Fieldlines.com
It was not exactly easy getting everything working since I had ZERO perl knowledge going into this, but it was mostly straightforward. We upgraded from Scoop 0.9 to 1.0 during the process, which really messed up mySQL, caused server crashes, etc. But we re-installed scoop from scratch and that fixed the problems.
Thanks to everyone on #scoop IRC for timely help, and good help from the scoop-help list too. And thanks to Bill for that showtopics_box dynamic topics page, it works great!
We want everything posted right away, no waiting for moderation or ratings, so all that is turned off. We hope to eventually use ratings to automatically put good threads into our renewable energy FAQs.
Still a couple bugs - A weird thing with topics where users have to turn them off and back on after setting up an account, or they don't show up. Spellcheck is still not working. And a few things we'd like to tweak that are hard-coded into Scoop...size of intro text box, disallow photos in intro text only, etc. etc.
USER UPLOADS are absolutely awesome! That feature really makes our board different, fun and informative. Some folks don't like our new format since Scoop is much more "busy" in layout than our old board, which had all of 5 buttons. But they are coming around -- and photo uploads are one reason why they like it! Lots of complaints about how many boxes and links there are -- but all the prefs are so powerful that people eventually figure out what they do, why they are there, and how powerful they really are. In general, people who are already techno-savvy and use other boards frequently are very positive about Scoop. Those that don't - are somewhat daunted at first, but get the hang of it. We are still wokring on ways to make it look less "busy."
Projects from here in the works -- a "compile photo gallery" box that generates HTML to make a gallery for each user. A "latest photo upload" box on the front page that shows what's new -- but lets the ADMIN pick what goes on the front page from recent photos.
Thanks to all that helped me get this thing going!
DanF
PS - note to new Scoop Admins. Pay attention to the warning next to "default_template" -- if you accidentally comment out |CONTENT| when you are trying to get rid of the extra "comment_controls" box, you will really ruin your day, and will get a REALLY fast education on using mySQL from the command line to fix it! Trust me on this one.
