[Follow Rank: Frozen Foods IslePoints: 10517.25]

Now you can create a post via the quick post button located both at the top of the homepage and inside your user dashboard

At the suggestion of @billy-slut

[Follow Rank: Frozen Foods IslePoints: 10517.25]

Adding to the above: Filter By User is broken on the following feed

All of this will be re-thunk and fixed tomorrow. It’s about time to call it a night….

The Extra Chill Articles forum has been giving me a run for my money today but im happy its close to working properly now. Just another layer to this project… the chips continue to fall into place.

[Follow Rank: Frozen Foods IslePoints: 10517.25]

I added the “Extra Chill Articles” forum which will automatically post articles from Extra Chill as they are published.

It creates an exact replica of the article (minus the ads). This part works great and the articles are being correctly synced.

The next step is combining the upvote counts, which has proven to be a bit trickier. The idea is that the user should be able to upvote an EC article, and its corresponding topic on the forum, one time each, with the total upvotes count reflecting the combined number of upvotes.

I’m close to figuring it out but it has really been giving me a run for my money.

Then, after achieving that, the next step will be to allow community members to interact in the topics created, so anybody can essentially contribute to a given piece of content.

Of course, the ultimate idea is to lock the Extra Chill Articles forum so that you must be logged in to view it. Then, it will allow community members to read the articles without ads, and give us a further incentive to drive signups to the community.

The overall goal is to continue building a digital ecosystem that is completely seamless between the two websites, and turns Extra Chill into an entire world. Each step gets us closer and closer, and I have been working on this every day.

[Follow Rank: Frozen Foods IslePoints: 10517.25]

Sometimes, simply writing about the issue helps me logically understand what needs to happen. I’m basically learning enough about the underlying logic behind the code to explain to ChatGPT how to make the code work for me. So, a lot of this has been brute repetition of figuring out the logic before I can explain to the robot exactly what it needs to do for me.

Anyway, upvotes are now seamless between the main blog and the Extra Chill Articles forum.

The next step is cleaning it up. But the hardest part is done. Sheesh! It’s like mental gymnastics trying to wrap my head around all this code sometimes. But it works!!!

[chubes]

Now:

Users can reply to topics that correspond to Extra Chill articles, or comment directly on the article itself

Users can upvote once on the blog and on the community site and the upvotes are combined

Still to do:

Fix spotify embed format for imported posts

Fix upvote count for first post in an imported topic

Sort by upvotes doesn’t work in the custom forum (yet)

Upvoted feed needs a complete re-work…

• This reply was modified 2 months, 1 week ago by chubes.

[Follow Rank: Frozen Foods IslePoints: 10517.25]

Merged everything into one big developer log topic instead of spamming my own forum with multiple threads. From now on this is where I will track my progress on the ongoing build.

I have ditched my initial idea to come up with three separate profiles for fans, artists, and music industry professionals. Instead, I have merged all of that into the main profile, with specialized sections for all three.

I also added a custom script to auto-convert Instagram posts into embeds.

I have now completed all of the ideas that were on my initial list. Now it comes down to spurring signups and engagement in the forum.

It’s an interesting thing. The discussion breeds the discussion, but you can’t have the discussion without the discussion.

[Follow Rank: Frozen Foods IslePoints: 10517.25]

Two more quick ideas to write down before i head to Pour House

1. pop up for non logged in users after viewing 3 pages
2. nested comments under each comment, allowing replies
   1. this will work in conjunction with quotes, so you can reply under a specific post or add to the overall discussion by posting a new reply
   2. thanks to @toastedcarrot for the idea

[chubes]

1. Combined “Mainstream Pop Music” with “Music Industry General” – there seems to be significant overlap between these topics, and since we are still small I am trying my best to consolidate the boards
2.  I will be adding a “collapse” icon to each forum header that makes it easier to scroll down the page. Just a minor enhancement but I saw it on another forum and I really like it

 

 

• This reply was modified 2 months ago by chubes. Reason: collapse completed

[Follow Rank: Frozen Foods IslePoints: 10517.25]

Some more merging, the Artist Introductions forum was well-intentioned but I combined it into one topic. Most of those threads would just have one post anyway, so new artists who join the forum can simply post once in the introduction thread to introduce themselves to the Community if they so please.

In the future I might make this a requirement before adding the badge, but for now, I just want people to sign up and post.

[Follow Rank: Frozen Foods IslePoints: 10517.25]

I have decided to DITCH the “Upvoted Feed.” Upvotes are now just for influencing the conversation and tracking points, and will no longer save posts to the upvoted feed.

I think it was too confusing, and sometimes you might want to upvote a post without saving it. I will probably implement a separate “SAVE” feature, which would allow you to save an individual post if you wanted to, but it would be separate from upvotes.

Keeping the “Following” feed as it makes a lot more sense to have that.

[Follow Rank: Frozen Foods IslePoints: 10517.25]

More simplification of the project. Consolidated all the forums in the rabbit hole with plans to break them off into individualized genre forums as things get busier. For now I would really just like to keep everything together so people don’t get confused.

The easier, the better. I had a lot of fun building this website, but some of my ideas were more could than should.

That said, I also think this forum is dope and fine-tuning is a natural part of the process. It is really hard to imagine forums as discussion zones before anybody posts in them.

So, I re-thought the entire process. Still not 100% sure this is how it will remain but it’s closer to the final vision.

[chubes]

Some ideas to mark down here for when I get back to coding…

1. Ability to select “City” from a dropdown when posting a music review
2. Need to fix the Extra Chill articles forum so that replies from people who aren’t the post author don’t go above the imported post

Plus, the ideas in this thread that I haven’t gotten to yet. Life has gotten busy with the coming of Spring, but this is going to be an ongoing build for a long time.

Also – Fix table of contents on imported posts

• This reply was modified 1 month, 4 weeks ago by chubes.

[Follow Rank: Frozen Foods IslePoints: 10517.25]

Couple more ideas

1. pinned topic at top of homepage – “Featured Discussion”

2. Add the reply button back in, or a jump to reply box feature. Was a good idea in theory but sometimes you don’t want to scroll to the bottom to reply and you don’t want to quote

[Follow Rank: Frozen Foods IslePoints: 10517.25]

1. Some avatars are too tall

2. Strip URL parameters from Twitter / IG embeds

[Follow Rank: Frozen Foods IslePoints: 10517.25]

More ideas:

add autocomplete for username mentions

Make text box shorter on mobile