Syn-Journal development thread.
 

Hello all :),

Scence the release of vBjournal lite there has been a big demand for modifications to that hack, because it lacked some fetures (like paging).
However it is one of the mosted used hacks out there because there is such a big demand for the script.

I was going to try and upgrade vBjournal when the author was no where to be found, but he has posted back and said he will countine development (last I heard),
so ive decided to code my own from scrath.

Here is the feture list thus far, idea's are welcomed :)

User functions::

Posting entry's

- Smilie box
- vBcode box
- Emotion icons
- Mood's (with images in drop down)
- Now Playing
- Notifiy me - Get a email when someone makes a comment to your entry
- Buddy Entry's - Allow only members on your buddy list to read and comment on journal entry
- Private entry's - Only journal owner can read entry
- Important entry's - Act like sticky threads.

Journal 'home page'
- Most Actvie Journal Today
- MyJournal - Quick display of your journal's info
- Journal listing (Show's all journals in a table sorted by pages and username)

Viewing Journal

- Summary box with some info about the member
- Entry listing (include sort and paging functions)

Viewing Entry's and comment's

- This page will mostly act like threads, except the Journal entry will apper at the top of all pages and have a differnt layout then comment's.

Admin/Mod Functions

- All user actions/perrmissions controled in usergroups
- Can Delete/Edit all comments and entry's (perrmissions based on usergroups)
- Can Delete/Edit all journals (perrmissions based on usergroups)

- Flood Check (Option): specify how long members must wait after posting comment/entry before posting again
- Easy View's (Option): Delay view counters on journals/entrys to save server load
- Close Journal (option): Only admins may access journal when this is on

This is what I came up with, I am sure alot more is wanted. :)

Looking good! Can't wait to see it

Suggestions:
- Customizable templates (journal user can customize colors on (a) preset template(s))
- Automatically link user buddy's journals on the side when visitors are viewing entries

That's about all I have right now :)

Looks good! I didn't want to use vBJournal because something was missing on it... Maybe a more cleaner journal would be simply perfect!

As I've posted an example in the beta hack forum of an all-around custom journal [ https://vborg.vbsupport.ru/showthrea...6&page=1&pp=15 ], I hope something like this is recoded and made fairly stable. ;) The major custom blog issue is a pretty large one that really needs some work with a decent thought process, but it's certainly high on my list of priorities.


But other than that, the vBulletin buddy list could also be used for "journal friends". If x friend is on your buddy list and x friend has a journal, then display x's most recent entry on your journal's friend page using a version of the Alpha[Generator] template I provided in the addon (see the addon link above for screenshots if any of you haven't already).


And I was going to recode all of those setups I had added to the old journal.php into a menu from the admin panel, but yet again since you're going to redo everything I'll have to wait and see what's in store. :P

+ link from profile with journal entry name
+ buddies view private entries
+ search for journal
+ search through journal
+ display all journals
+ display all entries on multiple pages
+ attachments
+ HTML allowed in entries
+ journal catergories
+ only certain usergroups can create entries
+ user has ability to disable comments
+ currently playing music
+ emoticon legend on add reply and add comment
+ flood checker
+ ability to personalise/customize journal colours, fonts and background
+ New journal entires and comments appear in new posts and searches
+ admin override that you can edit, delete, or lock
+ It must have an archive by year / month
+ A mini calendar with a link to every day posted
+ If several posts in one day, than than they are united under one date, not repeating it several times.
+ A WYSIWG panel (as HiveMail)
+ Download as txt file hack integration and Vb code in titles
+ Can have multiple attachments and place them where you want $attachment01 $attachment02 style
+ Zodiac and Age hack integration
+ Notify me when someone replies to this journal


[high]ported this over from the other thread, so sorry if you've already done em in your initial post[/high]

i'm very curious over whether or not you've actually started coding or not?

yes coding has begun, hopfully I will have something to show soon. :)

sounds great, i've been waiting on this for ages

Funny how the journal system described above is almost exactly what I already have made for vB2....

Mine contains 90% of those initial functions / features, and a fair amount of other functions not listed above...

I don't yet have most of the stuff that sabretoothe listed, mostly cos some of it is really difficult and takes a ton of file edits (and thus I decided against 'm), and others just cos I've been preparing those for my Journal System for vB3 only, not for my vB2 one.....

