What are the biggest drawbacks of FluentCommunity as of now?
What features is FluentCommunity lacking right now that absolutely need to be included in the next updates?
To me...just my personal taste...it's the Course component ...where the Lesson Navigation (lesson list) is displayed on the Right Hand Side instead of the customary Left Hand Side. Many users want it on the left.
arjun arjunΒ I think that could be fixed with a simple bit of css
.fcom_lesson_container .fcom_lesson_sidebar {
border-left: none !important;
border-right: 1px solid var(--fcom-primary-border, #e5e7eb);
}
.fcom_lesson_container {
flex-direction: row-reverse !important;
}
Ross FCAΒ Hey Ross, thank you so much for providing this CSS. Although it appears Simple, to me it has an extraordinary value. I am so much thankful to you for this CSS snippet, Dear Ross!
arjun arjunΒ You're very welcome! Did you manage to apply it and is it working ok?
Ross FCAΒ Yes Ross, I did apply it as soon as I saw the css from you. I had a feeling that it would definitely work looking at your css and looking at the cool way you were talking about how it could be fixed "with a simple bit of CSS". And do you see the reactions/likes on your css? A good many course creators are loving your solution. And this clearly hints at how the course designers are looking for ways to have the lesson navigation displayed toward the left instead of the right.
And Ross I think you were once talking about creating something like a "toggle navigation" to expand or collapse it...In case of the Lesson structure, having the sidebar appear and disappear upon hover would be awesome!
I think it will be course navigation as the course library grows. Up until recently, I wasn't using the course component but I have just added a bunch of courses to one of my communities and I'm envisioning the left sidebar becoming impossible. Other than that, it has taken me a lot less time to get the lessons up than when I was using LearnDash. I still have a site with a bunch of courses on LearnDash but am wanting to get away from BuddyBoss.
The follow / friends function is the biggest missing piece in FluentCommunityΒ β¦
In my community, the lack of a follow or friends function is a major drawback because of interest & age relevance... Most members only want to see and interact with people in their own age group or interest. Without the ability to follow specific members, their feed is filled with posts that donβt feel relevant to them, which lowers engagement and makes the platform feel less personal and less appealing to return to
TjaΕ‘a PeterleΒ The addition of this feature would be a major win.
TjaΕ‘a PeterleΒ at least get notified if a user you follow post a topic, that would increase engagement a lot Shahjahan JewelΒ
I agree with the follow/friends function, and I'd also add:
The ability to allow our Community members to upload videos from their devices without the need to have a URL.
The ability to allow the Community owner/admin to add different emoji's in the reactions on posts and comments.
The ability to upload audio/video directly from the members device to the default FC Chat feature, main news feed, and groups.
The ability to integrate seamlessly with Tutor LMS and other Forum plugins such as wpforo.
The ability to allow Community members to create their own groups and own/manage them.
The ability to allow the Community admin to assign or set a member to moderate/manage specific groups, not just the option to add a group moderator/manager that has the power to oversee ALL groups/spaces.
There are a few other minor things, but these should suffice for now, and sadly for some the lack of these functionalities is a deal breaker when trying to get them to switch over to FC.
I second the ability for members to make and manage groups. I want my members to be able to form small masterminds for themselves.
And ability to create a questionnaire to vet people before they join. (Like when you join a Facebook group)
I still find the layout and navigation of a topic with a lot of comments bad. There is no "remember" functionality, so you always have to search which comment you where last if you visit the topic after a week for example. I would really really love to have the choice to for a more traditional lay-out instead of this facebook comment style.
π
- Inability to rearrange the positioning of courses. They are in alphabetical order or by order of creation. This is a significant problem in the organization and updates of curricula.
- In discussion spaces, text formatting options are not visible.
- Inability to export a session or all sessions of a course, for backup or installation on a site.
- Unable to export settings, for backup or installation on another site.
- The too-often mandatory use of "!important" for custom CSS.
- The SEO/GEO referencing system via Json-LD enrichment is not complete.
I donβt know any π
On the course module:
- Place the "Complete lesson" button at the bottom, where people already are, instead of having to scroll back up
- The ability to add other types of blocks into the quiz, instead of only the questions
- The possibility to add h5p content in general for improved immersion
Notification system. Browser notifications/push notifications--some way other than email to get a notification of a comment/post/etc. That's where a full app would shine, but a simple notification system for now would be great.
- No ability to put static advertisements in sidebar that are viewable accross full community.
- The messaging feature for admin doesnt notify the admin they received a private message.
- The login issue with caching and no cookie present has not been addressed.
- If someone posts in the wrong Space you cannot easily move the conversation to the proper space if the member is not a member of the new space. This makes moderation very tedious.
A calendar function would be great to show upcoming office hours and workshops
KaiΒ - Calendar function with event registration
A simple way to integrate tag manager and analytics, this is a must!
Searching in courses.
And, but that might be a support thing, having support use community for its knowledgebase (forums and courses).
#1 Friends / Follow functionality, as mentioned by TjaΕ‘a PeterleΒ s above
Also would like an additional like/favorite icon (as with heart), and both configurable (icon=heart, label=like, functionality is: AND or OR):
eg. thumbs up OR thumbs down, #1 OR #2 ... OR #n, Option A AND/OR Option B
This can be used in many situations. I see it as a positive addition, nothing negative. Consider a movie review, where the "expert" ranking diverges strongly from the user ranking, and what that might indicate. Or a group discussion, where a particularly popular choice also garners many down votes, possibly warranting consideration that otherwise wouldn't be apparent.
The ability to vote 'yea' and 'nay' is important and constructive. Removing the so-called "dislike" button should be left at the discretion of each community, not imposed (as with YouTube). If a community isn't mature enough to use responsibly, disable.
Seems like a relatively simple feature to augment, that can broadly enhance feedback quality and engagement.
The comment interface if you ask me. I'm really not a fan of this Facebook style and wished many times Shahjahan JewelΒ his team would add a option to just show the comments like in a normal forum. With more space and better way to keep track of comments (for example the system remembering with comment you saw last, so you can start from there).
A huge gap is not having the ability to easily integrate the community within an existing site. You can have a top menu on your site with a link to 'Community' but then you can't edit the community top menu or show the whole site top menu so the user gets lost.
Needs the ability to add different menu button options (or at least one to get back to the main home page!) AND set the icon and text size/font otherwise Fluent Community remains just like circle etc and a strange alternative user experience.