Hi All,

Its been a long wait but the new forum software is just around the corner. After months public testing it is now in the RC stage (still unstable with minor bugs), this is the stage just before the Gold 'stable' release with all bugs eliminated. When this happens, I will be updating the forum software here!

Here's a preview of the new features, click on each attachment:

Inline Spam Management and Prevention Tools

Forum spam is an increasing problem for many boards. Unfortunately, due to the visible-source nature of vBulletin and most other forum systems, most preventative measures we might add to the system can simply be reverse-engineered and worked around by persistent spammers.

Therefore, the new forum software contains a new set of tools to help clean up spam and deal with spammers.

Threads and posts can be selected in the usual inline moderation fashion, and then the new 'Delete Threads/Posts as Spam' command can be selected, which will load the spam management interface, which contains options on a single page for removing the spam posts and threads, banning the spammers and finding other spam they may have posted.

Thread Tagging

A new way to facilitate searching and grouping of threads, it is now possible for users to add tags to threads they post or read.

Tags can be added when creating a new thread, or to an existing thread by any user (with appropriate permissions).

Any users who then click on these tags will not only find all thread that have the same tag as the one clicked, but will also contribute to the building of a search tag cloud, which gives users a quick guide as to what has been searched for recently and most frequently.

Thread Prefixes

Long requested by users, threads can now have administrator-defined prefixes to their titles.

Thread prefixes are divided into groups by the administrator, allowing different prefixes to be available in different forums.

Reciprocal Friendships Between Users

As part of our new social networking system, users can now request that people on their buddy list confirm their friendship, after which time a person's list of confirmed friends will be viewable to other users.

Public Messaging

While private messages between users have been in vBulletin since version 2.0, vBulletin 3.7 introduces the public messaging system, allowing users to communicate publicly via their profile pages.

User Picture Galleries

Users can now create albums and upload pictures to their account.

The ability to view these albums and pictures can be limited by the user to just board staff and people on their buddy list if they want privacy.

User-Created Social Groups

To further social cohesion between users and to encourage people to make friends, the forum now includes a facility to allow users to create their own social/interest groups.

These groups are enhanced by having their own public messaging system, and the ability to add pictures to the group from user albums.

New Member Profile Page

In order to accommodate all the new features, the member profile page has been completely redesigned from the ground up.

The new page presents information in a far cleaner and more logical manner, while dividing up information into manageable chunks using a tabbed interface.

Individual profile field categories can be displayed alone in blocks in the right column, in addition to appearing by default in the 'About Me' tab.

Member Customization of Profile Page

The administrator may choose to allow his members to use the profile page customization tool, which allows users to alter fonts, colors, background and borders etc. of their profile page in order to create a more personalized look.

The administrator can lock-down customization permissions, in order to prevent the personalized pages being made too offensively awful by aesthetically challenged members... nobody wants to see some of those really ugly MySpace pages on Yo! Liverpool!

Attachment Viewing Lightbox

Clicking on an attached image will now open a lightbox rather than open a new window, with the image scaled to fit the browser viewport. A click on the image in the lightbox will open it in a new window as before.

Social Bookmarking of Threads

I can now define a list of our favorite social bookmarking sites and have them available for use on the showthread page for bookmarking threads.

Can I stress that these features aren't available yet. They will be here in the near future.

Eggciting times ahead!!!

I've setup a forum that runs the new software. If you can spare a bit of time, can you all register and have a play about? It's almost identical to Yo! but its a Merseyside and Liverpool Runners community I've setting up.

It'll give you a taste of what's to come here.

http://www.runcityliverpool.com/forum/index.php

Thanks for your continued support! :PDT11

I reckon its about 2 weeks away.

Getting excited!

Strange. vBulletin 3.7.0 is a few weeks away yet they release a 3.6.9 update!

:PDT_Xtremez_12:

I'm not updating yet, the RC 2 Version of the new software has just ben released. Fingers crossed, 2 weeks away.....

The new version of the forum should be available this week.

Fingers crossed!

Look back through this thread to see what's new!!!!!

:PDT11