Forums Upgraded 1/11/09

[kurt]

Hi everyone! Lots of new features in this upgrade. If you have any problems or questions please let us know. Thanks and enjoy!!!





Social Group Discussion Threads

• Messages in Social Groups are now threaded into 'Social Group Discussions'.
• Discussion are sortable by creator, replies and last post.
• Discussions can be filtered with a simple full text search on titles.
• Discussions can be managed with Inline Moderation to soft delete, physically remove, approve and unnapprove them.
• Discussions are Read Marked using both database and cookie methods, with a jump to go to first new post.
• Users can subscribe to discussions and receive email notifications on new messages.
• Subscribed discussions with new posts are aggregated in the User CP.
• Individual Discussions have social bookmarking links (user defined, such as Digg, StumbleUpon etc).
• New 'Can Always' permissions to create and view both discussions and messages, simplifying access.
• Fallbacks implemented for non javascript users.
• Moderators can Quick Edit social group messages using AJAX.
• Posts are now ascending, which is more intuitive in threaded discussions.
• Users can configure their groups so that only the group owner can create new discussion threads.
• Moderated and Deleted discussions are aggregated in the User CP where the user has moderator permissions.
• Moderation permissions are seperated for discussions and threads, including deletion.
• Some extra database cleanup is performed with discussion related data when a user is merged or deleted.
• On upgrade from < 3.8, existing messages are moved to an initial discussion with the same name as the group.
• Social Group info is hidden when entering a discussion or viewing pages of results to move focus to discussions.

Social Group Changes

• Social Groups are Read Marked using both database and cookie methods, based on new messages or discussions.
• Mark All will read mark all discussions in a group via AJAX.
• Social Groups can be subscribed to, adding group aggregation to the User CP.
• Social Groups now belong to a category.
• A group's category is displayed in the navigation breadcrumb, group lists and group info.
• A new overview page displays a random group, your groups, new groups and groups that you created.
• Groups that you created are navigatable via AJAX and display further information about the group, including pending members and moderated items.
• A category cloud is displayed in the group overview with popularity weighting based on the number of groups.
• Categories can be created and deleted and merged in the Admin CP.
• On upgrade from < 3.8, existing groups are moved to an initial 'Uncategorized' category, which can be renamed.
• Groups can be filtered by category, via the category cloud or advanced search.
• Social Groups can now have a group icon. The icon is displayed in the group info, and a thumbnail version is used in group listings.
• Icons are displayed on the User Profile page for groups that the user is a member of.
• Permissions control user abilities to upload icons for their groups, including file size and the ability to upload animated icons.
• Icons can be stored in the database or filesystem.
• A new permission can limit the amount of Social Groups an individual user can create.
• Social Groups can now be transferred between users. The group will only be transferred if the recipient accepts the transfer.
• Moderators with the appropriate permission can transfer any group. This is useful when a group owner becomes inactive.

Private Message Changes

• Read receipts are automatically accepted when a PM is replied to.
• A new Quick Reply can be used to reply to PM's.
• A new user option is available to set the default value for 'Save Copy' which is also used with Quick Reply.
• PM's can be ordered by Title, Date and Sender.
• When ordered, PM's are grouped by:
  • Title - Alphabetical ranges (A-H, I-P, Q-Z, 0-9 and other) - Non ASCII chars are grouped based on transliteration where possible
  • Date - Today, Yesterday, individual day names, Last Week, 2 Weeks, Last Month, Older, etc.
  • Sender - Grouped by Sender
• Private Messages can be filtered by Sender, Title, a given date period, and whether the message has been read or not.
• Message Throttling. Admins can define a time period and the maximum amount of message each usergroup can send within that period.
• Message selections are remembered over multiple pages for bulk actions (Move, delete, mark as read etc).

Profile Privacy

• With the appropriate permission, users can now configure which parts of their profile is visible, and to who. The configurable components are:
  • Profile Picture
  • Visitor Messages
  • Contact Info
  • Albums
  • About Me
  • Friends
  • Recent Visitors
  • Group Memberships
  • Custom Field Blocks where the admin has allowed it
• The components can be configured to be visible to:
  • Everyone
  • Registered Members
  • Contacts
  • Friends

• Generally information is only hidden/displayed within the user profile page with the exception of Albums which also affects the ability to view the albums.
• Also, custom field blocks can be configured by the admin as to whether they will be included in users' privacy settings.

Albums

• Pictures can now be moved from one album to another.
• Album covers are regenerated when moving images if the cover is moved, or the destination album has no cover.
• The default albums view now displays recently updated public albums.

