WISH LIST

[squarepusher]

As the season winds down, i'll be looking for new features to implement here at Brewerfan.net.... I'd like to keep this thread around so I can have sort of a checklist on items i'll be working on, and a way to keep everyone notified on progress on them.....

 

So please, if you have any ideas, submit them here and i'll add them to the list. Prerequesites define issues that need to be addressed before work on the feature can begin. Difficulty rankes the item on a scale of 1-10 (with 10 being the highest).

 

** NOTE: No suggestions for the message boards themselves, please. I don't have the ability to modify any source for EZBoard software. (It's hosted by EZBoard).

 

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PHOTO GALLERY

description: browsable online gallery of digital photos

prerequisites: Server with more space

difficulty: 3

% complete: 0

 

CUSTOMIZABLE HOME PAGE (Portal/Portlets)

descirption: allow the user to pick what content they want to view on the home page. Will be using the Jakarta Jetspeed framework (jakarta.apache.org/jetspe...ndex.html) for development.

prerequisites: none.

difficulty: 8

% complete: 25

 

DOWNLOADABLE MEDIA GUIDE

description: a downloadable / printable media guide to serve as a supplement to the official Milwaukee Brewers media guide. Will focus heavily on minor league information and brewerfan.net specific information (Power 50).

prerequisites: none

difficulty: 6

% complete: 75

 

POLLING

description: a non-message board oriented poll to be located on the hoem page.

prerequisites: none, but would like to work out the portal/portlet issue first so users can choose what they want to see on their home page.

difficulty: 5

% complete: 0

 

INJURY TRACKING

description: a system for tracking injuries, including date of injury, date of placement on the DL, estimated date of return, date of return from the DL, injury type, injury occurrence type (nagging, freak play..etc), and screens for reporting this information. Also, a portlet to be added to the options for the home page once the portal project is complete.

prerequsites: none / portal (for the injury portlet)

difficulty: 6

% complete: 10

[Katuluu]

Some type of photo gallery might be nice.

[BMuch]

How difficult would it be to add a "printer-friendly version" link for each thread?

 

There are times that I am interested in a thread and would like to print it and read it while I am not in front of my computer. I know I would appreciate this feature.

 

Anybody else that might appreciate this?

 

Thanks

[Frisbee Slider]

I've never thought of that before...I guess there ARE times when it'd be nice to read some of the longer threads away from the computer...

[Katuluu]

*COUGH*

 

** NOTE: No suggestions for the message boards themselves, please. I don't have the ability to modify any source for EZBoard software. (It's hosted by EZBoard).

 

*COUGH*

[950opsLHcatcher]

It might be possible to "grab" the threads from EZBoard and make them into a printable version elsewhere, but I don't see that as being easy or space-effective. Interesting idea, tho.

[pogokat]

highlight everything, copy it, paste in notepad and print...it wont be pretty, but it will work

[Katuluu]

Has it ever been considered to do a poll on the main page? Colby's recent poll seems to be a perfect example of something to have on the main page, even if it makes Massbrew cry.

 

Shoot, that's reason #2 to do it. http://forum.brewerfan.net/images/smilies/wink.gif

[squarepusher]

I think polling on the home page is a very good idea.... However, the home page is getting to the point where it's becoming overloaded with information (or maybe just not laid out in a manner that is condusive to showing massive amounts of info).

 

WARNING: TECHNICAL DETAILS FOLLOW

 

The overall goal for the home page is to turn it into a portal (like my.yahoo.com) where users can pick the portlets they want to see, can configure them (let's say you only want to see the 1 newest daily brew and the 5 newest transactions, but only transactions involving MLB and AAA).

 

This website is programmed in Java, and I leverage some Java frameworks that allow me to develop things quickly (like reading and writing from the database, page flow, logging...etc). Sun Microsystems has just released the "Portlet 1.0" spec. Which basically means that if I adhere to certain "standards" while developing the portlets you see on the home page, other people will come along and write the code that allows the user to configure those portlets (which saves a lot of time, and allows the site to basically be upgraded by other developers while I sit back and do nothing).

 

The problem is, it's going to take a few months for people to develop the framework, while there's already a framework out there that doesn't adhere to the new standard. (Analogy: I could record something in Beta now, or record it in VHS later). I'm leaning towards waiting, which means I'm not going to really want to touch the home page for a few months.

 

END NON-TECHNICAL SPEAK

 

So basically, yeah, i'll get around to it http://forum.brewerfan.net/images/smilies/wink.gif

[Member]

I'd prefer the Portal and Downloadable Media Guide. Since you have to wait on the portal and the season is almost over, I've got no problem waiting a few months for them.

 

Like I can make you get them done sooner anyways.

