Suggestion: Drafting a post.

[Galdr]

Not sure if this has been suggested before (I tried the search but it gave me an error... Don't know why.) Anyway, simply put; is there a way that we can "save" a post by drafting it? Like, say you want to post a fanfiction and are typing it within the text box. You get tired for whatever reason and want to save where you left off. In this case, you can click a "save as draft" button, and then the post will be saved as a draft in your User CP without actually making the post.

This way, you can add more to it later, then save the draft until the story is completed, depending on how long it is. I know, you can always type in Microsoft Word, but what if people don't have it? (Just as a scenario.) This would be especially good for the graphics, fan-fictions and role-plays. You could draft the post and preview it before posting to make sure there's no mistakes or anything. Or, if it's a huge, collaboration, you'll want everything in there. I think this is a good idea for those who have those random power outages and are typing their posts. They could save as a draft quickly if they suspect a power surge or anything without losing their post.

We know, that just sucks when you typed 1 hour worth of text, only to be gone and frustrated.

It's just a suggestion and it would be cool if it was here. If not, then that's understandable. I get so used to typing up huge posts for threads then wanting to save them just in case, and to take a small break in between.

 

[Ho-Oh]

Sadly we don't have anything overly similar to this function, however I think it would be kinda awesome. I tend to PM myself posts before posting them if they're long, or put them in my notepad (that's a function of the usercp), but honestly in general this'd be something that could be useful for a few sections. Not so much in discussion-orientated ones, but in the creative ones, or if you're typing up an important post it'd be of use. Or even a save draft thread, even, could be good. I mean we can do that with blog entries, so why not posts?

 

[Galdr]

Ah, dang. It would have been very cool and useful. Yeah, from where I know this feature from, you could make a thread, but save it as a draft so you can work on it later. It was the same for posts in a thread.

Maybe a feature similar to this will be available in the future? Who knows. I've never written a blog here (or for any vbulletin-like website) due to being confusing, so I wouldn't know about the blog thing; I'll take your word for it. It could be for any post in general, really. That's what I was aiming for too. But, dang. Maybe they can add-on something similar.

 

[bobandbill]

Well, I know this feature exists with VB4 and maybe other forum software, but there's no current plans to change it and it's no small matter in itself. IDK about any forum hacks with such addons, but then it depends also how much more load that gives the database. Certainly I think it is an extremely useful feature at any rate.

I will address one thing though; ideally with fics and roleplays, for it to be decent in the majority of cases it really is better to save your work and come back to it later in an external program, even if it's the likes of say Notepad or something simple like that. For longer works you can always (if you don't have Word or whatnot) download OpenOffice (free to download, uses .doc files like Word) or say google docs, which is free to use (just need an email). There's plenty of alternatives available even if they are not as convenient as an auto-save post function.

 

[Nihilego]

Can it absolutely not be implemented into posts with what we have now? Seems odd that it's possible in blogs but not in the forum as a whole.

 

[droomph]

If not, it would be nice if there was an option to translate your Notepad into BBCode temporarily. So you can preview your threads and clean it up a bit easier.

I think that would be useful.

And then maybe HTML code but I'm just getting ahead of myself.