[pb: clarification edit]
OpenTopic has been designed from the ground up as an alternative to UBB for sites wanting a powerful, scalable hosted community platform.

Areas targeted for improvement were:
?? Architecture: we??ve made changes to allow us to add more features and new products with ease.
?? Site Management: OpenTopic is now easier to set up and run.
?? Content Management: Content on your site is easier to manage so you can present the best content to your community.
?? Greater Customization: Many new customization options have been added to allow administrators to better choose the features and look of their site.
?? Richer Content: OpenTopic now provides for content ranging from plain text messages, through HTML, posts with images and even multimedia.
?? Better User Experience. A great site without visitors is not great. We??ve added features that will improve the user experience and draw your members deeper into your community.

The sections below go into more detail.

Architecture
Cross Platform. Java, Servlets, SQL. These technologies allow us to offer a hardware and OS-neutral solution.

Standards Based. Our use of XML, XSL, SQL permit integration with other content on your site as well as content sharing with other partners.

Page Caching. In addition to topic pages, forum and category/forum pages are also cached for quicker retrieval. Access rights are still checked so it is safe to cache even secured forums.

Site Management
Anti-spam. Registration approval by administrator. IP address recorded on registration. IP banning.

User Management. User Management page introduced. Allows creation of mailing lists, approval of membership applications, editing of user profiles.

Secure Site. Category and forum page will not display unless the user is registered.

User Registration. Each field on the user registration form can be set as optional, required or disabled. A minimal registration can consist of a Username and Password field. Five customizable fields have been added.

New members confirming email. Members can now choose their own password at registration, registration is validated when they click on a confirmation URL mailed out to them.

Backups. OpenTopic can import and export messages and member information using standard XML files..

Message board statistics. Number of posts, popular forums and topics. Planned: Top posters, and more.

Member delete function added. Their posts become ??guest?? posts.

Administration pages have been rewritten with the goal of making options easier to locate and quicker to get to.

User Search Page. Administrators use this page to perform functions such as filtering user lists for group security.

Content Management
Messages queuing (a.k.a. Moderation). Can be enabled on a per-forum basis.

Content Management. Content (posts) can be managed at the forum and topic level. At the forum level, topics can be moved between forums or deleted. Also, topics can be re-ordered. At the topic level messages can be deleted, edited or reordered.

Message Postings. Icons on posts can be set per forum. For example, some forums may allow only a question and answer icon.

Message Editing. Per-forum setting to enable message edits and deletes. Moderator can specify a time-limit on changes. Subject can be edited.

Duplicate Posts. Duplicate posts are prevented (for example when a user tries to spam a board by repeatedly submitting a message..

Customization
Internationalization. Style sheets and text resources bundles should make ports to other languages easier. Should make it easier to manage upgrades to international customers.

Style changes simplified. Color previews in style settings. Introducing style sets ?V change fonts, colors, HTML inserts per forum or site.

Layout customization. This is probably the most significant new feature with OpenTopic. We deliver XML, you provide a XSL style-sheet to render your site??s pages as you wish. XSL is a standard emerging from the W3C.

Images. All images are now included in the style settings. Width and height attributes have been added to all HTML IMG tags to speed up table rendering.

Thread view ordering. Standard chronological order is retained as well as reverse-chronological-with-topic-at-start.

Disable Smilies. Option to disable per-forum.

Date formats are more flexible. Can now include elements such as day name.

Message Posting
File attachments. Upload documents, voice greetings, images or other files with your post. Full security options are given to the site administrator to limit or restrict uploads.

Message preview. Future Option. Do you want an option to see you message before posting?

Spell checker. Future Option.

Authors can close (and re-open) their own topics.

Polls. Topic starters can now include a poll with their topic.
User Experience
Quick catch up. Today??s topics has been replaced with a ??View Posts Since Last Visit?? link. Different icons on individual posts new since a user??s last login.

Mailing List. Planned: allow users to bookmark forum and topic favorites. They can receive digests (at a frequency they specify) of new posts to these forums on a regular basis.

My OpenTopic Page. Planned. A page containing the forums and topics you??ve book-marked.

