Reply Into New PC

[[R] NuclearGeneral]

^{Please read the bottom for pricing information!}

 

 

Reply Into New Personal Conversation (aka RINPC) allows members to quote content from various locations in your community into a new personal conversation. It can be from an existing conversation, a forum post, product review in nexus or comments in other supported IPS applications. When you install and enable RINPC, members who are granted access will be able to quote content from various sources directly into a new personal conversation with the author of the quoted content or they can optionally select to start the new conversation with someone else.

 

 

History of RINPC

The original reason for creating this new feature came from someone who had recently upgraded to IPB3 and all previous private messages were read-only. So the idea was to make it easy for someone to spawn an old private message into a new personal conversation. After making this possible, I thought it could be helpful to do the same with forums posts and this rapidly grew to include the other IPS applications, with the exception of IP.Content.

 

 

Features and settings

With the way it's designed, it can be set up to be treated as a community feature for everyone or only for members of certain groups, which can be used as a bonus if your community accepts contributions or sells membership subscriptions. It can also be set to always be available for staff members (those with ACP access and/or SuperMod access) based on what kind of access they have. For staff members, it can be an invaluable tool if someone posts something and an administrator feels it necessary to respond in private. You can also select which applications are supported, so if you want to support comments made for blog entries but not for gallery images, you can do it easily.

 

When you first install RINPC, it is disabled by default. The reason for this is to give an administrator an opportunity to decide who can use it and where it will be available at. This prevents an active member from seeing the button one moment but then encountering an error when they try to use it or deciding to ask what it was and why it disappeared. There is also a built in logging system which can be enabled for debugging/troubleshooting purpose. Normally this should remain off, but even when it's on, only a limited amount of information is logged with the goal being to not only see what is absolutely necessary, but to protect the privacy of members.

 

 

Usaging RINPC

Using this new feature on the front end is rather straightforward. Members who are able to use it will see a new button anywhere it's supported and enabled. For someone who isn't quite sure what the button is for, some helpful text will appear.

http://content.screencast.com/users/LordWolf/folders/rINPC/media/a20e36f8-bdde-4747-b1e3-a36bc2e5764e/screen-1.png

 

When a member clicks on the button, they will be taken immediately to the messaging system to start a new personal conversation. Not only will the selected content be automatically included, but some information will already be filled in to make the whole process easier. The member is also presented with a preview of the content they are quoting, to make it easier to review the original content while they they are composing their message.

http://content.screencast.com/users/LordWolf/folders/rINPC/media/95fe58e8-c434-4442-920d-e313de4200f9/screen-compose.png

 

As you can see, the original author is automatically entered as the person to start the conversation with, the message subject is filled in and the quote also includes the original author and date when the quoted content was posted. It may seem unnecessary to include the author's name when you're quoting them, but this allows a member to change who they are starting the conversation with or to include more people in it, without adding confusion to the issue. Included within the quote is also a link back to the original content. When it's a post, it's a link back to the topic, as the quote itself already includes the ever useful snap-back arrow to return to the original post. For everything else, the link at the bottom goes to the quoted content, making it easier to return to.

 

 

Customization

For communities that aren't English based or where an admin wants to use different wording, customization is made easy. As with most applications and hooks, you can update the language bits within the ACP. When needing or wanting to change the wording, there are two options available. For most things, changing one language bit will affect multiple applications. For example, regardless of if someone is quoting content from Blog or Gallery, the link back text uses the same language bit. However there is also the option of having custom text for Blog that is different from Gallery. The benefit here is it's easier to make wide changes with less work, when the same text will be used, while providing the option to use different text where desired. This same flexibility is available for the text used for the default message title as well as the text used for buttons and the little 'help' text for those buttons.

 

 

Email notifications

RINPC can also be used for email notifications for new personal conversations or replies to existing ones. This makes it easier for members who want to reply to only have to click one link and instantly have the message quoted. If you don't want to alter the language bits to include the new RINPC tag, you can toggle an option that will replace the default link with the new RINPC style link.

 

 

IP.Content and future plans

Considering how powerful IP.Content is and the fact that each site may handle permissions in specialized ways, I decided it best to not pre-include support for IP.Content. However, I am looking into adding the ability to allow external 'modules' to be used. Not only so that sites can add in support for their IP.Content needs, but also to make it possible for 3rd party application authors to enable RINPC support for their applications, meaning that RINPC can be expanded easily for current and future 3rd party applications. This is not a feature guaranteed to be added, but if it is, a new setting will be added to toggle which 3rd party applications to support. Not only pick and choose from available applications, but also keep your community secure as a module wouldn't be loaded and used if it's not supposed to be supported.

 

 

Pricing

The introductory cost of this product is only $10 (limited time). After this offer is over, the price will be $15. Renewal $5 every 6 months but is only necessary for product updates and support.

 

Click here to purchase RINPC

 

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