Future Plans.

We regularly receive emails asking about our future plans for CourseForum and ProjectForum, often accompanied by requests for particular features. We're always glad to hear your suggestions for making the products better, and we do keep track of all such requests - and have already implemented many!

While we've certainly got (somewhat flexible) plans for the next few releases, as well as lots more things we'd like to include down the road (mostly drawn from your suggestions), ultimately we try to drive the development plans based on user feedback. Are there features that many of our users would appreciate or benefit from? Are there problems that many are having? Do the same suggestions keep coming up again and again? Would adding particular features make the products attractive to a whole new audience?

Obviously, priorities do get juggled a lot and do change over time. New ideas come in, some changes make other pending ones more or less important, and so on. When asked, we'll do our best to give you an idea where a particular request sits in the priority list, though keep in mind this can change.

If you have something you'd like to see added to CourseForum or ProjectForum, what are some of the ways you can increase the chances of that happening? Glad you asked...

• Offer to pay for it. We do custom development work, which includes adding features to the software. If you really want something done, and especially want it in a timely manner, this is usually your best approach. For changes that will benefit a lot of users, we will give you a substantial discount on customization (and can sometimes find other people with whom you can share the cost).
• Purchase licenses for the software. Other things being equal, we'll give higher priority to suggestions and requests from people who have already purchased our software. (For work you're also willing to pay for, we'll apply part of your license purchase to customization work).
• Explain the benefit of the feature. Help us understand why you're asking for the feature, what problem it is solving, and who you think it would be applicable to. We really want to make changes to make the products better for real users.
• Help us promote CourseForum and ProjectForum. As a small company, we're grateful to those of you who are excited enough about our products to help us promote them: talking about them with your colleagues, on mailing lists, at conferences, setting up demos for people, etc. Again, other things being equal, we tend to be more receptive of ideas coming from people who are doing what they can to help us spread the word.
• Keep your letters coming! Most importantly, keep letting us know what you'd like to see in future versions! We do consider every suggestion, and we do our best to use these suggestions and other feedback to keep improving the products.

  ¶ 3:40 PM

Small Fix for Using RSS Feeds (Version 3.2.1).

We discovered a bug with the new RSS inclusion feature in 3.2, which can sometimes lead to pages (usually containing lots of included RSS feeds) hanging when they are being loaded. We've posted a new version (3.2.1) which corrects this problem. Worth an upgrade: CourseForum and ProjectForum.  ¶ 2:55 PM

For those with custom themes...

With the themes changes in 3.2, the fixed "Projects" and "RSS" links were replaced by an editable "Key Pages" list. You'll need to modify your theme's styles.css file to take this area into account. The old "navlinks" and "bottomnavlinks" styles are gone, and there is a new "keypages" style. Check the themes in the theme exchange to see examples of this.  ¶ 12:16 PM

Version 3.2 Released!

We've just posted version 3.2 of both CourseForum and ProjectForum. The highlight of this version is definitely the new RSS support, allowing CF or PF to be used as a "group news aggregator", but there's also lots of other notables in these releases too... check out the change logs (CF or PF).   ¶ 8:09 AM

License Upgrade Policy.

A few people have asked about this recently. Both CourseForum and ProjectForum licenses include one year of free updates to the software (so you can move to newer versions). After the one year is up, you have a choice. If you do nothing, you can continue using the versions you're already running indefinitely, at no charge.

If you want to move to newer versions after the one year though, you'll need to purchase an upgrade. The current fee to receive another year of upgrades is 50% of the current license cost. So for example, if you'd originally purchased a ten group ProjectForum license, the fee for another year of free updates is US$399 (half the full cost, which is currently $799).

We'd rather give people their upgrades for free though. If we get referred one or more people by you who make combined purchases of twice the current full license cost (e.g. $1598 in the example), we'd give you your annual license update for free.

In any case, we're always grateful if you pass along information about CourseForum and ProjectForum to anyone who you think might benefit from them. Make sure to have them tell us you sent them...

  ¶ 3:43 PM

Prices Updated.

Just a note that pricing for the licensed versions were updated today (hosting fees are staying the same). See the CourseForum or ProjectForum sales pages for the new prices.   ¶ 7:51 PM