Forum Maintenance Announcements

[number6]

OS, DB, web server, kernel etc. upgraded on forums. Testing posting
Let us know if you see new problems with the forums since this upgrade.
Thanks!

[number6]

Test comment.

[number6]

Work towards another round of upgrades is underway. After 4 hours (7:00pm PST November 9, 2021) if you notice new problems, please let me know.
Upgrade and testing completed.
Please let me know if you see new problems after November 9, 2021 at 6:30PM PST.

No other maintenance planned on forums in the near future unless new problems are found.

Thanks!

[number6]

Minor upgrade applied to forums. Please let us know if you see new problems. Thanks!

[The Dark Tangent]

New forum upgrade has been completed, here are the release notes:

Answered Topics

Topics can now be marked as "Answered." This is a special status applied to a specific post within the topic. The post that is marked as the Answer will be highlighted and show directly under the starting post in the topic. The ability to mark posts as the Answer in a topic is controlled by permissions. There are three different permissions to control this. Usergroup and Channel Permissions both support the "Can Set Answer" permission. Within Channel Permissions, there is also a "Can Set Answer on Own Topics" permission. The last permission is under Moderator Permissions to control which moderators can set answers. After upgrading, all of these permissions will be set to No. If you leave the permissions in this state, the feature will be disabled.

The Channel Display module has been updated to allow users to filter by answered status.
Photo Gallery


The ability to manually re-order images uploaded in a photo gallery topic has been added to the system. This can be accomplished by drag and drop when editing the images during upload.
Additional Issues

• Resolved several filter issues with Blogs.
• Users with custom HTML titles can update their settings without breaking their titles.
• vB Messenger should load new messages quicker. However, the update rate will slow down with inactivity.
• Tag searches are no longer case sensitive.
• Users no longer need permission to post to create flag reports.
• When uploading a new site logo in Site Builder, it can now be properly applied to all styles.
• If the site is configured so that the user's birthday is optional, it is no longer required when updating the user settings.
• Information from inline images should no longer appear in the meta description of a page.

We will be testing and enabling the Answered Topics feature this week and next, and then post about it when it is ready for everyone to try!

[number6]

System upgrade completed which should have no impact on forum software or add any features. Please let us know if you see new issues. Thanks!

[number6]

Upgrade for forum software completed. Changes of interest to users:

Photo Gallery
When uploading images to a Photo Gallery topic, users can now enter a title for each image as well as the image description. This will enhance the searchability of images within these topics.

Note: There is a known issue that you cannot add a title when uploading images during the creation of a new Photo Album within the user profile. You can edit the Photo Album and add titles as a workaround.

Additional Issues

• Attachments will now show in the Latest Activity streams when using the Web Client.
• Resolved an issue with username links in Pinned Topic Answer posts. These links would not work properly on subdomains.
• Resolved an issue where clicking "More Smilies" in the editor would result in smilie selection disappearing.

Other items not mentioned above may be enabled for testing and possible inclusion in the future.

As usual, please let us know f you find new issues. If you can't post, then use the "contact us" link at the bottom to send us an email message.

[number6]

A forum service has been upgraded. Please let us know if you see issues. Thanks!

[number6]

Maintenance on forums to being at 7:30pm pacific time. Expected to be unavailable for ~3-4 hours.

[number6]

Upgraded OS, libs, and Forum Software. Please let us know if you see issues. Thanks!

[The Dark Tangent]

Forums Updated!

With this latest update there are some new features and some fixes. Please test out the new features and let us know how they are.

NEW:

Display Name

New functionality was added to allow for Display Names. Display names work in conjunction with user names and are not unique. This would allow two users to identify as "Robert Smith" when this functionality is needed. In new registrations, Display Names will default to the username created. Administrators can assign display names in the AdminCP by editing the user. There is an option under Settings -> Options -> User Profile Options to allow users to edit their display names. At the same location, there is also an option to limit the number of times a user can change their Display Name per day.

When used, Display Names will appear at most locations that would show the User Name in previous versions. In some locations, both the Display Name and User name will appear to increase clarity between different users.

Hashtag Support

Users can now create #hashtags in their content to link the content to tags, existing channels, and specific nodes (via nodeid). Hashtags will allow better organic categorization of your content. If you wish to promote specific tags as hashtags on your site, you can create them in the AdminCP under Tagging -> Tags.

Types of Hashtags allowed:

• Tag: These will match tags that currently exist on your system.
• Channel Name: This will match any of your existing channels. After saving the hashtag will be replaced with a link to the channel specified.
• Node ID: Allows you to create links to any specific node on your site. This will pull the node title and use it as the link.

After the user types the # (hash) and three characters the system will automatically pop up a search box of results they can select from. As they continue typing, the results will be refined. This allows user to easily find the content that they want as a link.

FIXES:

• Updated the display of Name Cards based on customer feedback.
• Name Cards are now rendered on request via AJAX. This was done to reduce the initial download size of pages and resolve some HTML formatting issues.
• Updated the Photo Title UI so that it works properly when reusing photos in an existing Album.
• Resolved minor issues with UserName lookups in the system.
• Resolved an issue in Apple Safari where using the UserName lookup can delete the content of the entire post.
• Events will be included in Outgoing RSS Feeds. The text content of event posts will be included in outgoing RSS Feeds. Users will need to continue visiting the site to view the event details.

[The Dark Tangent]

dc30 Adversary Village test of tags.

Basically tag your posts and when you use # hashtag you can optionally select what to link it to.

[number6]

We are expecting the forums to go down for maintenance sometime on Wed, March 30, 2022, with a down-time of about 3 hours.
Best estimate for this happening, is starting 6pm PDT, but may start later. I will update this post when I have more current information.

[number6]

Forum maintenance expected to start at 6:30pm PDT. Down-time expected to be 2-4 hours.

[number6]

Upgrade completed. Please let me know if you see issues.
Thanks!

[number6]

Software used by forums upgraded today. Down-time was around 5 minutes. Please let us know if you see issues.