The time has come to start working on the next major update to the S2KI.com site. In preparation for this we are freezing version 3.0 for new features. We will continue to fix bugs as they come up but new functionality will be rolled into the new version.

If you have any feature requests, things you'd like to see, feel free to post them here. If you have PHP development skills and experience and would like to help develop your favorite feature, drop me a PM or email.

Cheers,
Erik (cthree)

 

Some kind of "advanced search" would be really nice. I used to use it a lot.

 

I would like to see the previously viewed threads highlighted in the "Today's Active" forum. They do so in the other forums. Thanks.

 

I would like to have more control over looking through my history of subscribed threads, and more control over how many PM's are shown by default.

1) When I click on "View All Subscribed Threads", I mean just that -- I want it to show the first page out of many many subscribed threads, so that I can trace back in time, no matter how far back it was. Several times something got posted a couple weeks ago and I go in there to look to see what it was and can't find it. The current search feature doesn't seem to return the results I am looking for, either. I end up having to remember someone who posted in that thread, and doing a Search All Posts on that user and tracing back until I see something I recognize.

2) When viewing my list of PMs, oftentimes I am there to follow up on a PM that I recently got but didn't reply to yet. To view the PM list takes a very long time (relatively). It would be nice if the PM list was also broken up into pages, or at least an option of showing "Last 5 days", 10, 20, so on. I want to clarify that I DO like the fact that all PM's are kept alive, and that there's no pressure to organize the PM's into a Saved PM's folder or space constraints. I'm one of those people that likes to have the whole history of things available at my fingertips.

3) Great job on the current version of s2ki. After what happened when 3.0 was released (I'm sure you remember all too well), I absolutely promise that I will not be one of the quick-to-naysay-the-new-look-and-feel if and when s2ki 4.0 comes out, and give myself some time to get adjusted before making any critiques or comments, and I hope others do the same.

4) Keep the Start Button, that has been a great help to keeping the lesser-used-but-still-important features out of the main thread viewing area.

5) I have no clue what it means when a thread is red (the text of the title, not the folder). My eyes tend to skip over these as if they were previously viewed, when instead I should be looking at them again.

6) I recall someone saying to me in person that they missed the flame animation for hot topics. (that is, "hot" as it relates to the rate of new posts in the last day or something like that)

7) I have voted on several threads without meaning to, and wished I had a chance to change or remove my vote. Whether this means there should be a mechanism in place to make it harder to accidentally vote, or to allow the user to change/remove vote is up to you.

 

Version 4.0 is not going to be a major visual change from 3.0, it's going to be mainly functional.

There is a big trend in sites like these, I'm sure some ahave noticed, to add feature after feature, button and link to the point the window is jamb packed with too much information. I resist this trend. If anything the site design with hopefully become a little more organized and straightforward. There will be more help for new users.

The library, the library in particular, the store, the marketplace and many other sections of the site will be cleaned up, in some cases finished, and some new functionality will be added. The forums will get a face lift and general upgrade but it will remain mainly the same as it is now.

I see 4.0 as what 3.0 should have been given more time and resources rather than an entirely new site like version 3.0 was compared to 2.0.

In version 3.0 we started to implement a new core software base which, as it turns out, is great except that it's a hell of a lot of work to get anything done and a new version is coming out which is a complete rewrite of what we use now. That leaves us in a tough spot. We've got a software base which is a lot of work to extend and maintain and is now obsolete before we even got it fully implemented.

Fear not. Version 4.0 will be much more of what we started in 3.0.