You can see mine here, btw..

yours is a great script Kura, altho not sure i like the thread view journal and comments, i prefer it how it is, where you click to see the comments, and have all the journal entries on one page. i also have a few concerns about layout but bar that it's awesome.

basically just means that he'll have to implement a bunch of my requests/suggestions in order to move away from the couch journal look and feel ^_^

I like the idea of the new journal type system suggested by Anime-Loo. I think it will be a lot better for users.

Kura Fires is nice as well, althought I thought it could be laided out a bit better, overall it looks fabulous.

I would suggest the following options:
Web Cam of the person(hyper link to their camera or where their pic is)
Gender Notification. (Maybe a way to link the gender, flag, and zodiac stuff with vBulletin and post in the postbit and in the journal bit.)

hmm I just forgot the other two i had, but let me know what you think so far!

Great job!!!!

Actually, the new Journal System I'm writing will have it optional, ie. View entries and click through for the comments, or view it like it is now.

Layout is just a template issue. Though I can assure you that the layout for the vB3 Journal System is going to be much better :)

Any thoughts of releasing it?

from what i can gather and from the sound of kura's first post he gathered also Loo's sounds as it his will look like Kura's in terms of Journal with comments underneath kinda thing


[high]webcam:[/high]would be better to leave something like that down to integration, as once i cam hack comes out chances are you'll see alot of users install it, not to mention they key to the greatest hacks is the ability to build on em, hence the popularity of the store hack.

as for the the gender things, that's as standard but would be ported over from the profile so really it comes down to if you're gonna make users install it or not as some may not want to, so best to have it as a plug in.


edit: tbh for now i'd be more than happy to just install vbxb but i want my users to pay for the ability to personalise their journals so until store integration comes out [high]*hint hint, nudge nugde, squint*[/high] i won't even upgrade to that, and then after that i guess i'll start worrying about all these vb3 based journal systems, which by the way if anyone needs help with i'll be happy to offer assistance :)

Yes, I will release my vBulletin 3 Journal System on vB.org.

I will also release it with an Importer script, so that you can install it and import the existing journals on your site that currently use the vBJournal that so many people already use, at the moment.


I think perhaps Anime-loo is going to do a lot of work that I've already done, so maybe we should see if we can combine our efforts and just make one heck of a vB3 Journal System :)

I know that my vB3 Journal will be fairly modular, in that you can 'add plugins' to your site that can be used in the Journal System..


Stuff like a Gender in entries is easy to do yourself, though. Add a profile field for Gender and just use the proper template var to display it. :) (don't forget that my journal system will be for vB3 only, anyway).

it's a smart idea, i couldn't see myself changing anyhoo :)

i like the idea of a converter/importer :)

you two working together would be great, good luck with it :)

There's no way that the journal should be crammed with coding. I know a lot of neat features are cool but I'm sure some unneccessary features can be left out. Maybe we can have a basic journal with the features Anime-loo already listed and then some mini-hacks to go with it.

as long as the personalised things come out or gets an add-on release when i'm ready to upgrade i don't mind lol

Koutaru: my current Journal System isn't crammed with code, really. It's large, true enough, but it has a large amount of functionality and features in it.

The new one I'm making will not be crammed with code either, but be made fairly modular so that you can install a rather 'clean' version, but also the more comprehensive one.

I can not wait to upgrade to vB3!

a journal is a personal diary of your feelings, actions and emotions, it should reflect that not just in the writing but also in the look imo.

There's a lot more work to it when you want to properly allow your users to customize the look and feel of their own Journals. As I only intend to deliver real high-quality Hacks for vB2, the look-and-feel customization will probably be part of the Deluxe version of my hack... :)

I can not wait to see your hack!

i would also like to see a converter hopefully from vbjournal lite => synjournal

Thank you to people who are working on Journal hacks/integration. The efforts are appreciated by us plus all of our users. Since this is a call for features, I will add a couple comments. Some of it might be redundant; I skimmed thread but might have missed something.

• ability to easily add/remove Journal moderators in admin cp
• ability to disable private entries in admin cp
• a "report" feature for lurkers to notify the moderators
• link from user postbits through to user's jorunal
• some sort of paged organization, either by month or number of entries
• search capabilties (of some kind)
• a "last edited by" forced feature that shows if user edited journal or if moderator took action
• integration with a common user warning system (yes, I know this would be a huge pain)
• ability to list or display journals in order of who is most active/popular in last week or month (not since beginning)

I know these are some crazy requests, but since this is an open call for suggestions I thought I would just put down some ideas. Again, thanks for the work on Journals. :)

Some of those features are already in my Journal system, the others are good ideas, though I'll not implement them all in the way you portray them. For instance, the User Warning system will just go via a usergroup permissions system in my journal, as you'll be able to limit a variety of aspects on a per-usergroup level, with my JS.

i was also thinking of something, was gonna make it but the ability isn't something i possess as of yet

anyway using all this RSS stuff as i understand the ability to import entries from another journal would be great.

