PropertyChat v2 suggestions

There is a major new version of the forum software coming in a couple of months (currently in beta testing), and I've been holding off from building new functionality for PropertyChat until it is released.

The new platform is a complete rewrite (as in, they pretty much threw out all the existing code and started from scratch!) and all customisations will need to be completely rebuilt to work on the new version - no direct upgrades possible! So until now it wasn't really worth doing further customisations because I'd have to build them again before I could upgrade to the new version.

But now that we're approaching the availability of the new software platform and I have a beta version to develop against, it is a good time to look at building new functionality for PropertyChat.

I'd welcome any suggestions for features or functionality you'd like to see on this site.

Some things I'm already looking at:

Resources

We haven't made great use of the Resource section yet - it's a good way of collecting reference information together in a spot that won't get lost amongst the discussion threads. Spreadsheets, videos, articles about property investing, just about anything really.

It also has built in rating functionality, so it could be ideal for things like rating books, seminars and other resources.

Chatroom

The current chatroom has been basically dead for the past year since I moved away from using IRC and haven't had time to fully integrate with Slack like I was originally planning.

I'm not happy with the integration capabilities of Slack anyway - it is intended for business use and doesn't give you good moderation facilities for communities like us. So I've been evaluating other platforms we might be able to use instead.

Right now I'm leaning towards using Discord for group chat - it's intended for gaming communities, but has a heap of functionality for moderating live chat sessions and has good integration functionality, so I think it may do what we need.

Media Gallery

There is some new functionality coming in the new version which makes it easier for people to upload collections of photos - so it would be good for people to document their before-and-after renovation photos and so on. I'd like to see a lot more of that type of content being uploaded so I'll be restructuring things slightly to make this easier.

Stats

I'd like to be able to automate a lot of the stats I generate so you can view them at any time.

Articles

I've always had plans to have a section for property investing articles published on the site. I'm undecided whether I should try and integrate them directly into the forum software, or use an external CMS for that functionality. I've got a bit of work to do before we get to that point.

Newsletter

I'm working towards building a regular newsletter for PropertyChat. Partly it would be about highlighting new content on the site - but also about articles we publish and other information of interest to property investors.

Property Sales Listings

I am going to build a section of the site which allows people to list properties for sale. It won't be a free-for-all, paid membership required to post your own listing - business membership required for real estate agents.

Memberships

The existing forum software only supports PayPal for membership upgrade payments, but the new software is fully extensible and allows you to integrate other payment platforms, so I'll be able to offer credit card based monthly subscriptions.

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Please post other suggestions for features or functionality you'd like to see on the site.

 

Do you mean just bookmarking a post, or a print view so you can make an offline copy (eg pdf or hard copy) to read later?

Both of these functions are frequently requested - but not currently available. I'll add them to my ideas list - there may be some addons which provide this functionality already.

 

The problem with recommendations is verifying their authenticity. Astroturfing is a huge problem that is difficult to deal with.

If I do allow recommendations, I would have to be pretty strict on who I actually allow to make recommendations - and the smaller the pool of recommenders, the less meaningful they become (potential for unintended bias from a small sample size).

That's not a "no", but it's a "will take a lot of careful thought" to ensure its validity.

 

Yeah, pretty much all of this is in the next release, including sticky navigation menus meaning you don't need to scroll to the top to access the menus - they're always there.

We already have jump to first unread post in the current version.

 

Yes, this is a good idea - I did start creating a section for this, but I can't quite remember what stopped me proceeding (may have just gotten distracted).

I'll add this to the todo list.

 

Yes, I am looking at adding this functionality.

It's not part of the core software (although is frequently requested), but I'll look at developing the functionality myself.

 

This kind of functionality is already possible in the current version - but I have it disabled because I didn't think anyone would be interested (is also less relevant for a brand new site like we had!).

The software comes with a "trophy" system whereby you can earn trophies for completing certain actions or reaching certain milestones (more than X posts, member for Y days, etc). This can then be teamed up with member badges and such to indicate things such as contribution to the site.

I'll add it to the todo list to investigate further how we might make good use of this.

I might start a poll at some point to gauge people's interest.

 

Yes, this has been requested to be part of the core functionality of the software, but isn't there yet.

I'll add it to the ideas list - I think it has merit.

 

Completely new emoticon system in the new software - also fully extensible and supports emoji codes as well.

There will not be any vomit emojis. Vomit emojis make me want to vomit.

I will take the time to customise the emoticons we have available with some site-specific ones which I think will be useful. Once we launch the new site and we get a handle on the capabilities, I may create an emoji request thread for suggestions.

 

Great suggestions everyone - keep them coming.