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Forums Upgraded to IPB3!


Chris

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After several months of dabbling around with IPB3, we've finally decided to upgrade, and here we are on nice shiny new improved forum!

The Skin

As you can see we've already made modifications to the default skin. Apologies to those of you who liked the old one better, we weren't able to convert that. What I've done is integrate the forums into the main website layout, keeping the site 100% consistent throughout.

New Features

IPB3 brings with it a decent amount of new features, I'll give a brief overview here, and Gerard will also go into detail about a few important changes in the following post.

Private Messaging

PM's are now
Private Conversations
between you and up to 6 other members. It's pretty much the same as the old system really, with the added ability of sharing the conversation with multiple people.

Statuses

Those of you who are active Facebook users will know doubt enjoy using this. From the index page or your profile page you can now tell users what you're currently thinking/doing etc. This will be shown on your profile page.

The Sidebar

On the index page you will have noticed there is now a sidebar. This displays the latest user status updates, recently posted topics, and any forums/topics you are watching (subscribed to for updates).

If this annoys you, you can always hide it by clicking the little X to the top right of it
;)

Of course there are many more. A topic will be posted later with a more in depth explanation to some of the features you may not be aware of or understand fully.

Found a Bug?

Something not working/looking like you expected it to? If you find a bug, let us know here.

You may find that every single post on the forum shows up as "unread" for you. To fix this, you can click "Mark board as read" right at the bottom of the page.

Staff Changes

We've re-shuffled the staff a little.

Retired staff members including Slayer and Jared have now been removed. Forum veteran Mike, whom you know as Righty, has been reassigned to the more appropriate position of Super Mod.

Finally, joining me at the top is @Gerard (once again!). Gerard will be playing a much more active role on the forums now, and you'll see him implementing a number of changes soon.

And on that note, Gerard will help explain some of the more important changes to how we're running this forum...

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Thanks Chris - it's good to be back in the hot seat!

So as well as the forum upgrade, new skin and a few staff alterations, we also have a few (more relevant) changes.

Ownership of Subforums

In the past, we have had 'section moderators'. These are staff who get a handful of subforums each which they can moderate, but they can't moderate the rest of the forum (unlike super mods). However, these subforums are usually picked a bit randomly, and quite often the section moderators don't even visit all of their areas.

So we're changing this. Starting soon, we will start giving some members a certain level of ownership over a chosen area of the forum. These members will practically run that subforum: picking which topics are pinned, closing dead topics, stopping people bumping old threads, making sure everyone stays relevant and on topic (without spoiling their fun) etc.

This is quite different to forum staff, who just go around and clean up other people's mess, because you'll have a big say in how your subforum is run. If you want it to be relaxed and funny, then you can make it like that. If you want it to be really focused and useful for people to find out they information they need quickly, with a really helpful community around that, then you can make it like that.

This is a great opportunity for a lot of you to get involved in how this forum is run, so I hope a lot of you will want to get stuck in and put yourselves forward for this! More details of how you can apply will come in a few days.

Report-a-Post

The reporting system is very useful for members to alert staff when there is a spammer on the forum, or some really serious abuse. However, it could be a lot more useful if members used it for anything staff need to know about, like arguments.

So starting today, you can use the "Report" button, below a post, to alert staff to any misbehaviour or breach of the rules, including arguing, spamming, etc. Again, don't use it just because you disagree with someone's opinion, or just because you don't like them.

Staff are here to help, so if someone is being a pain in the backside and spoiling the forums, then we can step in and help out. We can help arbitrate arguments and facilitate discussion, we can do more than just ban people. Just ask us to help, that's what we're here for!

Rep & Voting

The warning/rep system has been overhauled, and I'll do my best to quickly explain the changes.

Member Rep has been removed. Instead, you can now vote individual posts up/down. Just close your eyes and think of Digg. This is to be used when you think a post is unusually good, or unusually bad.

Vote up someones post if it's really clever, funny, helpful, informative etc. Vote down a post if they are being rude or arguing. You have a maximum of 10 votes per day.

This is NOT to be used for voting up someone just because they are your friend; or voting them down just because they disagree with you. Abusing the system will be dealt with, with a formal warning.

Warning System

In the past, rep and warnings used to cancel each other out. Now rep has been removed, that obviously doesn't happen anymore.

Warnings now stand on their own. You do have a warning level, which goes up every time you receive a formal warning. More serious offences will increase your warning level by more than minor offences.

But now, this is only used for staff to understand how well you have behaved in the past, and this does not automatically suspend/ban you when you reach a certain level. Staff can suspend or ban a member at any time, if they think the offence is serious enough; or if there are a lot of minor offences.

There are a few other changes behind the scenes, but nothing massively important. Just give me a shout if you have any questions.

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I realise a lot of people don't like the skin and I'll be making a topic about it later. The main body of the forum is simply the default IPB3 skin which we didn't customise at all. It looked fine, but having now used it for a while I can see where some of you are coming from. As I said, look out for a topic later regarding this.

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I like the new IPB, it looks quite good. I like the new status feature in particular, despite it being small, you can tell others if you're going away, sick or the mood one is in. I also like how your profile tells you how much posts you have made in total with the forum fun & off-topic inclusive. Not too fond of the skin though.

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Oh nice. I've been awake until 4am! Yeah, FOUR IN THE MORNING in the PC to see it but it was down. Epic upgrade and congrats Gerard.

Uh, 4 in the morning is not that late....

Anyway, really looking forward to see how the new skin will look like.

4AM is still fairly late, even if a few people stay up later.

We were up til 5am doing the upgrade, so I don't know why you're feeling sorry for yourself :)

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