Within the next several weeks, the forums are going to be upgraded from IBF 1.0.1 (which is what we're running now) to IBF 1.1. The upgrade will add a large number of features to the board, including a built-in calendar, easier moderation, and more end-user features.

I will begin testing the new version on my personal computer this Friday, and if everything appears to be stable enough, I will go ahead and upgrade this board as well. Please note that as a result of the upgrade, ALL of the board's skins will be lost. I will re-make them as time allows, but when the board is first upgraded, the skin options will not be in place. I will re-make this skin (the brown one) before making the upgrade so that the look of the forum stays consistent.

I would like to take the upgrade as an opportunity to ask people's opinions on a certain feature of the board. You can find the relevant topic here. Please vote in the poll and leave your comments on the proposed feature modification so that I can have it in mind while re-building the skin.

When we upgrade, we will be running a BETA version of the software, not a final release. If you spot any bugs or errors when you are using the new boards, please report it in the Feedback forum so that it can be taken up with the board's creators.

I'm very excited about this upgrade, and hopefully it will make the boards here even easier to use than they are now. It will also give me the opportunity to re-vamp the website at the same time, as it is in need of some repair (for instance, the search function has never been added to the main page).

Just thought I'd post a list of new features that people can expect to see here...

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Other: [NEW] Events Calendar - This will replace the current calendar... all events will be lost, and re-added as we get to them.
Other: [NEW] COPPA compliance - In other words, the site makes sure you're 13 or older to ensure compliance with the Children Online Privacy Protection Act in the USA.

Private Messages: [NEW] Forward Message - Handy
Private Messages: [NEW] Graphic display on allocated storage size remaining
Private Messages: [NEW] Message Tracking
Private Messages: [NEW] Carbon Copy Feature - Also handy
Private Messages: [NEW] Save as draft feature
Private Messages: [NEW] Ability to receive email notification of any new private messages
Private Messages: [NEW] "Select all read messages" link
Private Messages: [IMPROVED] Cleaner interface with a more logical structure

Posting: [NEW] Ability to remove, or change an attachment when editing - Quite handy
Posting: [NEW] Root forums can accept sub forums and remain postable - In other words, the Announcements Forum will revert to being one forum, with the Forum Announcements forum as a sub-forum to that. Kinda handy, that.
Posting: [IMPROVED] Improved Code Buttons - I think everyone will agree that's exceedingly handy...
Posting: [NEW] Ability to set an independent poll question to the topic title
Posting: [NEW] Admin ability to allow [URL] and[IMG] tags in polls - If this gets abused, I'll switch it off...

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The following few things are really only of Moderator interest...

Moderation: [NEW] IP Management center: Look up IP address, find all users that match an IP or find all posts made under an IP
Moderation: [NEW] Ability to view / unsubscribe all users from a topic
Moderation: [NEW] Ability to merge two topics into one - Look, it's built-in now!
Moderation: [NEW] Ability to split a topic into two - More built-in stuff!
Moderation: [NEW] Ability to move a topic directly after posting - Could be useful
Moderation: [IMPROVED] Re-written Moderators Control Panel: Includes topic by topic selection to move/prune/pin/unpin/close/open and delete - Anyone who's used the ModCP will agree this is also really spiff.

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More user-related stuff

Search: [NEW] Search flooding added (by member group)
Search: [NEW] View results as posts
Search: [IMPROVED] Increase in speed and effiency

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Some of the cool stuff I get to do now:

Admin: [NEW] Ability to set up custom profile fields
Admin: [NEW] Ability to change the active user list cut off minutes
Admin: [NEW] Ability to add individual members to the post moderation queue - So if someone becomes a serious problem, we can set your account so that any posts you make MUST be processed before they're posted. More incentive not to misbehave .
Admin: [NEW] Ability to add a group as a moderator. - Whee-ness.
Admin: [NEW] Upload permissions can be set on/off for each group in each forum. - Very whee-ness!
Admin: [NEW] Ability to change a member's username - If anyone ever wants their username changed, I can do that now!
Admin: [NEW] Bulk emailer; email members based on group, last online and post count - Not that I'll use this much, but it could come in handy for extremely important announcements.

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Interface-related stuff for everybody!

