Topic: members have the choice!!

[thehj]

hello there, the idea is to let the members customize the portal and blocks, meaning that the admin provides the possible blocks and the member chooses what they want to be viewed... something similar to igoogle and other customazible sites
for example...
weather block
clock
last topics

the member chooses the blocks they want, and where to view them (right, left, ...)........

some admin options:
obligatory blocks
default arrangement (if the user customizes nothing, they will have certain blocks viewed and arranged as the admin chooses)

[ccbtimewiz]

That's actually a very clever idea...

[Nathaniel]

Yeah, I thought a bit about this sort of idea earlier in the year. Allowing useres to customize some of the features of their portal would be quite nice, it would be even better if they could use Ajax and javascript to move them around while viewing the portal/forum.

The main issue is that there are many different things that admin may not want their users to be able to change/hide/move/etc. It could probably work best as a mod, so that it could be more complicated without adding extra complexity to SimplePortal (completely up to the devs though).

SimplePortal does currently have the 'collapse' feature for each block, which gives the users some choice for their blocks.

[willerby]

To start with, allowing users to choose from a range of blocks would be a neat feature. Admin should be able to override so that some blocks always appear and can't be turned off. Not sure moving blocks is a killer feature but would be a nice addition later...

[thehj]

thank you ccbtimewiz

willerby, exactly

nathaniel, i was about to open another topic about the AJAX idea, can it be done?

i know admins and moderators hate the off-topic posts but allow me to add some more ideas:


1. in simple portal, there are right, left, top, bottom... the idea is to make center column.... let me explain... now the top and bottom are surrounded by the left and right columns: so is it possible to make the top area above the right and left column, and the bottom below them... the center column will be surrounded, on the other hand, by the right and left columns... the center would be useful for the home portal (front page portal)

2. i had a forumotion forum (www.forumotion.com), the blocks system is devided into 2 systems... the portal (front page) and widgets (side and top-bottom blocks)... the pictures in the attachment show the interface of both, you can drag and drop the blocks then save the desired arrangement... and of course, each has a modify and permission buttons

sorry for being too "requestive", but simple portal is one of the best projects i've seen, i'm a bad coder, so at least i can help by providing some ideas

[Nathaniel]

Ajax could be done and would be nice, just would be fairly hard to do well.

1) If you just want to swap the order so that it works like below, then I can probably post a few template edits that can do that.
<--------               Top               ------->
<- Left ->  (Center area) <- Right ->
<-----               Bottom              ----->

The center area is where the normal forum content goes, or the SP articles.

2) Not entirely sure what you are requesting. You can already choose to show certain blocks only on the portal, with that feature you can effectively do what you want anyway, by adding top or bottom blocks, that only show on the portal.

[thehj]

thanks nathaniel, the 2nd request was a multipl one:

a. to seperate the front page from the side blocks... so that you customize the front page and side blocks easily.... it will be easier if side blocks have a page (in the admin center), and the front page has its own page

b. to view the portal in the admin center as a table, something like the one attached above....

c. storing blocks and using them later

d. drag and drop

i know, all of that is already available, but this is more flexible, i guess


another idea:
3. bbc blocks having the bbc buttons and a wysiwyg system

thank you very much

[Nathaniel]

2) Okay, so essentially you are suggesting ways that the admin area could be made visually easier for admin to customize their blocks. Those things could be hard to implement, but they would be quite nice for admin.

As with all these good suggestions, they would be nice to have, but probably not the most urgent features to add.

3) That is already on the list of features to add: http://simpleportal.net/index.php?issue=45.0

[thehj]

thanks a lot