Forums » Sweat365 Support » Feature Ideas

1. bhayden
   Member

   I like the categorization of Posts. The ability to add new categories is great and I finally figured out where you delete ones you don't want. I've yet to play with the sub-category concept but if it works like I'm hoping it's a terrific idea. How deep can sub-categories be nested?

   Anyway, what I've been looking for is a way to control what posts show up in the blog. I know you can make a post private which will keep it from displaying on the public view of your blog but I'd like to see a configuration option that lets you decide which catagory(s) are displayed.

   For example I created a catagory called Hidden. I changed the Hello World post from Uncatagorized to Hidden. I've made Hello World a "Sticky Post" to display in the sidebar and I want to "remove" it from the general blog posts. But if I change it to Private it doesn't show up in the Sticky Post either. What I'd like to do is be able to easily switch modes so I could look at a display of say just my Daily Info or just my Workouts, etc. I know you can sort of do this in edit/manage mode but you don't see the state of each entry very well with this method. The ultimate would be to allow public viewing of different configurations. That is maintaining one blog could appear several different ways. I realize that you can already do this sorting by catagory by clicking on the name of the catagory next to the post title. This makes me think it's "just" an interface change. I like to point interested people to links like:

   bhayden/
   bhayden/race_reports
   bhayden/mtn_biking
   bhayden/you_get_the_idea

   Then for my own use (maybe private configurations?) I'd have stuff like:

   bhayden/daily_metrics
   bhayden/workouts

   Something that would go a long way to making this easier to maintain would be to add an "Edit" button next to the "Comment" button whenever I'm logged in. And along these lines, if there was a way to add these links to the banner that would be slick. Of course, buttons for "private configurations" would be hidden unless logged in :+)

   I'd also like to see the button on the dashboard labeled something like "View your blog as others will see it" not show Private posts and other things that are different when you're logged in. Right now I think the only way to do this is to log out and then revisit your blog. In general I find it a little confusing and frustrating navigating between the Dashboard and the Blog since "Home" means different things. Plus in some screens (like the Forums) there's no direct link back to the blog but in other places there's multiple buttons to do the same thing but labled differently.

   Where I'm going with this is directly aimed at improving the log/workout functionality. Right now it seems the blogging is pretty "full featured" but I think these enhancements would put the Sweat365 blogs clearly ahead of anything else out there. Well, enough whining for now :+)

   -Bernie

   Posted 5 years ago #

2. Brad Hefta-Gaub
   Administrator

   WOW! This is great feedback... Where do I begin to answer this question?

   1) Good thing you've got categories/tags figured out... they are a great way to organize posts... As for nesting, you can go pretty deep... I'll admit I am not certain what the actual limit is, but I know it's more than would be practical... (In the DB it's just a tree, so you could theoretically go forever and ever...) I think the limit would come from the UI and spacing, but certainly I image that 10 levels deep would work just fine.

   2) Having some Categories EXCLUDED from an Archive... this is a great idea, and it's something that is theoretically supported by the platform. We use this feature in the "Sweat365 Theme" for the main news blog. We'll look into some ideas about how we could add this in a more generalized way for all themes. It would probably involve a new option page that allowed you to pick which categories you want displayed in the main post list. Thanks for the great suggestion!

   3) Private Categories is a good suggestion, it certainly would have the benefits your describe. We need to think about this relative to our other plans for groups and coach/athlete support.

   4) Edit button next to comments - Hmmm... If you mean what I think you mean, then this is supported by most themes. For comments, and for posts and pages, if you're logged in, there is an "edit" option nearby... I see you're using the Autumn Concept theme, so I'll double check that that theme correctly supports an edit link in the blog view. Usually Running Kate finds these bugs for us. ;) She loves that edit button. And we love that she loves to tell us when we missed one. :)

   5) View my blog as others see it is also a good idea. You're right that today you have to log out to get that view. We'll need to think about how to build this feature.

   Thanks again for all your feedback!

   Posted 5 years ago #

3. Brad Hefta-Gaub
   Administrator

   One more thing Bernie... have you checked out pages yet? Pages are similar to posts except that they don't have categories, don't get include in the "posts list", and can have hierarchical URL structures.

   But they do have comments (if you want) just like posts.

   So you could make a page that displays your log book items (just like training peaks) and you could even make that the front page of your blog. You could then make pages underneath that page (using the page parent option in Edit Page) to make a directory structure like you're describing.

   Anyway, pages definitley aren't the same as posts... but they have some nice characteristics and may be more appropriate for some of what you're looking for.

