Please Read: Important New Forum Stuff

[shriekingviolet]

OK guys, I know this is going to be long, but I have a lot of new info to cover spanning five topics:

• What's New?
  
• What's Missing?
  
• What's Moved?
  
• Known BugsNew
  
• Policies
  

What's New?

 

New Skins

I designed a skin series for the different seasons. To access different skins, scroll to the bottom of the screen. There will be a drop down menu on the lower right.

 

Personal Profile Portal

Invision Power Board 2.2.0 has a totally redesigned portal page with the following features:

 

• Friends list - manage your friends for easier PMing, to see if your friends are currently online and display your friends on your profile.
  
• comments - allow visitors to leave comments on your profile. You can set to moderate all new comments before they're shown.
  
• Recent visitors - recent visitors are shown on profile.
  
• Your content - show your recent posts / blog entries / gallery uploads on your profile
  
• Personal statement - add a short bio for others to read
  
• Easy access to edit your location, age and IM details
  

 

New Text Editor

New Style

The text editors, both standard and rich text (WYSIWYG) have been completely rewritten to make them more intuitive and faster to load. Clutter has been reduced with the new dynamic menus.

 

Switch

You can now switch between the rich text editor and the standard editor without the need to reload the page or visit your User Control Panel.

 

 

Close Your Own Swap Topic

It's been requested, and it's finally here. You can now close your own swap topic when you're finished with it. And yes, you still will get that reward point! Further instructions here.

 

 

Beefed Up My Assistant

You can now read and reply to recent PMs from the 'assistant' draggable "window."

 

 

Forum Visibility

The main forum index too cluttered for you? Tired of the long scroll of areas you don't read? You can now specify which forums you want to appear on the main forum and which you don't. Settings for this feature are in your control panel (click the link marked "controls") under the heading "options" which is near the bottom of the column, as Forums Visibiltiy.

 

 

 

What's Gone?

 

Features No Longer Around:

The following features are no longer with us. Most of them were code modifications that were designed for the previous software, but were not updated for the new version and I couldn't get them to work. In the case of the similar topics, I just didn't take the time, though would consider bringing it back if people want it. I may put the others back them if they become available again.

• Delete PM After Forward/Reply (it was a check box that deleted a pm for you after you replied to it)
  
• Similar Topics
  
• Mark PM as Read-Unread
  
• PHPSpellChecker
  
• Specify Favorite Smilies (the new smilie setup is rather nice though so I hope that's some consolation!)
  

 

 

What's Moved?

 

As you may have noticed, the forum structure has changed a bit. No forums have been deleted but one was added (BPTP Chatter), one forum (Swaps) became a category, five subforums were promoted to forums (TAL Chatter, and all 4 swap subforums), and one forum (Beyond Perfume) was demoted to a subforum of BPAL Chatter. So be sure to poke around and become reacclimated!

 

Also in the topic view, a few buttons that were there before have been eliminated. Rather than having a button to pm someone, there's a link to PM someone in the drop menu that appears when you click their username. In that menu you'll also find other helpful links, so do take a peek. The member online indicator has also moved from being a button at the bottom of a post to an icon to the left of a member's username in topics, PMs, etc.

 

Lastly the gender indicator is something that the software now incorporates more into its layout and so it created a whole new mechanism for it. Because of this everyone's gender was reset but can be easily respecified in your profile.

 

 

 

Known Bugs

• Both the Spring and Summer skins look wonky in the blog area. I'll make another attempt to try to fix them when my eyes stop crossing when I look at code!
  
• The Fast Reply won't open for IE users on certain skins. No clue why, but it won't. To side step this problem, I recommend all IE users to go into their board settings (which can be found in your user control panel/ "Controls" under the heading "options") and for the "Open Fast Reply automatically when available?" setting, select Yes. Not a perfect solution but it should suffice while I figure out what the real issue is.
  
• The Quick Edit may act wonky at first. During our "bug hunt" we've found that it often acts up the first time you try it as the old javascript file from before is still in your cache. Refreshing once or twice seems to help. If you still have issues the full edit should still work.
  
• PM count may be wonky for some. This should correct itself over the next couple of days as the forum becomes active again.
  

New Policies

 

Reminders & Warnings

After an intense discussion with the moderators and member feedback (both officially and "word on the street"), we have decided to overhaul the warning system.

 

Automatic PMs. One of the comments made was that people didn't know when a warning had been issued because the individual issuing the warning didn't send a PM. Now, the warning system will automatically send you a PM with the text of the message if the contact fields are left blank.

 

Reminders. We now have official rule reminders, which will be used the first two times you break a rule (for instance, creating a duplicate topic, or swapping outside the swap area). Instead of issuing a warning, we'll just send you a PM letting you know that a rule has been broken and the reminder will be logged.

 

So, the first (and second) time you break a rule, you'll be reminded. The third time you break that same rule, you will warned - but if (say) you get reminded for swapping outside the swap area today, and you then make a duplicate topic tomorrow, you'll still get a reminder about duplicate topics rather than a warning.

 

Reminders will disappear 9 months after they are issued. So if you make two duplicate topics today, and then a third next March, rather than getting a warninng that third duplicate topic will earn a reminder as the previous reminders will be off of your record. But, if you had made the third duplicate topic tomorrow, you would have been issued two reminders and a warning.

 

The user notes log (formerly known as the warning log) now looks like this:

Warnings will still be issued on first offenses in the case of severe misconduct (things that are more behaviorally-based, like trolling or member abuse), and like under the old system, a warning's impact on your warning level (the number under your name next to "Warn: ") will degrade after 3 months.

 

Additionally, reminders may be used by the swap moderators as a way to communicate with you when we have received swaplift reports.

 

 

 

Official Mod Posts

In the past, we've had people say that they have a difficult time discerning when one of our moderators is posting as a moderator and when she is posting as a contributing memer. To help eliminate this confusion, all "Mod Posts" are to going to be posted under the account cheekily named "Voice of God." Not a reference to the status of course, but in the spirit of those loud declarations over the PA system that come out of no where when you're out shopping and make you jump. All mod posts automatically log who is posting them and display that information for everyone to see, so while this adds an official tone to some posts it doesn't confuse things by adding anonymity.

 

 

 

Well I think that covers everything. If you have any questions feel free to PM quantum spice or I. Missed you all!

[ipb]

Just a quick note:

 

Once you click the "Close Topic" button for your swaps, you're done. You don't have to do anything else - your topic has been archived. Do NOT report your swap topics to be closed if you use the "Close Topic" button as it does archive your swap for you.