Attention: TDR Forum Junkies 
Steve St.Laurent
Staff Alumni
The new forum software is up and running as of 5:00 am eastern time. One thing you may notice is that the post time for all of the old posts are off by 4 hours. This is because when the original vB software was setup up several years ago it was done incorrectly. It is now setup properly and that's why there is a time difference. You can now choose whether you are in an area with daylight savings time or not in your user control panel and it will automatically change for you (or not).
The server will be building the search index over the next week or so. This means that when you do searches you will NOT be getting all the information until it's done (approximately 1 week from now - it's a LONG intensive process with the amount of data we have on here). Current posts will be added to the search index as they are made - it's all the old posts that will take time to build in. It also means the server will be slower than normal while it goes through this process. There is also a post cache that will take about a week to fill out which will increase performance as it builds.
EDIT: I had to restart the search index rebuild on 08/08 - you can read details on why here: https://www.turbodieselregister.com/forums/showthread.php?t=108862 . It will now be approximately 8/15 before the rebuild is done and the site will be slower than normal during this period.
There are 11 different color choices for the background of the forums. You can select them at the bottom of any of the forum screens. Once you decide on a style go into the user control panel under options and set it there. It will then be set to that color no matter where you log in from (when you make the choice on the regular forums screens it's saved in your cookie, may be lost, and won't follow you around).
Spell check will be added back in down the road once all the issues with the existing package are worked out. Spell check modifies quite a bit of code and I don't want to make tech support more complicated than necessary while we get it off the ground.
All of the forum software related buttons that used to be white at the top of the screen are now in the "Discussion Forums" pull down menu. View new posts is in there as well. Spend a minute looking at the different pull down menus across the top and you should be able to navigate around the site easily.
The reason we had to upgrade to this new version of vBulletin is because the version that we were running (2. 2. x) has a security hole. There were hackers that were searching the net for sites running that version of vB, hacking into the sites, erasing data, and generally creating havoc. As soon as I became aware of this security issue I got to work on upgrading us to the new release. I didn't want to say anything about why we were doing it until we were on the new software for obvious reasons.
We had been waiting to upgrade to this release until it had been out there for a while and had a good track record for stability. This is version 3. 0. 3 of vB which is the third production release of the software. I talked with a number of webmasters of large sites running it before we took the plunge and they are all happy with it.
I hope you enjoy the new software. It has a lot of new features that the old software didn't that I think you'll enjoy. I will be watching the site closely during the day today watching for problems (and then I'm going to get a GOOD nights sleep). I'll also be doing some finishing touches on other parts of the site while doing so (the menus). Enjoy!
I'll be opening a couple threads to answer questions. One for bug reports, and another going over new features - please post those in their proper threads. For questions on how specific things work please start a seperate thread.
Click here for Bug Report thread
Partial list of new forum features
-Steve St. Laurent
Webmaster
The server will be building the search index over the next week or so. This means that when you do searches you will NOT be getting all the information until it's done (approximately 1 week from now - it's a LONG intensive process with the amount of data we have on here). Current posts will be added to the search index as they are made - it's all the old posts that will take time to build in. It also means the server will be slower than normal while it goes through this process. There is also a post cache that will take about a week to fill out which will increase performance as it builds.
EDIT: I had to restart the search index rebuild on 08/08 - you can read details on why here: https://www.turbodieselregister.com/forums/showthread.php?t=108862 . It will now be approximately 8/15 before the rebuild is done and the site will be slower than normal during this period.
There are 11 different color choices for the background of the forums. You can select them at the bottom of any of the forum screens. Once you decide on a style go into the user control panel under options and set it there. It will then be set to that color no matter where you log in from (when you make the choice on the regular forums screens it's saved in your cookie, may be lost, and won't follow you around).
Spell check will be added back in down the road once all the issues with the existing package are worked out. Spell check modifies quite a bit of code and I don't want to make tech support more complicated than necessary while we get it off the ground.
All of the forum software related buttons that used to be white at the top of the screen are now in the "Discussion Forums" pull down menu. View new posts is in there as well. Spend a minute looking at the different pull down menus across the top and you should be able to navigate around the site easily.
The reason we had to upgrade to this new version of vBulletin is because the version that we were running (2. 2. x) has a security hole. There were hackers that were searching the net for sites running that version of vB, hacking into the sites, erasing data, and generally creating havoc. As soon as I became aware of this security issue I got to work on upgrading us to the new release. I didn't want to say anything about why we were doing it until we were on the new software for obvious reasons.
We had been waiting to upgrade to this release until it had been out there for a while and had a good track record for stability. This is version 3. 0. 3 of vB which is the third production release of the software. I talked with a number of webmasters of large sites running it before we took the plunge and they are all happy with it.
I hope you enjoy the new software. It has a lot of new features that the old software didn't that I think you'll enjoy. I will be watching the site closely during the day today watching for problems (and then I'm going to get a GOOD nights sleep). I'll also be doing some finishing touches on other parts of the site while doing so (the menus). Enjoy!
I'll be opening a couple threads to answer questions. One for bug reports, and another going over new features - please post those in their proper threads. For questions on how specific things work please start a seperate thread.
Click here for Bug Report thread
Partial list of new forum features
-Steve St. Laurent
Webmaster
Last edited by a moderator:
