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Post by Josh on Mar 30, 2005 22:53:13 GMT -5
If everything goes as planned, the entire forum will receive a *huge* update on April 30, 2005. During that time, you might not be able to access the forums or post messages.
However, the inconvenience is more than worth it! There will be a whole bunch of cool new things, including "karma" which will allow you to rate the poultry advice people give or receive and other great stuff that will make the community even more interesting.
If you have any questions, feel free to PM me. Thanks for making the forums such a huge success!
= Josh
Administrator
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Post by KChicken on Apr 13, 2005 10:44:26 GMT -5
What other things will you be adding?
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Post by Josh on Apr 15, 2005 22:40:43 GMT -5
Some of the major enhancements will be on the administrator-side to make running this forum easier and better (which has some nice intangible effects for you in that the community runs smoother).
As for things on your side, my favorite is the "karma" feature. However, the following is a brief list of *some* of the enhancements coming your way...
General Features:
Usernames will no longer be case sensitive.
Karma (optional feature). Each user can have their own karma, which other users can praise or smite a user to increase or decrease the users karma.
Reserved words will no longer effect staff members
If a category or board name is too long to fit in the jump, the forum jump at the bottom of the page will cut the name short and put "..."
An option for going to the "home" page of the board will be added to the forum jump.
For dates, "Yesterday" will also be added in addition to the already existing "Today." Posts may show up as something like "Posted on Yesterday at 12:22 am"
All email addresses will have spam protection on them which will help make it so that spam bots will not be able to pick up your email address.
Numbers that are displayed such as number of posts on a board, number of posts a user made, etc will contain commas (so 10000 becomes 10,000)
Drop down menus are now used to change between different pages for viewing boards and threads. This allows you to specify any page you want, especially useful for boards and threads with many pages.
Profiles
Signatures will be displayed on the view profile page
When a user's email address is changed -- by either an admin, or the user -- a new randomly generated password is sent and emailed to that user.
Last known IP address of user saved in profile
Last login date
In addition to member groups, users will be able to have their own custom title.
You can choose if you want to see people's signatures when reading threads
You can opt to not display avatars when reading threads (useful for those on really slow Internet connections)
You may choose to not receive any emails from the board administrators (mass emails will not send you mail, although we encourage you to *accept* email from us so you don't miss any exciting updates)
Birthday will become a required field in the profile. As we do not allow users under the age of 13, an age check will be in place which will remove accounts of users under this age.
The server times will no longer default to east coast time. Everything will be based off of GMT. All user profiles will be updated accordingly to keep them in the correct time zone.
Location will be shown in mini profile
Registration date shown in mini profile
Clicking on "profile" at the top will allow you to view your profile. An option to edit your profile will be on that page.
We will now be able to "suspend" accounts for periods of time (example: If you spam our forum, rather than terminating your account we can be gracious and simply suspend it for a week)
Bookmarks
We are introducing a new system to replace the notifications system. Using the bookmarks system, you will be able to bookmark different threads and have quick access to them from your profile screen.
For each bookmark, you can specify whether you would like to receive a PM, an email, or receive no notification when a new post is made in the thread that is bookmarked.
You will only receive notification that a thread has been updated one time until you view the thread again. This means that if 10 people post before you get back to a thread, you still only get notified once. Once you view the thread, you may then receive notifications again.
An option will be available to set what your default notification action should be for threads you bookmark. For example, you can set your default action to be to PM you. Then any time you bookmark a thread in the future, it will automatically set that bookmark to notify you by PM of any updates.
View Members
The top posters page is no longer limited to 1 page. You can view all pages to see where all members rank in terms of posts.
A new caching system will be used so that when you view the members list it caches the results for 15 minutes so that subsequent requests for pages are sped up significantly.
Calendar
An option to set who can view the calendar (Guests / Members / Admins and mods)
Improved method for navigating from month to month (won't have to click 5 times to go 5 months ahead)
Automatic addition of birthdays to the calendar.
Home
The "Last Post" column will display what the most recent thread is.
In the Info Center we will add "Most users online ever was X users on X date"
Info center will display today's birthdays
Attachments
We are adding a new attachments feature so that you can upload files with your posts.
You can choose whether or not to enable/disable the attachments feature.
