Introducing Feature Requests Board
Today, we’re launching something we’ve been thinking about for a long time and believe is truly important for the entire Balbooa community. We’re introducing Feature Requests — a new section on the Balbooa website created specifically for ideas. Ideas that are born in real work. Ideas that appear while you’re building projects, testing solutions, running into limitations, or discovering new possibilities. Ideas you don’t just want to mention but actually discuss.
Feature Requests is not a wish list and not a list of demands. It’s a space for meaningful dialogue, where your experience helps us better understand which direction to move in next.
Built with Gridbox
While working on Feature Requests, we once again realized just how powerful a tool we are building.
Without hacks, workarounds, or third-party extensions, we created a large, fully functional Feature Requests board entirely with the Joomla website builder Gridbox. Complete with statuses, filters, ratings, user profiles, and email notifications.
This is not a demo or a marketing mockup. It’s a live, real section. Today, we’re once again showing Gridbox’s capabilities not with words, but in practice. In a real-world, complex, and demanding scenario.
Different Needs, Different Spaces
Visually, Feature Requests may look similar to Community Forums. But these sections serve different purposes. The Support Forum is designed for solving specific technical issues, where you get help right here and now. Ideas work differently. They need space for discussion, growth, and reflection.
For a long time, you shared suggestions directly in support topics. We read them, saved them, and discussed them internally. But the forum format didn’t allow us to work with ideas in a structured way. That’s why we decided to separate these processes.
The Feature Requests board is a place where you can share your vision: what could be improved, what could be added, what could be made more convenient. Here, you become a participant in the development of Balbooa Extensions.
At the same time, it’s important for us to clearly define our boundaries. Balbooa Extensions are vision-driven products. They have their own architecture, philosophy, and long-term direction. We carefully review every suggestion, but the final decision on implementation always remains with the team.
This is not about ignoring ideas. It’s about responsibility for the integrity of the product. That’s why we recommend familiarizing yourself with the Feature Requests Policy. It will help you better understand how we work with suggestions and why not every idea becomes a feature.
Things to Keep in Mind
We truly value your ideas and feedback. Share suggestions, support existing requests, and take part in discussions.
To keep Feature Requests useful and comfortable for everyone, please:
- Before creating a request, try searching the board first. Your idea may already be under discussion
- Give your request a descriptive title and a detailed explanation
- Explain your idea in detail and tell us why it would be useful for you or other users
- Keep the discussion constructive and professional.
Every idea matters, especially when it’s well thought out and clearly described.
Submitting a Feature Request
To share an idea, click the Request a feature button. Choose the appropriate category, describe your suggestion, add screenshots if needed, and submit the request. Sometimes one visual example explains more than a long description.
Once submitted, your idea becomes part of the shared space and is open for discussion.
Feature Request Statuses
Each Feature Request has a status that shows which stage it’s currently in.
Right after submission, a request receives the New status, meaning it has been successfully created. Once a moderator reviews it, the status changes to In Review. This is our way of showing that the request has been noticed and is on our radar.
Next possible stages include:
- Planned. The idea has been approved and scheduled for development
- In Progress. Our team is actively working on this feature
- Released. The feature is now live and available for use.
This system makes the process transparent and easy to follow.
Voting and Discussion
Feature Requests is not a list of wishes. It’s a living conversation. Customers with an active subscription can take part in discussions, support ideas, or thoughtfully disagree with them. To keep voting fair, each customer can vote only once per request.
Your starts and comments help us better prioritize and see the community’s real needs.
Feature Importance Rating System
To measure priority, we use a 5-star rating system.
It’s important to understand that stars are not a measure of quality and not a “good or bad” indicator. They reflect importance. Five stars mean the feature is critical to your workflow.
This helps us evaluate how significant a request is for the community as a whole, not just for individual customers.
Filters and Navigation
As the number of ideas grows, it becomes especially important to see the bigger picture. In Feature Requests, you can sort ideas by category, filter them by status, or view the highest-priority requests. This saves time and makes it easy to find what matters most to you.
In Progress Section
We’d especially like to highlight the In Progress section. Here, you can see what we’re working on right now. Even today, it already contains an extensive list of features that have been completed or are currently in development:
A fair warning — there’s a lot to read. But an enormous amount of work has been done. We share the major milestones in our blog posts, and now you can also take a look directly into the process itself.
Every Idea is Its Own Topic
Each Feature Request has its own page. There you’ll find the current status, discussions, rating, and the author’s profile. You can rate its importance, suggest improvements, expand on the idea, or simply leave a comment.
Over time, these pages turn into meaningful discussions where ideas become clearer and more refined.
All your feature requests are also available in your Balbooa account. From there, you can easily track statuses, return to discussions, edit, or delete your requests.
Email Notifications
To make sure you don’t miss anything important, we’ve added email notifications. If someone leaves comments or reviews on your idea, you’ll receive an email with a direct link to the discussion, making it easy to stay informed and jump back into the conversation.
Final Thoughts
Feature Requests is our way of saying that we care not only about what we develop, but also about how you use it. We want to hear your ideas, see recurring requests, and understand real-world use cases.
At the same time, we stay true to our approach — Balbooa doesn’t evolve chaotically, but thoughtfully and consistently, with respect for architecture, our ideas, and long-term product vision.
So share your ideas, discuss them, and complement each other’s suggestions. We’ll keep listening, analyzing, and developing Balbooa Extensions the way we believe is right — carefully, consciously, and with respect for the community.
Let’s make Balbooa Extensions better together 👊😎