Post by BSC RPG on Nov 26, 2009 10:55:00 GMT -6
Proboards will be coming out with a new version of their software. The release date is still undetermined. But I'm going to sign this board up for alpha and beta testing (if it's available). Some of the codes in this post are active. So i put a "." in the code so it's readable.
Here are some of the new features taken directly from the Support boards:
We're adding a [.video] tag.
In v4.5, we already have a [.youtube] tag that is specific for YouTube videos, but there is no way to include videos from other sources. Now we're bringing in functionality to support a whole host of video sites all under one single tag.
The [.video] tag is simple. You just type [.video]http://URL TO VIDEO[./video] and your video shows up. It will auto-detect which web site you are trying to embed a video from and automatically generate the correct code to display the video from that page.
Right now there are over a dozen different video sites that are supported. Here's our current list of supported sites:
Break.com
Colbert Nation.com
College Humor
Comedy Central
Dailymotion
GameTrailers.com
Google Video
Hulu
IGN.com
Justin.tv
MegaVideo
Metacafe
MTV
MySpace
Qik
Revver
Sevenload
South Park Studios.com
The Daily Show.com
USTREAM
Veoh
Vimeo
YouTube
There's many others already implemented, but that's just to give you an idea. We'll also be taking suggestions if you know of other popular video sharing sites that you would like added on.
Next, I'd like to introduce you to the new [/b] (e.g. [.audio]http://yoursite.com/file.mp3[./audio])
Grooveshark:
Widget URL for single songs
Embed code for playlists
You can actually give these changes a whirl over at their V5 BBCode Tester
Split Threads
Ever had a time when a topic's discussion went from on-topic to off? With the Split Thread feature, you can take posts out of an existing thread and create a new thread from those posts.
Merge Threads
Sometimes there are multiple threads discussing the same topic on a forum. You will have the ability to merge these topics into one single thread with this handy feature.
Personal Messages: Conversations
Currently when you exchange messages with another member of your forum via our Personal Message system, each message shows up as it's own item in your Inbox and Outbox. In Version 5, each conversation you have will group together and function more like a thread does. This will allow you to read your entire conversation from one single page instead of needing to go back and look for previous messages.
Threads: "Look Inside" Option
In Version 5, you will have the ability to "see" into a thread without actually clicking on it. After hovering your mouse over the subject of a thread for 1 second a small box will appear with a preview of the message that is inside the thread!
# of People Viewing Thread
In addition to the current feature which lets you see how many people are viewing a particular board, you will also have the option to display how many people are reading a particular thread.
Password Protected Boards: Remembering Passwords
For those of you with password protected boards, it can be a pain to enter that password every time you come back. If you are logged in (not a guest), once you enter a password for a board it will remember that password for you, automatically allowing access to that board in the future. If the password for the board is changed by an administrator, you will then need to enter the new password to gain access.
Multiple Member Groups
In version 5, you will be able to join multiple member groups. This gives additional flexibility to forum administrators in managing their members -- anything from restricting access to categories/boards, doing mass PMs to different groups, etc.
Sub-sub-sub-sub-boards
There are no limits in the next version on the number of sub-boards any board can have. For those of you who have very complex forums, organizing your forums into many sections will be very useful.
New UBBC tags
We will be adding the following new tags, and more may be announced later:
[.youtube] ... [./youtube] - Allows you to embed YouTube videos in your posts
In addition to the new tags, some changes to existing tags:
[.code] ... [./code] Will be wrapped in a div that will prevent it from scrolling the page to the right and too far down, and provide an easy way to copy the code to your clipboard.
Skin Templates
Currently many ProBoards coders spend a lot of time making codes that simply re-arrange where information is displayed on the page itself and re-working the HTML. Needing to use JavaScript codes to accomplish this will be a thing of the past in Version 5.
In each template there will be three important elements:
HTML code
Variables - These store information that can be automatically inserted into your template, anything from the title of a page to the currently logged in user's name. Each template will have it's own set of variables that you can choose to insert.
Conditional Statements - These allow your templates to display, or not display, information based on a set of conditions. Examples of conditionals:
<guest>This code is only displayed for guests</guest>
<member>This code is only displayed for logged in members</member>
Let's give a basic example. On many pages on the ProBoards message boards you use, there are tables which are very similar to each other. For example, the table that you see when you go to the Admin area of your forum is the same table that you see when you go to login, create a board, modify a board, update your censored words list, etc. Literally dozens of pages use the same table, except that the title of the table changes from page to page as does the content of the table.
Here is a basic table structure we could use for that table:
<table width="80%"> <tr> <td> Title Here </td> </tr> <tr> <td> Main content here </td> </tr></table>
Your have your HTML code, which makes the table.
You have your title for the table (in this example "Title Here"), which you want to change with each table to be an appropriate title.
You have the section where you want the main content to be displayed (labelled "Main content here").
There are no conditionals in this table yet.
We're not done with this table yet. How do we make it so that the templating system changes the title depending on the page it is on? How does it know where to insert the main content into the table?
This is accomplished by the inserting of variable tags. The tags we have chosen to use will look like [pb variable] where variable is the name of what is to be displayed. Each template will have a list of variables that you will be allowed to put in. For this basic example, let's say that the title for the table is stored in a variable called title, and therefore we would insert the code [pb title] where we wanted the title for the table to be.
Now, we need a second variable to tell the template where to insert the main content of the table. We call this the action variable, or [pb action].
What if we want to display something in this table if the user is logged in, and a different message if the user is a guest?
We use conditionals. Anything placed between the <guest> and </guest> tags is only displayed to guests. Likewise, anything placed between the <member> and </member> tags is only displayed to users who are logged in.
This would be the new code that will accomplish:
Automatically updating the title for the table
Place the main content of the table in the correct position automatically
Add two conditionals, one for guests and one for members
<table width="80%"> <tr> <td> [pb title] </td> </tr> <tr> <td> <guest>Welcome, guest! Please login</guest> <member>Welcome back!</member> <br /> [pb action] </td> </tr></table>
I have bolded the two parts that have changed.
Now with this new code put in, any page that uses this table will have the correct title automatically inserted, it will display a different message for guests and members, and it will insert the main content of the table automatically.
Each Skin is Version 5 will have it's own templates that you can modify. There are dozens of conditionals and hundreds of variables which will be fully documented and released before Version 5 exits beta. Each template will have a list of the specific variables that related to it as well as the conditionals that you can use.
I hope this gives you a good idea of the basics of the V5 templating system.
Here are some of the new features taken directly from the Support boards:
We're adding a [.video] tag.
In v4.5, we already have a [.youtube] tag that is specific for YouTube videos, but there is no way to include videos from other sources. Now we're bringing in functionality to support a whole host of video sites all under one single tag.
The [.video] tag is simple. You just type [.video]http://URL TO VIDEO[./video] and your video shows up. It will auto-detect which web site you are trying to embed a video from and automatically generate the correct code to display the video from that page.
Right now there are over a dozen different video sites that are supported. Here's our current list of supported sites:
Break.com
Colbert Nation.com
College Humor
Comedy Central
Dailymotion
GameTrailers.com
Google Video
Hulu
IGN.com
Justin.tv
MegaVideo
Metacafe
MTV
MySpace
Qik
Revver
Sevenload
South Park Studios.com
The Daily Show.com
USTREAM
Veoh
Vimeo
YouTube
There's many others already implemented, but that's just to give you an idea. We'll also be taking suggestions if you know of other popular video sharing sites that you would like added on.
Next, I'd like to introduce you to the new [/b] (e.g. [.audio]http://yoursite.com/file.mp3[./audio])
Grooveshark:
Widget URL for single songs
Embed code for playlists
You can actually give these changes a whirl over at their V5 BBCode Tester
Split Threads
Ever had a time when a topic's discussion went from on-topic to off? With the Split Thread feature, you can take posts out of an existing thread and create a new thread from those posts.
Merge Threads
Sometimes there are multiple threads discussing the same topic on a forum. You will have the ability to merge these topics into one single thread with this handy feature.
Personal Messages: Conversations
Currently when you exchange messages with another member of your forum via our Personal Message system, each message shows up as it's own item in your Inbox and Outbox. In Version 5, each conversation you have will group together and function more like a thread does. This will allow you to read your entire conversation from one single page instead of needing to go back and look for previous messages.
Threads: "Look Inside" Option
In Version 5, you will have the ability to "see" into a thread without actually clicking on it. After hovering your mouse over the subject of a thread for 1 second a small box will appear with a preview of the message that is inside the thread!
# of People Viewing Thread
In addition to the current feature which lets you see how many people are viewing a particular board, you will also have the option to display how many people are reading a particular thread.
Password Protected Boards: Remembering Passwords
For those of you with password protected boards, it can be a pain to enter that password every time you come back. If you are logged in (not a guest), once you enter a password for a board it will remember that password for you, automatically allowing access to that board in the future. If the password for the board is changed by an administrator, you will then need to enter the new password to gain access.
Multiple Member Groups
In version 5, you will be able to join multiple member groups. This gives additional flexibility to forum administrators in managing their members -- anything from restricting access to categories/boards, doing mass PMs to different groups, etc.
Sub-sub-sub-sub-boards
There are no limits in the next version on the number of sub-boards any board can have. For those of you who have very complex forums, organizing your forums into many sections will be very useful.
New UBBC tags
We will be adding the following new tags, and more may be announced later:
...
- Hides part of your message unless people click on it to display it. Useful for when you want to reveal something (e.g. plot details in a movie) but don't want to spoil it for people if they don't want to see it[.youtube] ... [./youtube] - Allows you to embed YouTube videos in your posts
In addition to the new tags, some changes to existing tags:
[.code] ... [./code] Will be wrapped in a div that will prevent it from scrolling the page to the right and too far down, and provide an easy way to copy the code to your clipboard.
Skin Templates
Currently many ProBoards coders spend a lot of time making codes that simply re-arrange where information is displayed on the page itself and re-working the HTML. Needing to use JavaScript codes to accomplish this will be a thing of the past in Version 5.
In each template there will be three important elements:
HTML code
Variables - These store information that can be automatically inserted into your template, anything from the title of a page to the currently logged in user's name. Each template will have it's own set of variables that you can choose to insert.
Conditional Statements - These allow your templates to display, or not display, information based on a set of conditions. Examples of conditionals:
<guest>This code is only displayed for guests</guest>
<member>This code is only displayed for logged in members</member>
Let's give a basic example. On many pages on the ProBoards message boards you use, there are tables which are very similar to each other. For example, the table that you see when you go to the Admin area of your forum is the same table that you see when you go to login, create a board, modify a board, update your censored words list, etc. Literally dozens of pages use the same table, except that the title of the table changes from page to page as does the content of the table.
Here is a basic table structure we could use for that table:
<table width="80%"> <tr> <td> Title Here </td> </tr> <tr> <td> Main content here </td> </tr></table>
Your have your HTML code, which makes the table.
You have your title for the table (in this example "Title Here"), which you want to change with each table to be an appropriate title.
You have the section where you want the main content to be displayed (labelled "Main content here").
There are no conditionals in this table yet.
We're not done with this table yet. How do we make it so that the templating system changes the title depending on the page it is on? How does it know where to insert the main content into the table?
This is accomplished by the inserting of variable tags. The tags we have chosen to use will look like [pb variable] where variable is the name of what is to be displayed. Each template will have a list of variables that you will be allowed to put in. For this basic example, let's say that the title for the table is stored in a variable called title, and therefore we would insert the code [pb title] where we wanted the title for the table to be.
Now, we need a second variable to tell the template where to insert the main content of the table. We call this the action variable, or [pb action].
What if we want to display something in this table if the user is logged in, and a different message if the user is a guest?
We use conditionals. Anything placed between the <guest> and </guest> tags is only displayed to guests. Likewise, anything placed between the <member> and </member> tags is only displayed to users who are logged in.
This would be the new code that will accomplish:
Automatically updating the title for the table
Place the main content of the table in the correct position automatically
Add two conditionals, one for guests and one for members
<table width="80%"> <tr> <td> [pb title] </td> </tr> <tr> <td> <guest>Welcome, guest! Please login</guest> <member>Welcome back!</member> <br /> [pb action] </td> </tr></table>
I have bolded the two parts that have changed.
Now with this new code put in, any page that uses this table will have the correct title automatically inserted, it will display a different message for guests and members, and it will insert the main content of the table automatically.
Each Skin is Version 5 will have it's own templates that you can modify. There are dozens of conditionals and hundreds of variables which will be fully documented and released before Version 5 exits beta. Each template will have a list of the specific variables that related to it as well as the conditionals that you can use.
I hope this gives you a good idea of the basics of the V5 templating system.