Lightbox

• Lightboxes can now be used to view all images in a post.
• Next and Previous buttons can be used to navigate the attachments, and wrap when the first/last image has been reached

Other Changes and Additions

• Options and permissions for Human Verification checks have been streamlined. There is now a single bitfield option to select which HV checks are used, and a single permission to select who must pass the HV checks.
• Thread tags can now be merged and renamed, and threads are updated to reflect the changes.
• Tag selection in the Admin CP is remembered over multiple pages for bulk actions (Delete or Merge).
• A new Terms and Conditions link is configurable and displayed in the footer by default.
• A new Community link replaces the Members List link with a submenu for Social Groups; Pictures & Albums; Contacts & Friends; and the Members List.
• Deleted and Moderated items in the User CP menu have been collapsed into submenus to reduce clutter.
• A New Items submenu is also available with the newest Visitor Messages; Group Messages; Group Discussions; Picture Comments and Album Pictures.
• Some cleanup has been done on the User CP menu to ensure only links that the user has permission to are displayed.
• A new permission to view thumbnails in posts has been added. This allows users to see thumbnails even when they do not have access to view the full image.
• Improved RSS filtering for RSS Feed Forums. Terms can now be quoted into phrases, and a new 'match all' option is available.
• Templates can now be compared with 'inline diff', reducing the screen space used to find differences while displaying line numbers. Diffs are wrapped in an optional number of lines for context.
• Thread Prefix Permissions - Thread prefixes can now be configured so that only certain usergroups may use them.
• Support for TypePad Anti-Spam
• Username availability now checked via AJAX during registration
• Notices can now be configured to be dismissible, allowing users to close notices that they have read.
• Post edit histories can be pruned in Admin CP.
• Forum rules can be viewed outside of the registration process, which is useful for logged in users when multiple registrations are disabled.
• PM Reporting.
• Subscription folders can be emptied with one click.
• Quick Edit is available for Visitor Messages and Picture Comments, as well as Social Group Messages.
• New UTC and user date and time criteria for Notices.
• Improvements to Contact List editing. Show Avatars option is now preserved.

[kurt]

Discussions


When viewing a discussion, the group information is no longer displayed; allowing the user to focus on the discussion itself.



The discussion list is much like forum threads, or the group list view and has full inline mod, a quick select menu as well as a quick title search.




Private Messaging
This week I want to talk more about a few improvements to Private Messaging.

Previously PM's were only sorted by date. Most people will find this best for their default view, but sometimes you want to see what messages you've had from other people. PM's can now be sorted by sender and title as well as date. Interestingly, the PM's continue to be grouped based on the chosen sort method. For example, if you select Sender, each message will be grouped by the username of the person who sent the message.



...and if you select title, the messages will be grouped within A-H, I-P, Q-Z, 0-9 et cetera.



You can also find messages with a new filter that has been added to select messages within a date range, or by searching the sender or the message title.



Previously you could select several messages to perform an action on them (such as move to folder or delete). However, your selection was limited to a single page. Now you can search through all of your PM's, selecting multiple messages from multiple pages and folders before performing an action on all of them.

[kurt]

Social Group Discussions
3.7 shipped with a flat, non threaded message wall in the social groups. The wall is great for leaving messages such as 'hey, nice group!' but isn't that useful when it comes to actually having a meaningful discussion about the chosen topic. In order to greatly enhance the ability of social groups to allow users to talk about their common interests, the social group messages have been threaded with the use of 'discussions'.

By default, the user who created the group can moderate their discussions and the messages within them. Another permission allows users to configure their social groups so that only they can create discussions within that group. This allows users to create social groups with greater control over the subject matter (kinda like a forum with limited 'Can Post Threads' permissions such as the

Announcements" target="_blank">Announcements

**Internal Linking (Forums/Categories)

). Because users can take control of their groups and can be given the primary responsibility for maintaining them, this also reduces the potential extra work for board moderators.

Discussions and messages now also have several features from forums and threads. This creates an interesting scenario where group owners can now see how moderators work with the forums, and allows them to get involved in their own space. Features included:

• Full inline moderation (Discussions and Messages)
• Quick Editing (Messages)
• Subscriptions (Groups and Discussions)
• E-mail Notifications (Discussions)
• Social Bookmarking (Discussions)
• Read Marking (Groups and Discussions)

With read marking, users can mark discussions or entire groups as read, as well as automatic marking when users have read the last post of a discussion, or the last discussion of a group.





Social Group Categories
Each Social Group now belongs to a category. Categories allow users to find groups that are relevant to them, especially on larger boards. The categories are predefined by the board admins. As well as providing suggestions to the users for the kind of groups they could create, this also allows admins to encourage users to create social groups that are relevant to the board as a whole.

Categories are included in the advanced search filters, and can also be viewed individually. Selecting a category displays only the social groups that are in that category.



When upgrading to 3.8, any existing social group messages will be moved into an initial discussion named after the group, and all groups will belong to the inital 'Uncategorized' category, which can then be modified by an admin.


The feature list for 3.8 is pretty much locked down now, but comments and feedback are always welcome I'll be posting again soon about as yet unannounced features in vBulletin 3.8. For now, you can take a peek at this...

[kurt]

Private Message History

A new private message history feature has been implemented. When you receive a message from another user that is inreply to something you sent them, you can now view a history of replies.