[Katuluu]

So basically, yeah, i'll get around to it

 

Isn't this what you said two years ago about building your own message board?

 

Is your middle name Selig?

[filthyfrog]

I'd still like to see an organizational depth chart by position, as detailed a while ago. Here's a link to that thread: Organizational Depth Chart

 

Also, I think we need a comprehensive injury report for all the hurting players in the organization. Just a list of injured players with details such as nature of the injury, DL status, estimated time of return, etc. would be outstanding. Maybe even links to articles that talk about the injury. We could also have an injury watch that lists players just coming off an injury, players nursing a sore hammy, Jenkins when he gets hot, etc.

[xisxisxis]

We seriously need an ignore feature for the message boards. If EZboard won't implement the feature in the near future I am willing to spend some of my time looking for an alternative message board that offers that feature......If you ever plan on writing your own message board code, Brian, that needs to be a function on the top of the list.

[squarepusher]

Regarding the ingore feature:

 

"shewolf2001 posted:

other boards have a great feature which lets you ignore users.. this is akin to killfiles on usenet... this is a great way to keep people happy that don't like other people without placing judgement duties on admins, individual users can choose to ignore other users and their posts don't appear.... also similar to ignoring people on yahoo and ICQ etc

 

I don't believe in banning people or censorship.... everyone has different levels of tolerance and different lines.. this puts the power in the hands of the individual users... they choose who they would like to read and who they don't want to read... it is a simple solution that avoids huge amounts of debate over what is and is not acceptable... moderating or screening people's posts is also extremely time consuming..."

 

"SarahStar reply: I suspect that ignore would be just as problematic to implement as ban--unless the problem user didn't catch on and so kept posting with the old user name.

 

This could be dangerous for Admins and mods--they'd need to be warned not to ignore users so that they could watch for TOU violations.

 

I've also always been a big fan of just skipping over the posts if you really don't want to read them."

 

Sounds like they're not high on the idea, David... I agree that this should be a feature as well tho. I personally wouldn't use it, but I understand why others would...

[SenatorShriv]

I think that some sort of a "posting for dummies" item should be available. I'm starting to get the hang of it now, but I would have caught on a lot quicker if there were some simple instructions as to how to register on EZ board and here, put together a good post, adjust preferances, personalize a post, find good sites for info and stats, etiquate, explaination of the Jargon used here (link report, power 50, etc...) etc... you get the drift.

[Member]

There is a link for that already, provided by EZBoard. Its right on the first page of the forum:

 

EZBoard Help

[SenatorShriv]

My bad!

[Nefaste]

I'd like to see the stats line for the last 5 games played for each minor league player like they have at espn.com for the major league players. I'm not sure exactly how much extra data that would require, but I assume it's doable based on how you already collect the information for their overall stats.

 

Also, squarepusher, I did some development in java for a couple of years, I was wondering if you'd ever be willing to let others see some of the code behind brewerfan, I've always been curious about what it looks like.

[squarepusher]

I'm currently not storing stats for each game, so what you described isn't possible. I'm only storing one record for player per team per season.

 

Regarding the source code, i'm going to probably keep the lid on it for the time being. Maybe i'll draw up an architectural diagram and put it online so those who are curious can see it. It's actually a better representative of how the site operates than the source code itself (considering there are 738 classes, several XML config files and countless JSP pages one would have to wade through).

[SenatorShriv]

With the recent banning of Buddy, and other questions about censorship coming up lately, it might not be a bad idea to have some sort of a posted policy regarding behavior and consequences.

 

It might help in keeping this site professional.

[BrewCrewin2005]

I would like a printer friendly version of the power 50

[1992casey]

I hope I have the right thread, but since the stickies by definition are right at the top, I should be close enough.

 

I think a Site Map would be a good idea. Most accessibility guidelines encourage including one, and I know I look for them when I get to a complicated site. It could even become more valuable if we're allowed to customize the main page. It'd be an alternative to be able to see all that's available.

 

Question: Does EZBoard let you customize at all? Tool tips for the emoticons would be handy. (I believe it involves adding the 'title' attribute, but I'm not 100% sure.)

[1992casey]

Navigation links, like you have on the rest of the site's pages, would be a nice addition to the FAQ.

[tookej]

I was thinking it might be interesting to have the post of the week. I guess this would be the best post as voted on by the members. This would encourage quality posts reward the guys and gals that put so much time into there posts and are the back bone of this sites success.

[mothershipconnection]

I was thinking it might be interesting to have the post of the week. I guess this would be the best post as voted on by the members. This would encourage quality posts reward the guys and gals that put so much time into there posts and are the back bone of this sites success.

I second that. But I don't think we'd even need voting, Brian or Colby could pick one, or Jason could just include it in the Daily Brew.