   Posted 5 years ago #

4. bhayden
   Member

   Marking a post as Private is something I've played with and it has it's place. I was trying to create a catagory called "Hidden" for which I would have more control over when and where it was shown. It's not so much that I'd like a special catagory but more the issue of control over all catagories. In this simple case I wanted to show the post in the text widget but not in the blog. I bet changing the date on the post to something like the year 2000 would move it to the end of the list and function as a work around in this instance.

   I'm aware of pages but haven't played with them yet. I'd actually written a somewhat lengthy reply to your news of the week with respect to logbook ideas that included a reference pages along with a couple other possible approaches to the logbook. Unfortunately when I hit the Send Post button it vanished into the ether and "backup" didn't restore it. I was sort of hoping it would miraculously appear after some time but I guess I'll have to try and rewrite it. Never seen it happen here but it was common on another forum I belong to. In fact it was common enough that most frequent contributors knew to select all and copy before hitting Submit. It was some bug about how long you were in edit mode.

   It looks like there's several approaches that can be taken and I suspect the "right" answer will be different for different people. I have in my mind that a Calendar hook with iCal and/or WCAP compatibility would be the ultimate solution for a logbook and an Annual Training Plan. I think it would provide the best offline editing and the ability to sync with a laptop and Palm type devices.

   It's really great to see you're already thinking about coaches and team support! It seems like you're project is very database centric which in my opinion is really what this is all about.

   Posted 5 years ago #

5. bhayden
   Member

   Brad,
   I spent some time playing around with other themes and it appears that the edit button for posts (no. 4 in your reply above) isn't part of Autumn theme. Or if it is it's well hidden. I noticed in the other themes that sometimes it's just an icon off in space and other themes actually say Edit.

   Looking as Lisa's blog and playing with the themes it would appear that some support more than the Home and About tabs in the header. Lisa for example has several that point to some of her pages. I created a new Page and it was automagicly added to the header tabs. Is there a way to control the location/order/visibility of the tabs?

   Posted 5 years ago #

6. Brad Hefta-Gaub
   Administrator

   Bernie,

   Great questions... let me give a little insight into Themes... first of all, we don't write the themes, most of them are built by generous people in the open source world. We have included themes that are known to be popular, that we personally think look good, and that are considered "full featured"... since theme writers can take shortcuts and not include all the great features available to our core platform (based on WordPress)... After we find a theme we do our best to verify that its safe (with code review and testing) and that it really works (more testing) and then we usually have to modify it to support features like Avatars, Custom Theme Headers, and more.

   There are definitely things on the list that some of our bloggers (you and Kate for example) notice if they are missing, like Comments on Pages and Edit Buttons. There are also times when we have to fix more complicated issues like widgets not working correctly, or browser rendering issues. Anyway, I don't want to sound like I'm making excuses, just giving a little bit of context.

   The point is we have a standard list of features we look for in these themes, and we're trying to make all of the themes as consistent as possible.

   With respect to "page menus" this is an area where themes tend to vary widely. Our "policy" is to try to make sure that if the theme supports tabbed pages, that we test that it actually works correctly. In some cases we've seen bugs (thanks again to Kate for reporting some of these) where the tabs don't correctly show all the pages. But some themes don't really have tabbed pages, and so in that case we don't currently plan to take the step of adding it.

   Don't get me wrong, I am not saying, "you get what you get"... but instead I'm saying, think of themes as an artistic expression of the original designer of the theme. We try to do a good job of fairly representing that artistic expression, without significant modification.

   That being said, if you feel there is a theme that has a partially working "page" tab menu, then please tell us about it and we will look into fixing the issue.

   We will fix Autumn Concept to have edit buttons (links), that's an obvious change.

   Thanks again for the feedback.

   Posted 5 years ago #

7. bhayden
   Member

   Thanks for the info. I understand the themes need to be a template and as they say, "you can't please all the people all the time." Blogspot allows a little more customization via access to the html. But I know you're concerned with security issues surrounding that but I hope it will open up a little bit more as you're able to work on parsing routines to verify safe code.

   I also realize that Sweat365 is just getting started. You've done a great with the basic framework and super job with enhancements. The documentation is a bit sparse but I know you all have a zillion other things that are more pressing at the moment and the whole crew has been fantastic about answering questions. I'm the sort that kind of enjoys seeing just poking around anyway :+).

   How about a Sweat365 Wiki so we users can share the neat little tricks we learn or maybe just start a topic with a question and see what solutions other folks have adopted? A couple I have are:
   What's a Page Slug?
   If you try a new theme can you switch back without loosing any of the original formating?

   Would it be a lot of work to implement the ability to choose a theme on a per Page basis? I'm thinking that stuff like a Training Analysis page begs for a very different layout than a blog. And if you were to implement blogs by category it would be nice to at least use different banner images that are related to that category.

   Posted 5 years ago #

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