OpiWiki 2017: Features

Here are the key new features of OpiWiki:

Extended Layout

I've already talked about how special OpiWiki's layout is. Now it has become extended – not only in terms of the size, but also in terms of having even more amazing fonts, new icons and solutions. I truly love how pages with little to no images look like a piece of unique art, but at the same time they're elegant and clear.

Discuss Politics:
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Can anything be absolutely random?
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Does illegal downloading of music or films make you feel bad about yourself?
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Who are your favorite party member NPCs in Planescape: Torment?
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Best post-apocalyptic video games:
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Star Wars franchise:
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Superior discussion system

This one I worked on for a long time; I wanted OpiWiki to have the best environment for discussion of any website. Now loading further replies or replying to talks is always done without refreshing the page. For opinions with multiple replies, it all clearly lays out, with lines, arrows, and hints to guide the reader. You can now subscribe to any talk, or send a challenge to OpiWiki user(s) to reply to a certain talk. Example topic with many talks: Should prostitution be legal?

Challenges

It's now possible to invite OpiWiki users to answer a certain topic or talk. If you're interested about some user's opinion, simply go ahead and send him the OpiWiki challenge. Feel absolutely free to do so – it's just an invitation, and users can disable the possibility of inviting them at any time.

New subscription system

Previously it was possible to subscribe to topics and opinions with much less options. Now it is possible to subscribe to topics, opinions, and replies, but also to categories and tags. You receive neat emails with new opinion, reply, or topic notifications, depending on your subscriptions. It's fully customizable, e.g. you can set how often you'd like to receive emails, or disable email notifications and use OpiWiki inbox only. From email, you can always update your subscription or unsubscribe with one click without logging in.

Item tags

Most of OpiWiki items have now their dedicated tag. Item tags are being automatically created. Thanks to these tags, it's now possible to subscribe to items as well, to get a notification when a new related topic is created. It's also much easier to find topics related to a certain item – you simply search for this item in "Tags" on pages like OpiWiki/discuss or Categories.

Categories and Customize

The Categories section has been improved. This is now the section a user is redirected to after creating an account. The user is asked to subscribe to his favorite tags, which is a very smooth process. In general, I love how smooth and useful this page is. In combination with our great tag system, Categories lets users find topics they specifically like in a few clicks.

Related feature that has been improved as well is OpiWiki Customize. A user selects categories their like to customize their home page, and optionally subscribe to them all with one click. These settings are also valid for the Newsletter.

Newsletter

Yes, we finally have a newsletter system, which is a very basic feature for any serious website. The fact that it wasn't there earlier shows OpiWiki had in fact been in a very beta phase up until 2017. But now it's there and as every new feature, it's great. Customizable and with one-click options to update and unsubscribe. A newsletter will be including the most interesting topics of the week, as well as some Meta topics occasionally. Additionally, a newsletter will be sent in case of a globally significant event, right after this event, unless a user disables this option.

Choices

OpiWiki Choices is our new tool to handle the topics about choosing one item (or more) over the other(s). We had quite a few of such topics on the site and I felt we need a special layout to handle them. Example: The Terminator or Terminator 2: Judgment Day - which part of the series is better?

And other...

Additionally I've implemented tens of other improvements accross the site. Time to work on popularity now!