Our next phase of HomeCrowd Comments testing will start this week, with tomorrow evening the current target date. If you would like to take part in this round, please email us at homecrowd@fantasyfootballscout.co.uk. Those who took part in phase one or who have emailed us after the previous testing phase, should already be included providing you have supplied your Fantasy Football Scout username – look out for an email with further details in the next 24-hours.
This round of testing will feature a brand new feature which we hope will add to the value that the comments on this site and help folk find the very best and interesting discussions on a daily basis.
The sticky/hot topic functionality is now up and running on out test server. This allows admins and mods to not only sticky a comment and its replies (highlighting it in the thread), but now we can also add a title to the discussion. Adding a title makes it stand out further in the thread listing when browsing comments but, crucially, also adds a direct link to the discussion in a new “hot topics” widget. This widget is added as a tab next to the recent comments list we have now.
We will be giving the abilty to sticky and add titles to more members of the community as we identify likely candidates who, not only contribute good quality posts themselves but also have an eye for contributions from others that may be of interest. HomeCrowd’s built in reputation system will help us out there.
The Hot Topic widget means that visitors will be able to easily view any discussions picked out as of interest or of importance. Users will be able to view the last ten topics raised, with the option to view a full page(s) of topics past and present. Basically, then, it will create a forum like page of key discussions that have taken place on the site day by day. You can view some images of this at work via our Facebook page.
Other fixes and features made prior to this phase of testing:
The recent comments and hot topics widget now updates and refreshes every 5 seconds without the need to refresh the page.
Gravatar and Comment poster names are now larger to mirror the current system more closely.
Regular HomeCrowd users (moderators) now have a menu of moderator powers including the ability to moderate comments (replace with message), unapprove a comment and its replies (remove comment and replies) to sticky a comment and to add a title.
Duplicate posts are now blocked with a message presented to the poster.
When posting a comment which moves to another page, you are now taken to that page rather than the page you were on when originally posting.
We’ve fixed the spam filter that was generating all comments from a single domain ip based on the test server, thus trapping multiple users for no apparent reason. We’ve also added spam admin controls so we can manage this from now on.
What’s Coming Next…
Behind the scenes, Ed has also wired in a third party search engine to allow us to search throughout comments for a particular word or phrase. We have this facility in the admin tool but will eventually be rolling this out to users via a new search panel to allow them to scan an article thread or even all comments (with timeframe filters available). Tests of this search engine are hugely encouraging – we’re searching over five million comments in the database in just a few milliseconds and the results being returned are strong.
In addition, work has begun on the user public and private profiles. These pages will allow you to see details of any other user posting on the site – including a full list of their comments made so you can easily access them. Of course, users will also have an even richer profile page of their own so they can easily recall comments and replies they have made. We may even see some basic profiles available in this round of testing.
Once we have completed the above and carried out Phase Three testing, we will then move to a full stress test of the system which will involve a large section of the community being invited to use HomeCrowd for a limited period. This will allow us to fine tune and optimise ahead of going live.
