the-spot.net

What are some things you'd like the site to do that doesn't. I know certain things have been touched on since launch - but you can mention them again here as feedback, and I'll take all the feedback into consideration as I start knocking out bugs and moving on toward features.

It can be functional changes, design changes (different colors, different icons, different placement...whatever looks weird to you), feature adds, etc. Whatever you can think of.

Would you like an in-site one-to-one chat? Would you *not* like something - like a definite "don't add this" feature?

Because my professional job is to take requests and make them happen, I'm trying to do that here to make sure the end-user is having a good experience on the site. For people who've been around a long time, it'll be an obvious change from how I responded in the past - at least I'm trying to change how I've responded. So fire away...I'll do my best to be positive and build on them, instead of negative and shut them down.

There was something that was on my mind, and of course the idea was furthered by an old member. =)

Since the site is mobile-friendly now, a mobile app that will go straight to the site instead of opening up a webpage through your mobile internet browser. I know I'd certainly use it =)

"Yes, and...."

I have considered that, and it is something I don't know how to do yet. That is not a "no"...it is something for me to learn.

It is the easiest kind of app to create too.

Punix-GT wrote:Since the site is mobile-friendly now, a mobile app that will go straight to the site instead of opening up a webpage through your mobile internet browser. I know I'd certainly use it =)

I did some research on this tonight, and my suspicions are affirmed - I would have to learn Objective C for an iPhone app, Java for an Android app and C# for a Windows Phone app.

I could create an app that just launches the site in a web browser, but Apple will reject that if it doesn't make any kind of customizations for the iPhone; additionally, it's a sucky user experience - facebook tried it and went back to a native app.

On both Android and iOS, you can load the page in your browser, and then create a shortcut on the home screen.
For Chrome, it's in the menu panel, called "Add to Homescreen".
For iOS/Safari, you press the Share button, and click "Add to Home Screen" in the grayscale buttons.

It'll look like this for iPad:


And like this for Android:


This will essentially put an App Icon shortcut on your home screen and launch the site in the browser. Unfortunately I will have to learn those other languages and how to tie them into the site in order to make a Mobile version of the forums...something not easily done based on the fact that I didn't write the forums, and don't have full functional knowledge of everything needed to make them work.

Neo wrote:Would you like an in-site one-to-one chat?

This could be cool. It might be a little difficult to work on the mobile versions. But...I think you should look in to it!

Pam wrote:

Neo wrote:Would you like an in-site one-to-one chat?

This could be cool. It might be a little difficult to work on the mobile versions. But...I think you should look in to it!

Ok. We used to have one for the site, but I ditched it because you could put anything you wanted into it. It was an experiment and before facebook messenger, so it was something new and I wasn't really sure what I was doing. I've got a pretty good idea for how it should work now though.

And I think I can make it work well on Mobile too, as long as someone is looking at the site. If they have it in the background, I'm not sure what will happen then.

Punix-GT wrote:There was something that was on my mind, and of course the idea was furthered by an old member. =)

Since the site is mobile-friendly now, a mobile app that will go straight to the site instead of opening up a webpage through your mobile internet browser. I know I'd certainly use it =)

So, my mobile home screen shortcut was not a "No" to the app idea. I want to learn those languages, and I think, eventually, I could rewrite all the functionality of the forums and break away from phpbb...but that will take a lot of time as a single developer. The Home Screen idea is a "in the meantime" solution.

I have a couple of ideas. I desperately want mobile push notifications. If someone mentions my name, quotes me, comments on a thread I started, or commented on a thread I'm following, getting a push notification can help me quickly read, and reply if I want to. It would help people stay more involved on the site. As far as a chat system or something, you could create a slack team. Slack is a messaging service that let's you create multiple channels and groups and even do direct messages. There may be a way to embed it into tsn, but if not they have their own website and apps.

I already have a slack team for thepizzy.net... I'm the only one in it. :/ it requires an email address for the domain the team is about. This would mean everyone would have to sign in with an email address they don't have or don't want to use.

I do have plans to work notifications into some services like Twitter, Google Glass, and Pebble. Without the site being an app though, there is not a way (in my knowledge) to push notifications to the phone... Including text messages. I could have the tsn Twitter account DM the user like I did for storm spotter alerts on @NOAAalerts.

Neo wrote:I already have a slack team for thepizzy.net... I'm the only one in it. :/ it requires an email address for the domain the team is about. This would mean everyone would have to sign in with an email address they don't have or don't want to use.

You can actually invite everyone using any email address they want, someone just has to manually enter the email address to send the invite.

As far as notifications go, I also wasn't sure if there was a way to send any without an app.

DMoney wrote:I desperately want mobile push notifications. If someone mentions my name, quotes me, comments on a thread I started, or commented on a thread I'm following, getting a push notification can help me quickly read, and reply if I want to. It would help people stay more involved on the site.

Ooooh....yes. I totally wish there were some kind of notifications and not emails.

Pam wrote:

DMoney wrote:I desperately want mobile push notifications. If someone mentions my name, quotes me, comments on a thread I started, or commented on a thread I'm following, getting a push notification can help me quickly read, and reply if I want to. It would help people stay more involved on the site.

Ooooh....yes. I totally wish there were some kind of notifications and not emails.

How would Twitter notifications do? I do know how to easily setup the tsn twitter account to send Direct Messages - I'm already doing it with @NOAAalerts. I could setup the @thespotnet account to send a DM when you would otherwise get a notification in the Notifications menu above...then it'd be mobile and/or sms depending on your twitter settings.

Would that be a good compromise?

Hrm....that could possibly work. I guess it's practically a push notification, just coming from twitter.

DMoney wrote:Hrm....that could possibly work. I guess it's practically a push notification, just coming from twitter.

It worked for my weather alerts. I'm not sure when I will get to it...but it would require people to have Twitter on their phone, or at least their Mobile Number set up for SMS Alerts when they get a DM from a Twitter account.

I've already got the logic in place for my other weather project, I just have to replicate it, and find the place where Notifications are created and add it there.

I don't do Twitter. Not sure I would want to get it just for tsn notifications.