would be it, and is quite simple.

Answer 2

I also have some suggestions if you like implement it.

1. Save draft option in editor or autosave in the editor.
2. Block unanswered questions from indexing because of thin content.
3. Stop users from asking questions if their question does not get good response. (like StackOverflow do)
4. Request answers from other users like quora do.
5. Send an email with a related question to a user who gave the answer to the question.
6. Answer for answer option.
7. Inbuilt social share buttons plugin slow down the website.
8. Option to show HTML to show on mobile or desktop.
9. Like Recent, Hot!, Most votes, Most answers also a random question.
10. Move the answer box to last (after all answers) like StackExchange.
11. Add inbuilt infinite scrolling without plugin because plugin slows down the site.
12. Add night mode without a plugin.

13. Show search queries to admin.

Answer 3

that you can place gif images in the avatar

Answer 4

I'm have a big q2a website and in this moment what I need is:

1. users block another users from sending them private messages.

2. a good notification system in q2a core (that loads quickly)