This is useful when you receive a message from someone and you cannot recollect the original discussion. The message history keeps track of all messages that have been replied to back and forward since an original message, allowing you to view the full discussion. There are some caveats that should be noted:

• The message history will only ever show messages from your own message folders. For this reason, if you do not save sent messages then they will not be displayed; nor will messages that you delete.
• The message history only displays messages that are older than the current message.
• Message history will only be shown for PM's sent since vB 3.8 Beta 3.
• Messages sent since Beta 1 will show the message history option but it will display 'This message has no saved history'.
• If you save a copy of a PM when you send it, that PM will always have a message history option and open with 'This message has no saved history'.

Social Group Icons

When a user creates a social group, they will now be prompted to upload an icon during the group creation process. Additionally, the new usergroups and random usergroup on the group overview will favour groups that have icons. This ensures that the group overview appears interesting, and is not simply full of the default ? icon, as well as encouraging users to maintain their groups with interest.

[kurt]

Not to be overlooked are changes to the Blog system!



Customize your blogs to reflect your personality or your own business or website.

There are lots of new changes. I think these latest upgrades make our system comparable to just about any other blog site, service, or software on the web.

You can customize your blog here and use it like any other blog for personal or business use.

Link it from and to your website if you have one. Or buy a domain name and direct it to your blog URL here. Your blog URL is http://www.sowal.com/bb/blog.php?u=XXXX, where XXXX is your unique User ID number.


Customize your blogs to reflect your personality or your own business or website.

• Blog Customization - users may customize their blogs in the same manner that they can customize their user profiles.
• Group Blogs - users may allow other users to post to their blog. One good use for this is if you wanted to start a blog on "SoWal real estate" for example, with several realtors you know adding to the content by making their own blog postings.
• Sidebar Blocks - users may create custom blocks to display in their sidebar. These blocks can be rearranged by drag and drop.
• Custom Pages - users may create custom pages to be displayed in their blog. This will allow you to create a fully-functioning website!
• Private Entries - users may set specific entries to be private while leaving their blog open.

[Miss Kitty]

[kurt]

Originally Posted by Miss Kitty

Poor Kitty. Did the rocker get your tail?

[Bobby J]

Do you have a class anytime soon?

[Miss Kitty]

Originally Posted by kurt

Poor Kitty. Did the rocker get your tail?

I think I am good. This is jsut about social groups and I am not social.

[Beach Runner]

Hey, Kurt, hope you don't require us to pass an online quiz on this before we're allowed to post again.

[NoHall]

Originally Posted by Miss Kitty

Originally Posted by kurt

Poor Kitty. Did the rocker get your tail?

Whoa, nelly...I'm with Kitty!...that's a lot of words you put up there.

[SHELLY]

Originally Posted by Miss Kitty

I'm with you...does anyone keep up with all this "cyber socializing" stuff--and if so...why?

.

[AAbsolute]

Sounds real helpful.

[kurt]

A lot of the changes are improvements that you don't need to learn but will just "show up" as you are using the site. Some of them very useful like being able to sort private messages, or Next and Previous buttons can be used to navigate the attachments.

The changes to social groups I think will now make them very useful, where before they were not so much. Each social group now has it's own forum with the ability to have threaded discussions just like every other forum.

They are easier accessed through the new "community" drop down link on the navbar which replaced "member list".

A lot of other subtle changes which will make a big difference. The blog system changes make it so that members can in effect create their own websites!

[scooterbug44]

I like being able to subscribe to social groups!
-Is there a way to "cookie" them so you can go directly to "unread" parts of the discussion?
-If I am subscribed and there is a new discussion started, will it tell me?

Like the new privacy settings too! Have hidden more of my info!

[InletBchDweller]

I am with Kitty but Thanks for whatever you did!

[Smiling JOe]

Originally Posted by SHELLY

I'm with you...does anyone keep up with all this "cyber socializing" stuff--and if so...why?

.

Dude, you are on a bulletin board. Hel-LO.

[Miss Kitty]

Originally Posted by Smiling JOe

Dude, you are on a bulletin board. Hel-LO.

HELL-O.

[kurt]

Originally Posted by scooterbug44

I like being able to subscribe to social groups!
-Is there a way to "cookie" them so you can go directly to "unread" parts of the discussion?
-If I am subscribed and there is a new discussion started, will it tell me?

Like the new privacy settings too! Have hidden more of my info!

I'm not sure of the answers but the notification should work - let us know what you discover please.

[TooFarTampa]

Originally Posted by SHELLY

I'm with you...does anyone keep up with all this "cyber socializing" stuff--and if so...why?

.

So I take it you are not on Facebook.

[Minnie]

Thanks Kurt, always appreciate your hard work.

[SWGB]

Let the squirming begin!

[SHELLY]

Originally Posted by Smiling JOe

Dude, you are on a bulletin board. Hel-LO.

I'm not socializing...I'm prophetizing and sitting in judgment.

.