I had a number of good old threads from this board bookmarked so I could read them later and wrap my head around their ideas, but then I lost them all in a hard drive crash (strike two, Western Digital!). I also had a number of Japanese BBS's linked from this board bookmarked so I could take a look at their software's functionality and get some other ideas.

Anyway, these are all non-template suggestions:

• Topical category metadata in new thread creation so only one instance is necessary per site (further fine-grained behavior with PATH_INFO would let you nest one category inside another and view multiple categories of threads at once).

• Thorough search functionality a-la notchan, using PATH_INFO. This might not be possible without implementing a per-post metadata system though.

• Elaborating on the above, per-post metadata for "sage" status, for future-proofing in case someone wants to remove the functionality from the e-mail field (onto a checkbox, for example).

• config.pl parameter for a generic image that takes the place of a deleted image (ie, Hello Kitty)

• Fine-grained banning options that let you choose whether or not the user is blocked from reading a board, posting to a board, or both. Another parameter defines the duration of his ban ('0' for permaban), and another defines a reason/message displayed when the user tries to access a board.

• Replace HTML error pages with dialog box equivalents using JavaScript.

• Kill user deletion. I can't see any case for when it'd have constructive uses.

• Conversion to mod_perl?

I also have an early idea swimming around in my head about only bumping threads a few positions up, instead of to the top. Another idea is actively bumping threads down, either by a few positions or to the bottom. I'm not exactly sure yet what good it'd be for.

Also...

>* I'll add thread closing to Kareha, but I was thinking of setting the default behaviour to never permasage or close threads.

I think this is ideal for the time, until we have enough statistical data to derive thorough auto-permasage and auto-delete/archive algorithms. Just add the functionality for mods to manually set these statuses, but remove the "permasage at 1000" behavior.

The standalone thumbnailer project is a great idea too. As a suggestion, how about adding functionality to also read and thumbnail document files like TXT, PDF, and DOC?