I just wanted to update everyone on the site update. It is all done and completed. Everything went smooth and there were no issues. I think the whole upgrade took less than 30 minutes. It looks like everything is working and functioning just fine. I have implemented some of the backend features that help increase the site speed. At this time, I think the only thing I really have to work on now is getting some of the theme issues taken care of and really start digging into optimizing all the site icons/gradients that are not included in the sprite sheets. One of the members from Xenforo made this feature list that I will add here. As always, if you see anything weird or amiss, please let me know and I will dig into it. Thanks Russ The (long awaited) IGNORE feature: To access it, click on your name (at the top of your screen, by the Alerts) then select Preferences. It's pretty self-explanatory if you look at the following illustration. Notification emails: With the old vBulletin software, if someone replied to your thread you would get a email informing you of that. We have this with Xenforo as well, but the email did not include the post-text. Now with 1.1, if you are participating in a thread and a reply is posted, the alert email will now contain the full text, a graphic avatar and some useful links pertaining to your thread subscription. Example of the full-HTML email notification: Make sure your email client can receive HTML emails - 95% should have no problem. The rest should have an option to turn HTML emails "ON" Alerts: Alerts were introduced with Xenforo 1.0. However, some of us forget to notice the red alert in the upper right hand part of the screen. This is especially important when we get a private message. So another feature has been released in 1.1 to help make them more visible when you get a private conversation (message). Now you will get a little pop-up in the lower left hand corner of the screen as well, notifying you of the private message alert. Notices: Notices are the Admin's way of letting you know about special events, new features or any other announcements. You will see these at the very top of the screen and you can dismiss them after they have been read. Example: Permalinks: All posts are numbered, always have been. But now clicking on the number provides a nice link for sharing the post in other threads or across many different social media platforms automatically. Auto Media Embedding: This is another missed feature that we had with the old vBulletin software, but accomplished it with a modification add-on to the core software. Xenforo 1.1 now brings this feature back with the core product. What does this mean? Many people know how to embed a YouTube video or a Vimeo video. However, some still find this to be tricky so they simply post a link. This method requires the reader to follow the link to another site, opening yet another window or tab, and it all gets a bit confusing. Xenforo 1.1 takes care of all that. Now, simply insert a link into your post and the software will do the rest, even stripping out the unneeded portion of the URL. It will take care of all the embedding for you automatically and even provide a link under the embedded video, just in case the author has disabled embedding. Xenforo 1.1 now includes support for many different media sites, not just YouTube. But if you happen to stumble upon a site where Xenforo is unable to automatically embed the link, notify me and I can add the site to the software embed engine. Search Enhancements: You will see a new option under the Search window, titled "Useful Searches", which gives you more control over searching. Speed Improvements: Xenforo 1.1 uses a new Minified (compressed) coding, and a better graphics system (CSS Sprites) to deliver a faster browsing experience. This means faster page loads for you and better graphic caching. Infraction (warning) system. This will allow admin to send and track warnings to members. Up until now, this was handled by way of PM/PC in a very manual fashion that made it hard to track. Though we hope to not need to use it very often, it's just a way to say "Hey, don't do that, please" and then track how many times we've had to warn the same member. If you are ever on the receiving end of an infraction, I hope you will take it semi-seriously, but not to the point that it upsets you or causes you to stew over it. It's really just an admin tool to identify repeated offenses. Personal Conversation Attachments You can now exchange certain files such as graphics via the personal conversation system. Prefixes Prefixes are a way for us to categorize certain topics within a forum. For example, let's say we have a trading post forum where members post things for sale, things for rent and things wanted. When posting an item for sale, you can simply select the for sale prefix to the left of the thread title to announce to members that this is an item for sale. When searching for all for sale items, you can simply click on the for sale prefix to filter out all the wanteditems and the for rent items and the forum will show you only the items that are currently for sale. This saves weeding through a bunch of posts unnecessarily.