Here are some more comments:

• create ability of entries and comments to apply towards poster's overall post count
• allow "ignore" function to be active in journal area
• ability for journal moderators to block or de-activate a specific poster's ability to use the journal area (similiar to forum-specific suspensions)
• ability for journal moderators to lock a specific poster's journal (without suspending the actual poster)
• ability for journal writer to decide if they do not want replies to a specific entry
• restrict the length of journal entries to match the number of characters allowed in normal posts (or allow a separate maximum length for journal area)
• ability for people to convert from other journals/blogs and transfer all of their material to the message board's journal area (I know it is crazy request, but people always ask for it)

I just offer these comments, feel free to sort out which (if any) are useful or relevant. Again, thanks for the work with journals. :)

I've adjusted the items to be numeric so I could more easily respond to 'm :)

1) good idea, I've not yet included that :)
2) already planned for that. Tachy C will apply to my Journal System as well, ignored users will appear the same way as they do in posts;
3) planned in my version: new usergroup permissions:
- Can View Journals;
- Can Have Journal(s);
- Can Comment on Journals;
4) already planned for it :) 'cept I don't have Journal Moderators, the permissions are just in sync with Admin and Super Moderator permissions. Admin can close (locked but visible) and disable (locked and invisible) journals, delete them, edit them, etc. S-mods can lock and optionally disable, but not delete nor edit.
5) already in my system as well :)
6) good idea, I'll implement a separate setting (plenty of cases where you don't want posts and journals to be limited to the same amount);
7) this is not just a crazy request, it's also a near-impossible task. The problem is that we can't write an import-script for such things, simply because we won't have access to the database, only to the final output (the html pages). Since virtually Every online journal site allows users to totally customize their display, this can be a completely impossible thing to automate, thus you'd have to do manual copy-pasting after all..

RSS (and XML) feeds are not useful for doing importing of journals from one site to another. You want to generate XML data files for that, and then write an XML parser for this.

However, the idea is good, and as such I shall write an Import/Export Journal Entry function that will work with my own filetype, and not XML files (as that would be way more work). :)

i guess it would be basis for someone else to continue on if they wanted, could lead to the ability to import LiveJournal's and what not:)

I'll be impressed if someone can do that. Live journals are customizable and as such, the HTML is never generally the same, in some cases not even Close to being similar. Very hard to separate content from markup that way...

wouldn't it just be a matter of looking for certain strings?

Nope, I know for a fact that the html output from Livejournals (for example) is incredibly awful and has NO useful identifiers whatsoever that you could use in a regexp to gather the desired data (ie. the journal content itself).

I've not yet encountered an online journal site where they've done proper HTML markup that's thusly useful that we could fetch the data automatically. If you can show me one that does it consistently, I could write an importer for that specific one, though, but I don't know if it's worth the hassle....

Kura, great hack!
Later on, I'll write my huge wishlist for the deluxe version, as for now - good luck! Any deadlines for the first release allready known? The public release?!

Respect, Marco

No release dates planned yet, at all.

I'll be able to give an indication somewhere in december :)

can't wait as long as the layout doesn't differ from the vbJL version my users shouldn't be too baffled, but saying that i doubt that'll happen as your users have no idea what vBJL is lol

oh well atleast it seems like 1 hack down and only really 3 to go.

The overview layout will be very different, and there will be some differences to the journal layouts as well (for much bigger efficiency and userfriendliness). However, as said, the display style of Journal entries (ie. overview of titles, then one entry per page with comments, OR overview of entries with separate page for viewing the comments) will be a user-setting (that the Admin can globally enable/disable if desired). :)

w00t, i think i've found my journal ;)

question, the deluxe version be able to compete with the likes of LJ, DJ and GJ? as i'd really like to attempt to take them on :)

The deluxe version will definitely be able to compete, as it has a lot of Very useful features for your entire site, not just the Journal part :) (stuff that LJ etc. don't have)

I'll not go into details (though if you hang out in #Kura on the Devcore irc network you would've known some of it already :D), all I'm gonna say here is that the Deluxe edition of my Journal System will provide functionality for any average site with a community, that far exceeds being 'just' a Journal system. :)