I have been thinking about adding BLOG to our site. http://www.slashdot.org is one of the more famous BLOGS out there - if you don't know what I mean, go check it out, it's pretty cool... Basically it reads a little like a news site, with users submitting the stories.

Then I started to think, WHY start from the beginning by downloading the free "Slash" code from slashdot, dealing with the install, etc.? We already have 99% of the product in the discussion code, all it needs is a little tweak to *ALSO* do this in the next version.

Here is what I propose as a new feature.

Ability to mark "FORUM" as a regular discussion forum, or as a BLOG.

If it is designated as a blog then going to the FORUM will not only show the titles of the root message, but also the first 300 or so characters of the message. The entire message and all of the replies to it would show up when "Read More / Replies" is clicked.

It could either work so that any registered user could post a root message or only certain, manually selected users could do it (admin could give them BLOG root posting privilidge).

The admin could also have the option to either allow all root posts or selectivelly OK which post can go on it and which isn't good enough so as to keep up the quality of the "news" or articles submitted.


This seems like pretty easy tweak to me and the usefullness of the GT Forum software would drastically increase.

I would love to hear your feedback on this, with possible suggestions and additional ideas regarding the "GT Blog" upgrade.

Additionally, and this applies even for the non-BLOG discussion board... I would love to see a way to (using the admin interface) have sections of the forum separate from the mother forum, so that they don't link to the main one in any way and may not even be visible on the main menu. There are certain forum topics I would like to create for some websites (chess club or what not) where their website would link to their discussion but not the other stuff on the main site of ours...