Hi there :)
I'm running a very fast growing community based on oxwall and my users ask me if it is possible to make those things possible:
- Picture-Uploader should not re-convert into JPG so that animated GIFs and transparency in GIF and PNG are possible.
- For the administration it would be awesome to block email adresses for registration. It would help to prevent spam bots (Many bots are known with a single email address)
- Links should be editable/deleteable by moderation and administration
- Re-Sending of a verification mail should be possible for administration
- Protecting all uploaded pictures from hotlinking would save ressources for the server.
- Wildcard-Search for users (e.g. searching for *something* in their profile and not only for the first letters of their name/profile entries)
- Blocking user-profiles should be possible for everyone, so you can block content, posts and other stuff from a single user
- It would be wonderful if I could set a group to "Moderated", so nobody can join and see everything in that group. In addition to this, you should be able to set a group "private" to make it invisible for everyone except moderators and administration. But you are still able to send an invitation-link to users.
It would be AWESOME to make all this possible in a next version and my users (today: 825 users!) would love you :D
Greetings,
Hati
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Some ideas for a better Oxwall | Forum
Team Den
Oct 11 '11
Thank for detailed feedback Hati.
- Picture-Uploader should not re-convert into JPG so that animated GIFs and transparency in GIF and PNG are possible.No, it's impossible. Script converts uploaded photos to JPG and resize it with standart utilities.
- Links should be editable/deleteable by moderation and administrationDo you mean plugin "Links"? If yes, then this plugin is available for moderation, isn't it?
- Re-Sending of a verification mail should be possible for administrationNot sure it is too critical to have for admin such option.
- Protecting all uploaded pictures from hotlinking would save ressources for the server.This can be done via server's settings.
- Wildcard-Search for users (e.g. searching for *something* in their profile and not only for the first letters of their name/profile entries)Agreed. Already added to our TODO list.
- Blocking user-profiles should be possible for everyone, so you can block content, posts and other stuff from a single userMaybe some time later, but not now.
- It would be wonderful if I could set a group to "Moderated", so nobody can join and see everything in that group. In addition to this, you should be able to set a group "private" to make it invisible for everyone except moderators and administration. But you are still able to send an invitation-link to users.Moderated groups already planned too. This option will be added soon.
Hati Narcatis
Oct 11 '11
Thanks for your reply! I hope the new features will come soon :)
PICTURES:
Is there a chance to deactivate the reconverting part of that script?
LINKS:
Yes, I mean the Links-Plugin, but no, there is no option to detele a user's link.
VERIFICATION RESEND:
Why is that critical? Many website administration backends use such an option for re-sending the verification mail if a user didn't get it in the first time.
Greetings,
Hati
PICTURES:
Is there a chance to deactivate the reconverting part of that script?
LINKS:
Yes, I mean the Links-Plugin, but no, there is no option to detele a user's link.
VERIFICATION RESEND:
Why is that critical? Many website administration backends use such an option for re-sending the verification mail if a user didn't get it in the first time.
Greetings,
Hati
Max
Oct 11 '11
For verification resend, the user can click on 'send' if he didn't get it in the first time. More, Admin can approve him in the admin panel..
Team
brindy
Oct 7 '12
Quote from Hati Narcatis - Picture-Uploader should not re-convert into JPG so that animated GIFs and transparency in GIF and PNG are possible. No, it's impossible. Script converts uploaded photos to JPG and resize it with standart utilities.If you want transparent avatars it is possible, but it isn't pretty.
1) edit ow_system_plugins/base/bol/avatar_service.php and replace jpg -> png
2) all your users' avatars will now be broken, but once they upload them again transparency will work, or you can convert all the JPGs in the avatars folder to PNGs (e.g. mogrify -format png *.jpg)
I think JPG for photos, etc is good (better compression), but for avatars PNG is better (lossless and supports transparency). Maybe the Oxwall team can make this a system preference in the admin section?