Security. OpenTopic implements group based security. Assign users to groups. Give groups the ability to perform one of more of the actions listed against a site or forum. Access can differ between forums. This security permits private forums.

Search. Search speed has improved. Simple boolean operators available on searches: ??or??, -/??not?? and ??and??.

Logout function added (to invalidate your login cookies).

----
Hey I wrote this software. Be nice about it.

[This message was edited by Peter Bryant on Sat, 13 May 00 at 10:14 AM.]

quote:

---

These technologies allow us to offer a hardware and OS-neutral solution.

---

Really? Better not advertise this - or the "Why the hell can't I install this on my own server" people are going to be all over this.

Joe Siegler
Webmaster - 3D Realms Entertainment

I won't enumerate reasons for having a hosted app (security, scalability, less install hassles, less admin hassles, improved tuning, more features, more frequent bug fixes). Whoops just enumerated them!

We understand peoples concerns (loss of control, 'losing' access to the data). We're gonna fight to change that perception since its not true. You only have control if you own the server and it sits in your building and you own and manage the line that connects it to the internet. We'll also make sure a sites always has access to its data.

We're trying real hard to stay out of peoples way and let them build communities (thats why we let XSL stylesheets loose on you to give you COMPLETE control).

BTW: our little setup here is running on an OS neutral setup of 1 Linux firewall, 2 Linux web servers, 1 Linux servlet engine, 2 NT servlet engines and a Linux Oracle database (and this is just for the first month or so, then we get BIG).

So while its platform neutral, do you think most sites want to spend this much time and effort installing a 'mere' bulletin board?

----
Hey I wrote this software. Be nice about it.

My point is that given all the heat that Infopop has taken so far (and will continue to take), you should take steps to potentially diffuse them. If you publically state it's platform independant - that'll further flame the fire. What's the point in pushing that as a selling point if people can't install it themselves?

Joe Siegler
Webmaster - 3D Realms Entertainment

Ghard296
Administrator and Webmaster of H-Realms.com

quote:

---

New members confirming email. Members can now choose their own password at registration, registration is validated when they click on a confirmation URL mailed out to them.

---

Ooooh....peter! somehow I missed that first time around... that is a brill idea. Ok, that is just, well, brilliant. yay!

Ghard296 ... I know I get antsy too, but I think (not sure, but I think) this is just a test board for trying out stuff and maybe isn't moderated (?) so you could prolly email michael I think his email is michael@infopop.com, hope that helps!

bye now!
--whizabeth

I've lurked here for a little while, read the blurb, posted a few messages etc, etc and I started to realise that OT is a hosted service (oh, no, not THAT discussion again...).

I do understand the reasons and +'ves for hosted apps, but I can garauntee one thing from my bosses: no way is their data going to live on a server they have no control over. Simple as that. They hire their own dbas and server admins and we all sign contracts that we won't disclose any company secrets. We make our customers sign NDAs for uptodate patches etc, etc, and there is no way that they will trust data on an external server.

If you are concerned about upgrades and administration and all that, well we (IS people) chase versions of Oracle: hell, we have one DB app that needs to be upgraded, and it's gonna send of a whole chain of upgrades (Vantive gets upgraded, but first we need Oracle 8i, which in turn requires Solaris 2.6 or something like that).

If you are worried about security, we have dedicated network admins monitoring our networks. We have server admins doing audits every odd week.

If you are worried about the technologies that are used? well guess what UBB grew up and requires Oracle, requires Java, requires XML, servlets etc, etc.. I know this is not feasible for smaller sites to manage, and maybe the hosted option is the one to go with..

Anyway, I love this software, please, please, please let me buy it, and install it on my own machines, otherwise I have to set up a bloomin NNTP/NetNews/Collabra server...

Pete

Another thought maybe you could allow users to have the general things on their server(like the user database) and then it would connect to a infopop server for other parts or something.

Also when we sign up for your hosting will we have the option of either being on a shared server or a dedicated Open Topic machine? Also will we have access to this computer like telnet, ftp, etc.?

Steve

www.HuntAmerica.com