Forums Upgraded to 3.7.0! New Features!

[Paul J. McCain]

I am pleased to announce that we have successfully upgraded to the lastest version of vBulletin, the forum software, version 3.7.0! It just came out today and we've already upgraded!

There are many new features in this version upgrade. Many of them are admin and mod-side, adding more features to administration and moderation, but here are a lot that you can use as members. Enjoy, and as always, your comments are welcome and appreciated!

[Paul J. McCain]

Thread Tagging

A new way to facilitate searching and grouping of threads, it is now possible for users to add tags to threads they post or read.



Tags can be added when creating a new thread, or to an existing thread by any user (with appropriate permissions).



Any users who then click on these tags will not only find all thread that have the same tag as the one clicked, but will also contribute to the building of a search tag cloud, which gives users a quick guide as to what has been searched for recently and most frequently.

[Paul J. McCain]

Thread Prefixes

Long requested by users, threads can now have administrator-defined prefixes to their titles.



Thread prefixes are divided into groups by the administrator, allowing different prefixes to be available in different forums.



Update

Here is a new screengrab showing some of the thread prefix administration system, which should answer a lot of questions we have been receiving.

[Paul J. McCain]

Reciprocal Friendships Between Users

As part of our new social networking system, users can now request that people on their buddy list confirm their friendship, after which time a person's list of confirmed friends will be viewable to other users.

[Paul J. McCain]

Public Messaging

While private messages between users have been in vBulletin since version 2.0, vBulletin 3.7 introduces the public messaging system, allowing users to communicate publicly via their profile pages.

[Paul J. McCain]

User Picture Galleries

vBulletin users can now create albums and upload pictures to their account.



The ability to view these albums and pictures can be limited by the user to just board staff and people on their buddy list if they want privacy.

[Paul J. McCain]

User-Created Social Groups

To further social cohesion between users and to encourage people to make friends, vBulletin now includes a facility to allow users to create their own social/interest groups.



These groups are enhanced by having their own public messaging system, and the ability to add pictures to the group from user albums.

[Paul J. McCain]

New Member Profile Page

In order to accomodate all the new features in vBulletin 3.7, the member profile page has been completely redesigned from the ground up.

The new page presents information in a far cleaner and more logical manner, while dividing up information into manageable chunks using a tabbed interface.

Individual profile field categories can be displayed alone in blocks in the right column, in addition to appearing by default in the 'About Me' tab.

[Paul J. McCain]

Member Customization of Profile Page

The administrator may choose to allow his members to use the profile page customization tool, which allows users to alter fonts, colors, background and borders etc. of their profile page in order to create a more personalized look.



The administrator can lock-down customization permissions, in order to prevent the personalized pages being made too offensively awful by aesthetically challenged members... nobody wants to see some of those really ugly MySpace pages on your vBulletin installation!

[Paul J. McCain]

Inline Editing of Profile Field Values

The 'About Me' tab of each member's profile page has edit controls, allowing them to quickly change values without leaving their profile page.