Will add to direction Phil is recognizing. Groups (Communities on our site) are bread and butter content providers. We are subscription based, zero advertising. Our users get Proton mail like account (iRedMail/Roundcube/Enigma), and twitter clone (Mastodon). Just signed up 2 nationally syndicated radio host and scrambling to make Groups presentable. Shoot, try adding a podcast to a Group! At wits end and ready to scrap OSSN. Whatever direction we go will say this to powers that be regarding OSSN...content is king, and Groups is only real avenue you have to entice content providers to brand.

After checking with other private developers, it appears that there are many obstacles to the structures of OSSN that prevent any "easy" application of the features needed to even bring the groups to "minimal" features that you would expect in a modern social networking platform. Unfortunately, this actually has me evaluating other options that have everything I wanted, PLUS much more, already built into groups, pages, advertising, newsfeed options, multi-leveled pro access, and a bunch of other things that could only ever be on a wish list here. I would have to lose some ability to fully customize, though, and the customizing is essential to me.

If I decide to switch, I will lose the ease of adding my own menu items to my own content, and a few other things involved in total customization, BUT... everything that is paid extras here is already available in the packages as standard features (at a lower base price, as well), and with MUCH more functionality and very good interface.

Softlab24 has been fantastic in some of the things I've asked them for, and ~Z~ Man does awesome work on the things he develops for OSSN, but the world moves fast, and OSSN is lagging far behind the modern world. It saddens me in a way, because I really like OSSN for some of the things you can do with it.

Difficult choices. Do I wait a little longer and see if they developers start taking this a little more seriously, or do I just chalk up all the money and time I've spent trying to make this thing work??? Let's see what 6.0 brings.

Regards,

Phil

Groups definitely needs a makeover. I just started a site and currently have about a dozen people on making sure everything is working correctly before moving several hundred over from other social networks. So far group functionality is the main concern for my testing team. We would be more than willing to pay for better group functionality as a paid addon as this is quite important to social media.

I agree with your opinion.

Yet another great discovery about groups... "uploaded" videos don't get a share button. nice.

@Arsalan Shah ... are there any third party persons that you know who are familiar with OSSN code that may be able to do some of these changes . Rules are the least of what is needed. In fact, that would be last on my list. LOL! I have actually had to turn groups OFF for non admin because people are creating them, not finding features, and abandoning them. Now I have to create groups and find a couple of other people to regularly put some posts so users see "something" until I can figure out what to do with it... like I said... it is the NUMBER ONE feature used on a social network, by far. If I can't figure it out within a month or two, as much as I would hate to because I love how I have been able to customize my site, I will have to figure out how to move the database info into another social network software.

Adding a member requests questions and answering them before requesting is possible to modify group component to add that but i don't have a time to look into it and have no plan for that in future too, however it is possible.

In addition to what i said below... this just came up in discussion about what group owners want:

Hey... it's a users world, and if any of us are going to compete, we need to give them the basic stuff they are used to, and want, if they are going to go someplace new. No?

regards,

Phil

@Aesalan Shah ... real simple... to be even close to up to par with other modern social network sites that are retaining members it needs at the very least:

• groups should be able to be created in categories defined by the System Admin to make them easier to find instead of just sifting through every group in chonology of when they were started

• Group owners should have the ability to assign additional Admin and/or moderators to the group

• Users should be able to see any new posts from groups they belong to within their newsfeed instead of having to go to every single group to see IF there are new posts... they will lose interest otherwise.

• When group posts are shared they should have an indicator in the newsfeed, WITH LINK in group name, of the group they came from...

i.e. ) "Philip Lozier>Yub Nub Q&A Group shared post" ( -- promotes groups and draws more participants

• When groups are searched, or displayed by category, they should have a thumbnail image of the group cover photo ... marketing 101-"catch their eye"

• When groups are displayed in search or by category they should contain at the very least the number of members in the group, if not also the last post date.

• groups should have a seperate section for a "rules" posting, that by option of the group owner the user must agree to for an application to be sent

When my site can be compared against MeWe or Wimkin, more than once, I must be doing something right... when I can have the same complaint about groups on SEVERAL occasions, there must be something wrong.

Not an insult... at all... I love OSSN for many things, but outdated functionality on some key features is not one of them.

Regards,

Phil

I don't understand about group doesn't have functionality, what functionality?