Interface: [NEW] Ability to download a copy of the topic in HTML or Microsoft Word compatible format
Interface: [NEW] Quick log in box for guest users
Interface: [NEW] After log in, you're taken to the page you logged in from
Interface: [NEW] Users browsing forums feature (can be switched off) - Displays what users are looking at the forum with you.
Interface: [NEW] Users browsing topics feature (can be switched off) - Displays what users are looking at the topic with you.
Interface: [NEW] Yahoo! Icon linked to Yahoo! Messenger Console
Interface: [NEW] MSN Icon linked to MSN Messenger Console
Interface: [NEW] Ability to choose posts per page and topics per page - Coolness stuff there!
Interface: [NEW] Report post to moderator link on each post - Wow, more handy user-friendly moderatorial stuff!
Interface: [NEW] Who posted featurette
Interface: [IMPROVED] Edited by line now in viewers time zone
Interface: [IMPROVED] Pinned topics have their own HTML rows and start / end rows - Not only are pinned topics at the top, they're seperated into a seperate section entirely.
Interface: [IMPROVED] PM Pop up contains a direct link to the latest message (saves a few clicks!)
Interface: [IMPROVED] Printable Version of topic HTML makeover - Much cleaner printouts now.

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Active Users: [NEW] Link to topic with topic name a user is browsing - Tells you what topic a user is looking at and provides a link to it.

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Registering: [NEW] Anti "Flood Bot / DoS" control when registering, forces user to input a random numeric string shown in images - Bite me, trolls!

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Subscriptions: [NEW] Ability to "auto track" topics you participate in
Subscriptions: [NEW] Ability to receive notification of new topics in a forum via "Forum Subscription" feature
Subscriptions: [IMPROVED] Viewing current subscriptions list grouped by forum
Subscriptions: [IMPROVED] Frequency of emails for tracked topics increased to 1 per board visit

This is just a partial list, if that gives you any idea how much new stuff has been added to IBF 1.1. I chopped out stuff I either wouldn't be implementing on this board or which dealt explicitely with my ability to run and skin the boards.

Anyway, there's your fun overview . Assuming everything goes well, the board should be upgraded in a couple of weeks. I get the beta release tomorrow to fiddle with, and after I've re-made the base skins available here, and re-tooled some things on the website, the boards will be upgraded. In all likelyhood it'll be in a couple of weeks.

Wow, sounds cool, you'll have your hands full for a little while

Sounds good Al.

You must be like a kid in a candy store about now. :runs:

Nice Al!

Believe it or not, my new job at IUP's Software Development Center exposing me to the guts of this kind of technology - much sooner than I would have been able to take it up on my own, too. I'm working with Perl and SQL right now (as in I'm at work right now). I'm starting to understand SQL, and so then I'll only have to understand PHP to get an idea of how this board works. Yikes - it's been a wild ride - and I can appreciate these forums a bit more now. My goal is still to program my own, though I haven't decided if I will use php or Perl yet. That's still up in the air, really. :runs: Have fun!

so where's the poll Al??

http://www.dpwr.net/forums/index.php?act=S...ST&f=3&t=320&s=

Congratulations AL! This is going to be a nice upgrade, seeing some of the new and improved features!

Thanks so much for keeping us informed on all this...it's greatly appreciated!

I'm not sure I understand what the Anti "Flood/Bot DoS" thing is all about, but if it helps to curb the troll activitiy...then bring it on!

Thanks again!

Remember when we got over 2,000 new registrations and I had to purge them manually back in September, which resulted in the current Admin-authorized registration for security? Well, the Anti Flood Bot/DoS feature will prevent that from ever happening again, because of an added layer of security.

I dunno how many people here have signed up for a Yahoo email account in the past, but as part of the registration process you're required to input a series of numbers into a text field exactly as they appear in the image to the left of that field. Those numbers are randomly generated by the script when the page is loaded, and without that information being correctly placed in the text field, the registration won't process. There's also no way for a registration flooding bot to figure out what numbers will be displayed in the image, making it impossible to flood-register in IBF 1.1.

If all goes as I hope it will, the new forums, as well as a revised website, will go live in a couple of weeks. Absolutely no promises are made regarding the validity of that estimate, but it's what I would *like* to have happen. There's still a LOT of tests that need to be run on both the forums and the website integration code before I can plug in the new stuff, plus, as usual, new things keep surfacing that would make some things far easier, and so I'm taking a lot into account here.

But anyway... yes, the new boards and site should be a really good time once I get them up and running .