Also, the image utility uses the WideImage library ... this library has not been updated in over 12 months and has a ton of open bugs against it. The Oxwall team might consider moving to a different library. On Linux I'd actually prefer it there was a wrapper around ImageMagick, but I guess that's not portable for Windows.
The Forum post is edited by brindy Oct 7 '12
Joseph
Oct 7 '12
den on the photo thing that's a lie it is very possible I see sites doing it all the time and you guys built oxwall and could change it don't force feed us lies I really don't appreciate it
Michael I.
Oct 8 '12
Hey Brindy, thanks for your contribution!
1) JPG format is better for images as it is more common format to use. So it is more convenient to work with jpg's in plugins, during conversions and servers highloads.
2) So, will all formats be converted to PNG or will only PNG be allowed for upload then?
Regarding the WideImage lib - do you have any better solutions? We need something that is fast, reliable, cross-platform and is supported by vast majority of hosting servers. We are open for suggestions.
@Joseph, what do you mean by saying that we are lying?
Joseph
Oct 8 '12
I am not saying the staff in general is lying its just I see sites do it all the time and yes it may take a code modification but he said its not possible which is very negative and not true it is possible I bet money I could pay a developer right now 100-200 dollars to make it so
brindy
Oct 8 '12
1) Firstly, I don't agree that it is a more common format. That might have been the case a decade ago, but PNG is ubiquitously supported as a standard web image format now. JPEG is better for compression, but for smaller images (especially avatars) PNG is better simply because it supports transparency and is loss-less. The fact you have to do compression with JPEG implies conversion operations might actually be slower. I have no empirical data to support that though and I imagine that libraries such as ImageMagick perform well regardless of the format.
2) Any of the existing formats can still be uploaded; JPEG, PNG and GIF. However, the transparency within a GIF still does not work (I believe this to be a limitation of WideImage) so if you want a transparent image then you need to upload in PNG format.
As it happens, I also made the change to the Event plugin as well so that Event images can be transparent and works fine there also, if uploading in PNG. When uploading with JPEG and GIF, it's just as before.
RE: WideImage ... yes, not sure what to suggest as an alternative really. :( Would it be possible to make the image library "pluggable"? Then the community can provide alternatives, e.g. a wrapper around ImageMagick, GD, etc. Thus, Oxwall continues to work out of the box, but if people want to change image library they can.
The Forum post is edited by brindy Oct 8 '12
Purusothaman Ramanujam
Oct 8 '12
I feel that all image formats should be supported for avatars. Why not animated GIFs too?
Purusothaman Ramanujam
Oct 8 '12
RE: WideImage ... yes, not sure what to suggest as an alternative really. :( Would it be possible to make the image library "pluggable"? Then the community can provide alternatives, e.g. a wrapper around ImageMagick, GD, etc. Thus, Oxwall continues to work out of the box, but if people want to change image library they can.
Coppermine image gallery does this. It provides a list of image libraries installed in the server and your favourite can be chosen during installation.
brindy
Oct 8 '12
I feel that all image formats should be supported for avatars. Why not animated GIFs too?
Yeah, you'd definitely have to dump WideImage to support that. Plus, Oxwall would have to be more clever about how it references image files on disk. Generally it is using a fixed extension, but if you uploaded an animated GIF, it would need to stay in GIF format. However, you don't want all your images in GIF format, because it's a crappy format. So somehow, you'd have to track their types.
Joseph
Oct 8 '12
well not to compare but fubar.com does it flawlessly so it has to be very possible and I have seen others do it as well
Michael I.
Oct 9 '12
Thank you for your suggestions and great feedback. We are not saying supporting multiple photo formats will never be added, we just need to gather more information and do some research. I believe that posting this suggestion at oxwall.uservoice.com would help us with gathering more feedback.
Feel free to post your further concerns here and I will be happy to be involved into this discussion.
Leader
Team Alia
May 20 '13
Same thing with gifs for photo albums.
Best thing is to suggest this to UserVoice. From what I can see, nobody has suggested this feature so far.
Best thing is to suggest this to UserVoice. From what I can see, nobody has suggested this feature so far.
Leader