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Post by Brie on May 10, 2005 15:12:44 GMT -6
You may have noticed the message at the top of every page that ProBoards is upgrading. After what sci-fi did to us, I'm sure that many of us hear the word "upgrade" and want to run away screaming. I'm pasting the "important notes about this upgrade" here, it looks like we have nothing to fear. See you in 24 hours!
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If you have reached this thread from a link at the top of a ProBoardsĀ® forum, it means that the forum you visited will soon be upgraded to ProBoards Version 4.
Here are some answers to some common questions you may have:
What will happen during the upgrade? During the upgrade, each server will be brought offline. At that time, you will not have access to the forum (although a message will display saying the forum is upgrading). The estimated time that each of our servers will be down is anywhere between 12 and 24 hours for this upgrade.
What time will the forums go offline? We anticipate that the upgrade will start around 11pm Pacific time.
What is this ProBoards Version 4upgrade all about? ProBoards Version 4 is the newest version of the ProBoards software. It will provide over a hundred new features to the over 1.3 million forums that we currently host. To read a list of many of the new features, click here.
Will all of my threads and posts still be there after the upgrade? Yes, all posts will still be there after the upgrade.
I am the board administrator, is there anything I should do before the upgrade? Many people use various codes on their forum to enchance it. Some of these codes are not compatible with version 4. We recommend that you backup your Headers and Footers and clear them before the upgrade to ensure that you do not have any codes in which are incompatible. For a list of codes that are known to be compatibe and ones that have problems, please click here.
Will ProBoards still be free? Yes, ProBoards will still remain a free service.
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Post by Brie on May 10, 2005 15:16:26 GMT -6
This is the cut and pasted list of new features. It's too long, I have to split it up.
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This is NOT a complete list of new v4 features. There are 120 new features listed on this page, but there are many more unannounced features.
General Features (12) Usernames will no longer be case sensitive. The "cell highlight" hack will become a standard feature of all boards. You will be able to choose what color you want the highlight to be for both the main page and for boards (or you can choose no color to leave it standard). 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. If a user creates an account with the same username as someone who was deleted, the new user will not be able to edit or delete the older users posts. This will be based on a registration date check versus the time of the posting. 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. For displaying dates and times, you will now be able to specify 4 different options that will let you control the date and time. These options include am/pm or 24 hour time options, time zone choices, what format to display the date in (e.g. Jan 1, 2000, 01-01-00, etc), and options to reverse the month and day fields.
Profiles (17) 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 A notes section will be added so admins/mods can add notes that no one else can see Disable / Enable account 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 You may choose to not receive any emails from the board administrators (mass emails will not send you mail) 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. Staff members have the ability to disable a user's account so that they can not use it. If you disable a user's account, you can specify a number of days for it to last, so that after that amount of time they may use their account again.
Bookmarks (4) 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.
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Post by Brie on May 10, 2005 15:17:11 GMT -6
View Members (2) 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 (5) An option to set who can view the calendar (Guests / Members / Admins and mods) Ability to choose who will be able to add entries to the calendar Edit calendar entry ability 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 (3) 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 Posting / Polls / Modifying (6) When you want to use a UBBC code, such as bold, you will be able to highlight text from your message and then click on the bold icon. The UBBC tags will be instantly added around the text you highlighted. Moderators of a board will be able to change the name of any guest posts. Add checkbox that a mod can select to sticky a post when it is posted / modified.
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Post by BSC RPG on May 15, 2005 16:24:30 GMT -6
When members sign in under their account they will be asked for an activation code. This activation code will be supplied via E-mail from Proboards. This is a one time only thing. Your best bet is to copy & paste the code in the activation box. This is part of the upgrades. Any questions contact Captain Hawke.
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Post by LucianG on May 16, 2005 11:30:11 GMT -6
One of the upgrades, "karma", has been disabled. My experience (and that of those who have objected to the addition of the function) with the "karma" function on other boards is that it is frequently abused and causes more trouble and bad feelings than it's worth. With our limited membership, the way we've worked it in the past is that if you disagree strongly with a post, you e-mail or private message the writer and let them know. If the problem cannot be resolved privately, with have a dispute resolution board that can be convened.
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Post by Captain Hawke on May 17, 2005 9:00:42 GMT -6
I have been getting E-mails saying that people can't get their activation code from Proboards. Here's something that might help. This is taken directly from the Proboards Support board:
I'm not getting my activation key in my email! If you use AOL, they tend to block lots of mail that should be allowed through. If you can not get your key with AOL, we suggest you use an alternate email account with a different provider (such as hotmail, yahoo, gmail, etc).
My activation key doesn't work! If you submitted a request for an activation key more than once, then a new key was generated which voided your old one. You will have to wait for your new key to arrive. Submitting extra requests for keys only slows down the process.
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