Google/Gmail approach to vB

[ragintajin]

What if instead of creating forums and subforums, we could assign "labels" to posts, just like the way you can label emails in Gmail? Kinda hard to explain but here's an example:

A user starts a thread: "Shaq to be traded in 3 team deal"
The user then assigns the following labels to that post: NBA Rumors, LA Lakers, Houston Rockets, Orlando Magic.
Now you can visit any of those four forums (NBA Rumors, LA Lakers, Houston Rockets, Orlando Magic) and that same post will be shown in each one.
What do you guys think? I'm not a database specialist...would the database queries be realistic/reasonable?

[jamslam]

That would probably be a nice hack if you wanted it.

But yea, it would be realistic... You would just need an extra field that contains the IDs of the other forums it's in... probably delimitted by a comma. Anyway... That's how I'd do it.

[Surrix]

If I understand you right there used to be a hack for vBulletin 2 where when you recieved the email saying someone has posted in a topic you were subscribed to it would allow you to reply to that email and it would post it on the forums. You idea is taking that a few steps further but you might want to find it as it would be great reference to start with.

[Bane]

According to Jelsoft it's impossible :p I've tried getting this out of them multiple times. Basically what you are wanting it to allow a post multiple forumid's yes?

[merk]

i cant see why you couldnt have seperate threads referencing the same posts (though, the thread itself is constructed the other way around)

[Radon3k]

Another idea may be to have it linked in other forums. For example you post the topic in one forum and based on the keywords the thread title may appear in other forums but is actually linked to the original thread. That way there are no duplicate threads.

[MrNase]

Some people @ www.boardunity.de (german :)) had the same idea a couple of months ago. We will write a new bulletin board software which has that feature just to see if it's possible or not.

[Matrix28]

Sounds like a good idea. From a database point of view I would say it is possible.

[Dean C]

Of course it's perfectly possible :)

[Shining Arcanine]

According to Jelsoft it's impossible :p I've tried getting this out of them multiple times. Basically what you are wanting it to allow a post multiple forumid's yes?It would require a large redesign but it is far from impossible. It would change how forums and their moderation tools work, which is something I wouldn't want to give up.

[cirisme]

I find this to be the one of the more obnoxious aspects of GMail, personally.

But it's an intriguing idea. I kind of like the idea of having multiple threads point to the same post. :up:

[Shining Arcanine]

I find this to be the one of the more obnoxious aspects of GMail, personally.

But it's an intriguing idea. I kind of like the idea of having multiple threads point to the same post. :up:On 2nd thought, maybe it would be possible to post redirects in other forums... Just a thought.

[Jan Klerks]

This would be great. I'm running a forum on skyscrapers and buildings, which is now doing with a coexisting functional dimension and a geographical one. It would be great if people could make a thread count in both a functional category and a geographical one and let the viewer decide how he wants the forum to be organised.

[colicab-d]

Heck even if its simple as google it stil be a v.kool piece of kit and i can think of about 4 uses already id have for it :). Be even better as an addon to vb where we could organise anything

[Wayne Luke]

Actually, we are implementing MySQL's FullText search for users of MySQL 4.0 and higher. It is being tested on this forum right now.

You could use this to do something like what you want when it is finally implemented. A user could store "keyword searches" that could be linked to and present them with a "Custom Forum" layout which holds the information they seek based on those keywords. The possibilities are endless especially if you allow members to "share" their searches with others.

However, you have to remember there is large differences between vBulletin and Google's software. We don't have control over what is on a user's servers or compiled into the PHP handler. We can make recommendations but we still have to cater to a broad market. This is actually a limitation which Google doesn't have. We are also using an JIT-Compiled language which brings its own series of limitations and benefits. Google's applications are compiled for speed and efficiency. There are just some things you can do on a compiled application that can't be done easily in a script.

[drumsy]

On a somewhat related subject, the CMS I use, www.subdreamer.com, incorporates with vBulletin's user database. A requested feature, and one that is slated for a 06.30 release is something similar to this.

I would generate an article for the front page, and then select each forum that I feel the article would apply to. Upon submission, each forum gets a thread advising of an article of interest that has been created on the front page, as well as a link.