Before getting to the name a quick update to all those people who have been asking about the status of Simple Forum Version 3. Yes - it’s a little on the late side. I had hoped to release before the end of January. But the good news is that it is code complete and the number of bugs or problems we are finding with the new code are declining swiftly. I very much expect to have it running my support forum in the next couple of days - at the latest the weekend - which is one of the best tests it can have.

So - back to the name. A few weeks ago I was sent a link to Simple Forum. Stunned, I was, to discover that there is actually a commercial web forum software package that goes by the same name as my humble WordPress plugin. I debated whether I should change the name of mine and then basically forgot about it again. Until this week, when a security vulnerability notice was posted against this other product and some people immediately figured they were talking about mine. Even one of the sites who raised the notice put a comment on my plugin page with the foreboding message ‘Beware’! This was plain stupidity of course and showed an amazing lack of judgement. But it is there and I responded to it and the guy went very quiet.

But it bought back into focus the question of whether I should or should not change the name. And to be totally honest - I just can’t make up my mind.
Maybe I will. Then again… maybe I won’t. But if anyone has any good ideas - do please email them to me.

As I have developed just about all the features I personally wanted to see Simple Forum capable of I have selected to open the floodgates to user requests. This does not mean that everything people ask for gets added but certainly requests that garner a lot of support will be considered and coded if feasible.

if you want to have your say and out forward your requests - or just want to keep an eye on what comes up - please do so at the Discussion Forum created for the purpose. You can contribute directly of just subscribe to the RSS feed to keep abreast of what is going on.

Please do NOT use the comments to this post for requests!

And any help is always welcome.

I have today, as planned, released Simple Forum version 2.1 and it is now available for download along with the User and Troubleshooting Guide. (See the Simple Forum plugin page).

This is a recommended upgrade for all users - including those on the beta or RC1 releases. A few days ago I was made aware of a SQL injection hack that can be used against the plugin to obtain the admins user credentials. This should now be fixed and addressed in the 2.1 version. This has meant that some very late code has been added to this release which has not had the benefit of a month of testing. if any problems are found because of this, I will issue patches as necessary.

I have today updated the beta available for download to Build 228 and consider this a Release Candidate. No more changes unless for fixing bugs and correcting problems.

Target release date for the final V2.1 including updated documentation - 15th October 2007.

If you upgrade from the previous beta of 2.1 you should just copy the files over the top of the existing ones. Read the Notes that come with it before you proceed - just in case!

A quick look through the support forum will reveal that there is one request that comes up again and again for the future of my Simple Forum plugin - and that is a way to identify which ‘new’ posts a member has or has not seen. A few users have become quite passionate on the subject and obviously think I am stupid for having overlooked such a trivial detail. Many stand-alone forums offer this capability (I understand) so why doesn’t Simple Forum?

Well - there are a few reasons. The quickest is that I have not implemented such a feature but the real reason is that I have not yet found a model that works. And this has been my response every time this has come up along with the challenge that if someone suggests a model that does work then I will look at it and see if it can be done. And that still stands.

But first - I’ll talk a little about the background. A major piece of forum software is a giant undertaking involving lots of people. Because that is all it does they can shape the ‘engine’ any way those people decide to shape it and do whatever they want to do with it. In the case of Simple Forum it is just me, my MacBook Pro and the confines of the WordPress architecture. It was also, as the name implies, intended to be ’simple’! It has become, of course, anything but.

So - I have said it before and I will say it here again so in the future I can just point people to this post and thread. I don’t want to do anything that will bog down the WordPress database and bloat the plugin so much that it slows to a crawl. That’s the first and most important point. Next, consider the following:

If I have 1 forum member and 1 forum post - I need to have 1 piece of data (a switch in effect) to record whether that 1 member has read that 1 post. If I have 10 forum members and 10 posts, I need 100 switches. At the time of writing this, my forum has 120 members and 3008 posts which gives a grand total of 360,960 pieces of data! And this isn’t a busy forum!

So - using this sort of method is not really viable. There has to be another way if only I could find it. What I DO do in Simple Forum, is log the date and time a member last visited, This is not noted at login time or, for that matter, at logout time as most people, I am sure, fail to log out at all when they have finished their visit. It is noted when the system determines that they have not loaded a page for longer that 15 minutes. When this is discovered, the date and time is recorded against their user record as their last visit. Next time they make a visit, all posts made since that recorded date/time are marked as ‘new to them’. But, of course, as they visit or read these posts (if they do and I can’t verify they actually do read them) then the ‘new posts to them’ flag is still set as is their last visited date. How can I make it so that these change as posts are read?

The first and obvious thought is to update the ‘last visited’ date/time in their record to match each post they open as they do so but, of course, this has the effect of removing all the post flags if the first one they open happens to be the most recent of all so this doesn’t work either.

So this is the challenge. Everyone wants it to happen nobody knows how to do it! And when the answer materialises it will probably be easy and it will be one of those forehead slapping moments. The best solutions are always like that. And if you have an idea then please join the discussion and let me know.

I have tonight upgraded the forum plugin on this site to an alpha build of 2.1 - mainly to start to test out the new stuff but also to ensure that the bug fixes that have surfaced are locked down. But it’s the new features that I am quite excited about two in particular.

The first is a new sidebar template tag that lists the most recent posts. It’s different to the current one because the text that gets displayed is configurable by the user. But also it gives the option to use AJAX (well it’s AHAH really) to refresh itself so anything new coming in can be quickly noticed.

The other main new feature is the cross linking of blog posts to a forum topic. This works both ways allowing a blog post to create a new topic in the forums or the other way around. This is something I’ve been wanting to make a start on since the beginning of the project and at last it is starting to materialise.

And a few other ‘goodies’? I have optionally added the ‘math spam’ to user registrations. Since I did this on my site here, rogue/spam registrations have dropped from about 120 a week to about 2 so I am delighted by this. There is also a new option to not use the math spam when an admin or moderator is posting which sort of made sense. MSN Messenger IS is a new option in the user profile as well as the ability to view all topics to which any member has posted.

The rest are bug fixes - many of the them embarrassingly stupid and some very important so the small feature set is now fixed for 2.1 so that the bugs can be tested out so as to get this into the field as soon as possible. Thanks to all the people using this for their suggestions, requests and for catching the problems and letting me know - usually in a most understanding way.