Boards
Announcement threads - a sticky thread, except one that shows up across all forums.
When viewing the threads on a board, you will be able to click on the number of replies. Doing so will popup a small window showing which users have participated in the thread and how many posts each person has made. The list of users will be sorted by who made the most posts in the thread.
A "who's online" box will be added to every board at the bottom.
The "new" image will link directly to the last page in a thread.
A new "hide board" option will be available which will make the board not
Login / Register / Password Reminder
An option will be available such that people can register for an account but will not be able to use that account until an administrator has approved them (or someone who is given the power to approve accounts).
On the register page, an activation code will appear which the user must type into a text box. This is to prevent people from utilizing scripts to mass register accounts.
Password reminder emails will contain the IP address of the user who filled out the password reminder form.
All users will be able to go into invisible mode. Administrators and Global Moderators will see these users as online with "(invisible)" after their name in the users online area.
When a user accesses a page which requires that they be logged in, instead of giving an error message it will display a login box so that the user may login and continue.
If someone attempts to login to an account more than 10 times unsuccessfully within a 10 minute period, that user will be banned from the forum for a period of an hour (good for security purposes)
You will be able to get your password reminder sent to you just by entering your email address -- you won't need to remember your username.
When registering you may specify your desired password instead of receiving a random password via email. You will receive an email with an activation code that you must use to activate your account.
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Instant Messenging (PM)
Users will be able to keep an address book of users so that they may easily select who they want to IM.
A "check all" checkbox will be added to the inbox and outbox pages.
Option in IM Preferences to get a popup message when you have a new IM.
Those are just a few of the updates we're hoping to have by April 30th. All in all, the forum will become even nicer and more conducive to sharing poultry information. We hope you'll like it! Remember, when April 30th rolls around, we may experience a few glitches. Please bear with us through this period.
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Post by KChicken on Apr 18, 2005 18:25:08 GMT -5
Sounds Great!
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Post by KChicken on May 1, 2005 20:33:55 GMT -5
Is this still happening sometime?
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Post by Josh on May 7, 2005 23:51:24 GMT -5
The update is a little behind schedule, as you can see.  Everything should be ready by Wednesday. You'll probably encounter a screen the first time you visit the updated community asking for your birth date. This is to ensure that no one under 13 can join (due to laws and such concerning minors). Of course, it's all on the honor system and everyone could simply be lying. Of course, that would also mean you all are *very* smart kids. ;D |
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Post by Josh on May 18, 2005 2:53:15 GMT -5
If you've visited this forum within the past few hours, you'll see that it is currently being upgraded.
Once it's done being upgraded, please bear with us when/if any problems pop up. We'll work to iron it out as soon as possible.
Thanks for your support and making us one of the highest rated poultry resource websites out there!
= Josh
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Post by Heidicat on May 27, 2005 10:24:05 GMT -5
Josh, really like all the new features! Karma thing is pretty neat.
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Post by Josh on May 27, 2005 13:59:17 GMT -5
Thanks. Keep the feedback flowing! |
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Post by KChicken on May 27, 2005 20:03:59 GMT -5
This is great. Although, it is taking a bit longer to load.
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Post by ThisGeekyChick on May 27, 2005 21:23:37 GMT -5
This is a great forum. The proboards tool is really cool. Is it freeware?
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Post by ThisGeekyChick on May 28, 2005 0:38:40 GMT -5
Cool, it is. Wonder if it'll run on the Linux servers  |
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Post by Josh on May 28, 2005 2:36:20 GMT -5
Yes, we are occasionally experiencing a bit of a slow down. Once everythings done and smoothed out, we should be back up to speed. Thanks for your patience!
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Post by Kyser on May 28, 2005 19:09:42 GMT -5
I really enjoy this sight and the folks on it.
I do want to know, where did the "next topic" link at the bottom of the pages go?
I'm just wondering if that will be coming back, or is there a new way to go on?
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Everything should be ready by Wednesday. You'll probably encounter a screen the first time you visit the updated community asking for your birth date. This is to ensure that no one under 13 can join (due to laws and such concerning minors). Of course, it's all on the honor system and everyone could simply be lying. Of course, that would also mean you all are *very* smart kids. ;D