What's new for Local Race Chat?

[RaceJunkie]

Here are a few things that are coming with the next upgrade here on Local Race Chat. We will be implementing this upgrade to the site sometime this weekend. So if you visit the site and it's closed you know what is going on. Some of these features are administration only but the majority of them are end user additions that everyone will be able to enjoy.

Inline Spam Management and Prevention Tools

Forum spam is an increasing problem for many boards. Unfortunately, due to the visible-source nature of vBulletin and most other forum systems, most preventative measures we might add to the system can simply be reverse-engineered and worked around by persistent spammers.

Therefore, 3.7 contains a new set of tools to help clean up spam and deal with spammers.

Threads and posts can be selected in the usual inline moderation fashion, and then the new 'Delete Threads/Posts as Spam' command can be selected, which will load the spam management interface, which contains options on a single page for removing the spam posts and threads, banning the spammers and finding other spam they may have posted.

http://files.vbulletin.com/3.7/spam-management.png

[RaceJunkie]

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.

http://files.vbulletin.com/3.7/thread-tags-newthread.png

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

http://files.vbulletin.com/3.7/thread-tags-showthread.png

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.

http://files.vbulletin.com/3.7/thread-tags-search-cloud.png

[RaceJunkie]

Thread Prefixes

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

http://files.vbulletin.com/3.7/thread-prefixes-forumdisplay.png

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

http://files.vbulletin.com/3.7/thread-prefixes.png

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.

http://files.vbulletin.com/3.7/thread-prefixes-admin.png

[RaceJunkie]

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.

http://files.vbulletin.com/3.7/friends-edit.png

[RaceJunkie]

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.

http://files.vbulletin.com/3.7/public-messages-profile.png

[RaceJunkie]

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

http://files.vbulletin.com/3.7/album-show-album.png

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.

http://files.vbulletin.com/3.7/album-show-picture.png

[RaceJunkie]

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.

http://files.vbulletin.com/3.7/social-groups.png

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

http://files.vbulletin.com/3.7/social-groups-messages-and-pictures.png

[RaceJunkie]

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.

http://files.vbulletin.com/3.7/new-memberinfo-b.png

[RaceJunkie]

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.

http://files.vbulletin.com/3.7/customize-profile-editor.png

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!

http://files.vbulletin.com/3.7/full-memberinfo-compare.png

http://files.vbulletin.com/3.7/customize-profile-memberinfo-b.png

[RaceJunkie]

nline 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.

http://files.vbulletin.com/3.7/profilefield-ajax-edit.png

[RaceJunkie]

Attachment Viewing Lightbox

Clicking on an attached image will now open a lightbox rather than open a new window, with the image scaled to fit the browser viewport. A click on the image in the lightbox will open it in a new window as before.

http://files.vbulletin.com/3.7/lightbox-showthread.png

[RaceJunkie]

Post Edit History

For boards where the history of posts is important, it is now possible to log all edits to posts and then review the changes at a later date.

http://files.vbulletin.com/3.7/post-edit-history.png

[RaceJunkie]

Navbar Notices

Administrators can now set up custom notifications that will appear underneath the navbar when visiting users fulfil specified criteria.

For example, one may want to set up a notice to display when a user is a member of a particular usergroup, or to show a congratulatory message when a user has posted their 1,000th post etc.

http://files.vbulletin.com/3.7/notices-manager.png

[RaceJunkie]

User Change History

In order to track changes made to users' profiles by administrators, a change log is now kept for various user profile fields including username, usergroup etc.

http://files.vbulletin.com/3.7/user-change-history.png

[RaceJunkie]

Social Bookmarking of Threads

Administrators can now define a list of their favorite social bookmarking sites and have them available for use on the showthread page for bookmarking threads.

http://files.vbulletin.com/3.7/social-bookmarking.png

[RaceJunkie]

Picture Comments
New to this version are picture comments - a system enabling visitors to leave comments on pictures in member albums. This final touch adds the key social networking functionality to the system.

http://files.vbulletin.com/3.7/picture-comments.jpg

[RaceJunkie]

New Member Album Types
In previous versions of 3.7, members' albums of pictures could be specified as private or public only, and any pictures that were intended to be used for backgrounds of customized profile pages had to be located in public albums. This has now been changed, and a new special type has been introduced - profile albums. These albums are not directly browsable, unlike public albums, but their contents are available for use in profile page customization.

http://files.vbulletin.com/3.7/edit-album.png

It's also now possible to pick background images from a profile-type album without having to memorize picture IDs etc.

http://files.vbulletin.com/3.7/choose-profile-album.png

Social Groups Administration
It is now possible to do extended searches on user-created social groups from the Admin Control Panel, and mass-delete groups should one wish to do so.

http://files.vbulletin.com/3.7/sgroup-acp.png

[RaceJunkie]

Conversation
A means by which visitor messages posted between two users on each others' profile pages can be viewed in a unified form. Look for the 'View Conversation' link on visitor messages to use the feature.

http://files.vbulletin.com/3.7/conversation.png

[w1ck3d0n3l0st]

starting to seem like myspace a lil.lol on the profile thingie.lol awesome work thnxz for the heads up on closin of the website if it happens we have no worrys now.

[Dirtfan_21]

looking forward to the new things

[Redclay Rebel]

You understand alot of us do not understand half of that stuff.

[battenfan4life]

and i'm one of them.

[Racerchaser]

:DontKnow: :exactly: :confuzeld::BustinAss:




looking forward to the new things