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Marina

New Features in upgraded forum

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Sluggish
Marina

The forum's finally been through its major and long awaited upgrade, as I'm sure you can all tell, LOL. I apologise for the delay in reopening the forum, but there were some blips and glitches that needed fixing first, as well as some of my symptoms and the fatigue fairy visiting me big time, all of which slowed me down rather a lot I'm afraid.

 

There are a ton of new features, too many perhaps to list, but I'm sure you'll find them whilst browsing around. You might also want to look at the "Help" page for a few tips.

 

Here are a number of new features, some of which I've added as extras:

 

- Blogs. This is a whole new feature where members can have their own blogs. Please see the "Help" page for more info. Both Cara (Hezza) and John (Heste) have created their own blogs so that you can see how they look. All members can start blogs, so please feel free to start your own.

 

- Sidebars. The main forum page now has sidebars, showing things like Recent Blog Entries, Latest Posts and Statuses.

 

- The PM system. It now refers to PMs as "conversations" simply because original messages and replies are now grouped into one, rather than being separate messages, and therefore look like topics in a forum, making them easier to read as a whole thread.

 

All your old PMs should still be there, but they won't be in the new "conversation" format. That means that the old "Sent" and any other folders you may have previously created have gone, and all old PMs are now in a single folder called "My Conversations". However, if you reply to an old PM, it should take on the new "conversation" format but will only contain the one old PM you're replying to.

 

You can now print or download as a Word document whole individual "conversations" using the "Print/Download" button at the top of the conversation.

 

- Statuses. This is a new feature where you can enter short messages or updates, a bit like on Facebook. You can enter them either in the sidebar on the main forum page or from within your Profiles. Other members can "comment" back on your status messages. This is not the same as "comments" on your Profiles, which is where other members leave little comments for you personally.

 

- Preview Topics. When in the list of topics and hovering over a topic title, a pop-up window will open showing you the first and last post in a topic.

 

- Reputation. "Reputation" is not for rating for entire topics but is a way of liking or saying "Thanks" for the individual post or reply post. You will see reputation options in the corner below each post. You will see an icon representing the reputation other members have given for that post, along with icons to give reputation. To give the post a positive reputation, click the green icon with a + sign in it.

 

- View New Content. At the top of all pages is a link called "View New Content". You need to go to your Settings and choose "View new content I haven't read" instead of "View new content since my last visit". This is because if you leave it at "since my last visit" it will only show you what you haven't seen since, say, 4 hrs ago if that was when your last visit was, and will therefore not show you what you haven't seen more than 4 hrs ago.

 

- View Unread Replies. Under your user menu (the bit at the top that says "Signed in as YourName") is a drop-down menu with "View Unread Replies". This is not the same as "View New Content". It shows you topics you've started where you haven't yet read any replies in it.

 

- Photos. In the old forum, we had photos in our profiles which weren't really seen anywhere else. In this newer forum, avatars are still used in topics but profile photos are used everywhere else, such as in statuses and member links. So if you don't have an image in your profiles, you might like to add one. It doesn't have to be a photo of yourself and can be any image you like or even the same one you use for your avatar. Both photos and avatars help make it easier to identify you.

 

- Moods. You can add an image to indicate your mood, which will show in topics you post in and in your profile. You can change your mood in the "Mood" drop-down next to your User Menu at the top.

 

- Favourite Emoticons. Smileys now show in a sidebar when typing. The default ones set by the forum show, whilst you need to click "Show All" for the remaining ones; but unlike in the old forum, a new window won't open, instead ALL smilies will show in the sidebar. You can now choose your own favourite smileys to show instead of the default ones. To do so, go to your "Settings" and choose the "Favorite Emoticons" tab.

 

- Zodiac Sign. You can add your Zodiac sign to your profile which will show in your posts and in your profile. This isn't associated to your birthday, so if you don't enter a birthday date, you can still use a Zodiac sign.

 

- Embedding YouTube movies. These can now be embedded and viewed directly in a post. Please see this topic on how to embed a YouTube movie: http://ms-people.com/forum/topic/13336-how-to-embed-videosmedia/. As an example, I took the liberty of editing Andy's post here to show an embedded YouTube movie: http://ms-people.com/forum/topic/13245-edinburgh-festival/

 

- "Mobile" skin. This has been improved from the old "Lo-Fi", allowing you to easier read the forum in a simple layout without images on a mobile phone. All mobile phones will automatically get this skin (aka "theme"). Although meant primarily for mobiles, one can also switch to it on a computer by going to the bottom of every page and clicking on the down arrow by the box where it says "MS People". There is also an app for iPhones available here: http://itunes.apple.com/gb/app/ip-board-communities/id372597645?mt=8

 

- Anti-spam and a new Captcha system for when registering as a new member. As the words in Re-Captcha are often impossible to read, and as spammers can easily by-pass it, I've instead installed a Captcha that uses a puzzle where one has to put the right parts of an image in place.

 

Whereas I'd set up the old forum to prevent as many spammers as possible and which worked remarkably well, we now have several additional anti-spam features installed. So we hopefully shouldn't get even the rare spammer we used to get. However, if you spot a spammer, you can "Report" them.

 

- Google site search. If the forum's own search system doesn't seem to find what you're looking for, you can choose "Google Site Search" from the drop-down menu in the Search bar at the top right. This will open a smaller pop-up window with the Google search results.

 

-The "new" and "not new" markers on the main page, which let you know if there's been new posts in those sections. There's a known bug which can't be fixed, however you may be able to fix it yourself. You may find that these markers don't appear to be working properly and remain on "new" even though you've read all posts. There are a couple of things you can try to try to fix this:

- First, clear all your cookies although this will log you out of the forum, and try refreshing the page several pages so's to clear it from your browser cache.

- Then click on the actual image with the word "new" on it; this will mark all topics as being read ("not new") - this needs to be repeated for AL sections where the "new" appears where you've read all topics.

- That should hopefully fix it. If it still doesn"t work, try clicking the link at the bottom "Mark board as read".

- If that still doesn't fix it, then I'm afraid there's nothing that can be done about it...

 

We'll also be moving all the links from the "Reference, Help & News" section into a new "directory" style format over the coming weeks.

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Marina

(belated DX in June '05, SPMS)

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