New vBulletin version installed - info here on new features, etc.

[Steve St.Laurent]

I've been working on this for a little while and we rolled it out tonight. We are now running the latest stable version of vBulletin! Here is a list of the new features available in this version and links explaining them:

There are many new features and improvements to existing functionality in vBulletin 3. 7. 0 over vBulletin 3. 6. x, most of which have already been described in the release announcements for the various pre-release versions, and in the First Look thread that was posted at the beginning of the beta process, but here is a brief list of just a few of the highlights.

• Inline spam management & prevention
• Thread tagging
• Search cloud / tag cloud
• Thread prefixes
• Reciprocal friendships between users
• Public visitor messaging on profile pages with 'conversation' feature
• User picture galleries with user comment facility
• User-created social groups with invite only and moderated membership options
• Extended member profile pages
• Customizable member profile pages with admin-controlled styling abilities
• Inline editing of custom user profile fields
• Lightbox viewer for attached images
• Viewable and comparable history maintained for post edits
• Extended re-authentication for inline moderation actions
• Notices system for navigation bar
• Multiple human-verification systems including reCAPTCHA, image verification and Q/A
• User change history
• Social bookmarking integration

A couple of notes:

TRUCK PROFILE - One is that you'll probably notice that the truck profile is missing at this time. It will be coming back. Because of the vast changes to the user profile area I wanted to get it completely up and running and some time under our belts with it before I attempted to reintegrate the truck profile into it. Once it's stable I will do so. (Turned back on 12/18/2008)

USER PICTURE GALLERY - this new version of vB has it's own picture gallery. It is very limited in it's capabilities. The one advantage that it has is that you can include pictures in your social networking groups. There are quite a few requests into photopost (what we use for our gallery) to integrate their package into this. For now we are going to leave the vB picture gallery turned off and will monitor the situation with photopost and if they don't come out with a way to integrate it in the not too distant future we will revisit it.

Take a look around and try out the new features. We think you'll really enjoy them! The social networking features should be a lot of fun for the chapters, groups of friends, etc. You can also now customize the look of your profile page - colors, fonts, etc. - much like on myspace.

This is a major version upgrade and there has been a significant amount of work put into it to integrate all of the features we've added over the years. Of course there's always the possibility that I missed something. If you have any problems please let me know and I'll try to get it fixed ASAP.

-Steve St. Laurent
Webmaster

 

[lmills]

Hey Steve,

I tried clicking on a persons user name at the bottom of the page where you have "users on line" and got a database error message. Not sure if it is an ongoing thing, or if it was just temporary.

 

[fest3er]

Yup. Can't view users' public profiles from any of the links on the fora or even from the members list.

 

[Steve St.Laurent]

Try it now. It looks like it was a field left over from ubb way back when we used that for our forums. It didn't happen to me because as an admin it wasn't running the same query as for you guys. I think I have it fixed - let me know please.

 

[fest3er]

It doesn't fail now, but it doesn't format very nicely. See cropped pic... .

 

[Steve St.Laurent]

That's the same way it looks for me. That is how it's supposed to look.

 

[fest3er]

Oh, I shoulda compared with MDTDC's forum first (VB373PL1). The 'broken image' icons are what caught my eye. Other than that, it looks right.

Yeah, yeah, I'm too persnickety and I should stuff it.

 

[24V-DSL]

I just had my rotary phone replaced today with a push-button...



You guys make my head hurt, but I do appreciate all the work you've done over the years, Steve, to make this a great site.

 

[fest3er]

I just had my rotary phone replaced today with a push-button... .

You shouldn't be so hasty! In a couple years, you might wish you still had that old dial phone!

 

[Steve St.Laurent]

The 'broken image' icons are what caught my eye.

Ah, I use Firefox and it doesn't show broken image icons. Looked at it in IE and saw them. I've fixed all those image icons now. Thanks for spotting it! Persnickety on . . . .

 

[fest3er]

Ah! Much more betterer! We may be persnickety, but at least we don't grouse too much.

Grouse? Where? I don't see no grouse. Oww! Oh! Look at the grouse!

Nyuk, nyuk.

 

[rbattelle]

I don't quite understand the purpose of the public messaging system...

You click a person's profile and you can say something to them, which can be read by anyone else. But why bother? I mean, why not just post what you want to say to a thread or send a PM?

And if you want to reply to a conversation, do you do so in your own profile, or in the other person's? And if someone leaves you a public message, there's no email notification that someone said something?

Ugh, I must be confused.

Ryan

 

[Steve St.Laurent]

If someone leaves you a public message you'll have a notification in the upper right of the forum pages by your "Welcome, username" message. There's a ton of notifications that will show up there related to the social networking stuff. I would envision it being used to say something regarding their profile - information in their signature, groups they belong to, etc, etc. I'm not big into the social networking thing and honestly don't completely understand it but there are a TON of people that are and do (look at how many are on Myspace, Facebook, etc).

 

[rbattelle]

I'm not big into the social networking thing and honestly don't completely understand it but there are a TON of people that are and do (look at how many are on Myspace, Facebook, etc).

I thought I was the only person on Earth not on some sort of "social networking" site.



Ryan

 

[Gary - K7GLD]

I thought I was the only person on Earth not on some sort of "social networking" site.



Ryan

SHUCKS - most folks agree that I'm not very "social", period! :-laf

 

[JApol]

I just noticed the bold italics names that some have. For example, Steve, yours is itallics but llmills is not. What does that signify?

 

[Steve St.Laurent]

It means the person is either a moderator or an administrator.

 

[Steve St.Laurent]

I added the Truck profile back in today. Let me know if you have any problems.

 

[MLee]

Steve;

I have noticed that the time is not right when a post is intered from my location, which is mountain time zone. It shows like 9:00 AM when its realy 8:00Am, one hour later. Is it just me, or have others noticed this? And yes I double checked this when I first noticed it.

 

[Steve St.Laurent]

Look in your user control panel (Discussion forums->user control panel) under options and check to see if your time zone and DST settings are correct for your region.