After IP.Board 3 road map (2009)

[Michael]

Although everything is about IP.Board 3 now. I wanted to give you guys some sort of road map for 2009 and what comes after IP.Board 3. DevFuse 2009 will be about: Big Mods; Free Mods; Social Mods (Web 2.0).

 

Big Mods:

This year has all been about smaller mods like the Moderator Action Alert, Calendar Topics, Auto Anniversary Greeter etc.. Although 2009 will probably contain small mods as well. I'm going to be focusing on 3 big mods that will probably take up a good chunk of next year. These 3 mods will become new flagship products along the lines of the Donation Tracker and Garage System. With your ideas and suggestions I hope to make these new mods feature rich and useful to any board admin. These big 3 to use a cheesy term will utilize all the new features of IP.Board 3.

Free Mods:

Although I currently have several free mods. Only 1 free modification has been made this year. In 2009 I will be making more free modifications. These modification may not be the complex paid mods like the Donation Tracker but will be simple targeted mods like the Guest Message or Auto Welcome that are small in size but I think offer just as much in value in helping the board admin grow there community.

 

Social Mods (Web 2.0):

Just as IP.Board moves to a more Web 2.0 world. I want to keep pace with all my modifications. Existing mods like the Videos System and News System do support basic web 2.0 features, like rss and bookmarking sites. I want to expand on that by providing a more web 2.0 feel like IP.Board 3 has I think successfully done. And by also expanding more on integration between DevFuse mods. This could be as simple as the Videos System report a video sends data to the contact system. Or much more complicated integration with 2 or 3 different mods at once.

 

I've added a poll so I can get some feedback. Please reply with any ideas or suggestions you have for us in 2009.

[Michael]

As we are now in the 2nd quarter of this year, I thought it was time to review what has been done so far and reiterate suggestions and feedback are still needed going forward. I would like to also add to the road map the goal of making my mods more multi language friendly. This includes utilizing language files in the public side and admin side of IPB3, something which wasn't fully done in the IPB 2.3 mods.

Free Mods:

So far 5 free mods have been released with the 6th one to be released within the next few days. This is a massive increase from the one free mod I did last year. I hope these new mods are benefiting your board in someway.

 

Big and Social Mods:

Unfortunately these two have been held up due to the delay in IPB3 being released, at the time of posting this topic, I was still expecting a 4th quarter 2008 or early 1st quarter 2009 release. But due to the delays I have not been able to really start these new mods yet. Upgrading mods to IPB3 has been slow also due to developer bugs in IPB3 which prevents some crucial features from mods from being upgraded.

[Breadfan]

I voted for free mods but wouldn't mind paying as well.

I realised most of the modders do offer quite affordable prices for their mods and only few (in my opinion) are a bit expensive but that's again, their choice and their policy.

 

Basically, if someone makes a good mod, I don't think it would matter if it's free or paid in terms of its popularity and usage (excluding sites that "distribute" paid mods for free).

 

Modding community is the backbone of IPB and you guys should get every support you need to keep the wheel rolling.

Edited March 17, 2010 by Breadfan