[dwx]

Hi Badshah,

I think you've written a GREAT addon! On our forum we use it primarily for the STG (SHOWTOGROUP) feature, so senior members can see restricted content and the junior level members have incentive to advance to the senior levels.

There are a few ideas that I had to make the addon a bit more functional and configurable:

Toolbar/BBcode ideas:

1. Shorten SHOWTOGROUPS to be STG, but leave the SHOWTOGROUPS tag as well so that old posts will continue to work.
2. Add an additional tag of SHOWTOUSERS for STU, just for completeness.
3. Add two check boxes to the SHOWTOGROUPS and STU tag's dialogs that will allow the poster's friends to see the content, or the posters ignored users to be blocked, both of these "checked" functions should override the groups that the users belong to. And I suppose admin setting to enable these check boxes or not.
4. Add a third check box to leave off the green box and outline. And and admin setting to enable this check box or not.

Core functionality ideas:

1. Add an option to NOT map the HIDE tag to anything. i.e. jsut don't have the button or do anything with the code. We only have SHOWTOGROUP active, so we effectively have 2 buttons that do the same thing, although if we change the mapping in the future, a lot of posts will expose content that wasn't intended to be seen. The remappable HIDE tag is a liability.
2. Allow the Green Box and outline to be optionally enabled or disabled. And possibly have the HTML code for the green box in a field in the control panel so the admin can edit the look and feel of the box. Possibly introduce some standard variables like {allowed_groups}, {allowed_friends} and {ignored_users} that can be used in the "green box" code to show WHO can see the content to all viewing users.
3. Add an option to ALWAYS block users that are on the poster's ignore list. (As a global setting)
4. Add an option to always ALLOW users that are in the poster's friends list. (As a global setting)
5. Allow the admin to select which usergroups show up in the dropdown box for the SHOWTOGROUPS tag.

Nice to haves (but not critical):

1. Allow users for the STU tag to be chosen by name instead of user number (similar to how you pick users for PMs)
2. Add a pick from friends button on the STU dialog that will bring up a list of the poster's friends and check boxes to quickly select them.
3. Allow the admin to choose the usergroups AND the order to be displayed for SHOWTOGROUP tag dialog. Also allow the admin to chose if selecting a group just effects that group or that group and ALL the groups higher on the list. (e.g. we have senior user groups defined as escalating ranks: bronze, silver, gold, platinum. Right now the poster has to select ALL 4 ranks to show content that requires a "bronze" rating. It would be nice if the poster could select "bronze and above" instead of individually picking the usergroups.)

Lastly, you need to come up with some way for us to pay you for this mod! You're doing great work, I'm sure that at least some of us would like to give you something for your efforts!

Oh, and PLEASE ANSWER the PM that I sent you about that other matter!

You're really done great work here, your efforts are definitely appreciated!