In preparation for the 1.1 roll-out

Dodgeboard

Well-known member
I know many of us are going to need some sort of announcement for when we go live with 1.1 on our forums. This well help our members realize and use the new features. I have begun to work on this and thought I would share what I have so far, in case others want to use it as a starting point.

I have this hidden from public view on my forums and will undelete it as soon as the deployment.

Please feel free to use/edit/alter anything as you see fit. Please understand that it has been purposely "dumbed-down" to make it easier to understand for average members.

************************************ANNOUNCEMENT************************************

I am excited to present you with the very first major update to the new software (Xenforo) for our forum system. I know for me, and some of you, it's been long awaited because of the features that we were accustomed to using in the old software. In this thread, I will now chronicle some of these new features and how they will affect you.

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.

ignore.webp

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:

emails.webp

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.

Alerts.webp

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:

Notices.webp

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.

permalink.webp

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.

search.webp

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.

attachment.webp

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 wanted items 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.

prefixes.webp

Known Issues:

Firefox 3.6.22 has a bug that renders some displayed graphics incorrectly with 1.1. If you are using 3.6.22, you should upgrade to 6.0.2 located here. One way to tell if you have an older browser, is to click on someone's avatar. When the member card pops up, the text should align perfectly on the black background. If half of it runs of the member card, you need to upgrade your browser because you will see other areas that are also affected.

Display Bug example:

memebrcard.webp

As with any new software, please report any questions or problems you may have within this thread so it can be promptly addressed. We hope you enjoy the new forum software!
 
The images don't work as they are attachments from your own site and presumably you have them turned off for guests?
 
You images doesn't work


Oh, brogan was faster (as usual:D )
 
A few things you've missed off:

Post count can be disabled for forums now.
Forums can be removed from the news feed.

Both of those have been applied to the test forum here.

The screenshot of the alert is for a standard alert.
Conversation alerts are different.

Standard alert
alert.webp

Conversation alert
conversation.webp

Both together
alert-conversation.webp
 
A few things you've missed off:

Post count can be disabled for forums now.
Forums can be removed from the news feed.

Both of those have been applied to the test forum here.

The screenshot of the alert is for a standard alert.
Conversation alerts are different.
But since people talked, there are missing things, the user warings system said it should be in 1.1, did some of the things announced gona be not in 1.1?
 
A few things you've missed off:

Post count can be disabled for forums now.
Forums can be removed from the news feed.

Both of those have been applied to the test forum here.

The screenshot of the alert is for a standard alert.
Conversation alerts are different.
If we rebuild post counts, is it possible to apply the post count removal retroactively? I.e. all of our test forum posts aren't counted towards our post count.
 
We can only wait for more HYS videos or wait for the 1.1 (beta/rc?? if they release it.. don't know:D) release
 
Very useful resource :-) Thanks for taking the time to put it together.

We've held off moving to XF until 1.1 is out. I don't suppose you've created anything similar to introduce XF from scratch have you?
 
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