Drafts Feature

[Dave247 568]

I think it would be very useful to be able to save a post as a draft to a list so you can go back later and post it when ready, that is if it's possible.

 

There's a number of advantages to this,

• You might type something but cannot find the picture at the moment you wanted to add to it and you don't want to lose what you typed especially if it's long.
• You might want to post something but you want to wait until someone else posts something because you are the last poster in that topic.
• Or maybe your just typing a long post, don't feel like it's finished, don't want to post it just yet and you need to step away for a large period of time but you don't want to lose what you've already typed.
• I could also see this used for fiction writers if they wanted to so that they can save the story their writing and come back to it later.

There can be a cut off though as not to clog the forum with heaps of unspotted posts. For example, it will only be saved for a short period of time and then it will be automatically deleted.

 

 

I am open to hear any reason why this would not be possible or plausible as I am not as experienced with the workings of this forum just yet. I am still relatively new.

[Prince Lightning Da Cute 619]

This could be a great idea but how easily can this be implemented? What's a short period of time and what are some other problems that could occur.

[I_wesley125 393]

IPB has a limited amount of features and I don't think that is built in.

You can have addons but the there are only addons that people have already made and making your own is a lot of work.

[Dave247 568]

I was originally going to say 5-7 days but that's just my opinion and I didn't want my judgement to cloud that of the staff's.

As for problems and implementation... that's why I posted it here. I've seen the feature on another forum but I don't know what it would be like introducing a feature like this to IPB. It seemed like a common thing to me that each forum would or could have.

[Twilight Sparkle ✨ 8,526]

Anything's possible with add-ons (and an experienced IP.Board modder actually joined us a few days ago, who has already done some custom work for us), but I don't think a "drafts" feature is really necessary. It would potentially result in an awful lot of drafts that people start writing, save, and then never touch again, resulting in unneeded database clutter.

 

I can imagine why you might want to work on a post in more than one sitting. Although such cases are rare, I acknowledge that it may be necessary or desirable to have the ability to save a draft for further editing later. I'd like to point out, however, that it's very easy to grab your post's BBCode and throw it into a .txt file or something.

 

Considering that the vast majority of posts are both written and posted in the same sitting, I don't think the effort to develop such a modification is worth it when you can save a draft of your post with Notepad, anyway.

 

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It's worth noting that IP.Board has an auto-save feature that periodically saves the contents of the editor to a cookie. Clicking the little "last auto saved" line under the editor lets you see what it has saved and restore it. This is, however, designed to be a disaster recovery feature (ie. you accidentally pressed "back") than a "drafts" system.

[Dave247 568]

Anything's possible with add-ons (and an experienced IP.Board modder actually joined us a few days ago, who has already done some custom work for us), but I don't think a "drafts" feature is really necessary. It would potentially result in an awful lot of drafts that people start writing, save, and then never touch again, resulting in unneeded database clutter.

 

I can imagine why you might want to work on a post in more than one sitting. Although such cases are rare, I acknowledge that it may be necessary or desirable to have the ability to save a draft for further editing later. I'd like to point out, however, that it's very easy to grab your post's BBCode and throw it into a .txt file or something.

 

Considering that the vast majority of posts are both written and posted in the same sitting, I don't think the effort to develop such a modification is worth it when you can save a draft of your post with Notepad, anyway.

 

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It's worth noting that IP.Board has an auto-save feature that periodically saves the contents of the editor to a cookie. Clicking the little "last auto saved" line under the editor lets you see what it has saved and restore it. This is, however, designed to be a disaster recovery feature (ie. you accidentally pressed "back") than a "drafts" system.

 

That's a good point, I am unaware if such a plugin exists but I do agree that if it does not then it is not worth the effort. It was just a suggestion of an idea I came up with the other day. I see now that with this idea I was mainly thinking of myself and not the board as a whole. I will try and adopt this mindset for the future.

 

On another note the auto-save feature is indeed useful and has saved me twice now when I accidently refreshed the page or clicked on a link.