Topic: Important forum upgrade + New Features

[ethan]

The forum is ready for upgrade. The upgrade is scheduled on September 13, Sunday at 7 pm, EST

Other time zones will be

Pacific Time, 4:00 pm
Mountain Time: 5:00 pm
Central Time:  6:00 pm
Eastern Time:  7:00 pm
United Kingdom:  12:00 midnight
Western Europe:  01:00 am (September 14)
Central Europe:  2:00 am (September 14)
Taiwan: 7:00 am (September 14)
Australia (Sydney): 9:00 am (September 14)

During upgrade, the forum will be in maintenance mode and not accessible. The approximate time to complete is 3 hours. It will be back live as soon as it is complete.

What can you help us before upgrade?

1. If you uploaded your avatar to the forum, please make a back up and upload to other sites such as photobucket and use that URL. If you don't make the change before September 13, your avatar will not be displayed after upgrade.

2. Before upgrading, the forum will back up all data. Please help us reduce the size of the backup by exporting your PMs and delete them from the server.

What changes should you expect?

Other than new features (see posts below in this thread), the only two that won't be available are

1. Member Map.
2. Option to upload your avatar.

How would you be affected after the upgrade?

1. The elimination of member map will cause all current flags displayed in your profile and post disappeared. You will need to manually select your country flag by modifying your profile.
2. If you uploaded your avatar to the forum and did not make a change to a URL prior to upgrade, you will see your avatar missing.

What should you do after the upgrade?

Nothing really. Just log on and play around! If you experience any difficulty or problems, please report in the thread below or contact mods.

Do you know the forum has a board for posting?

http://ennisjack.com/index.php?board=35.0

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If you have any comment/feedback/question, we would be glad to hear them in the following thread

http://ennisjack.com/index.php?topic=8710.0

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Google translation of this thread in other languages. Click the flag for the language of your choice. The translation may not be 100% accurate but it will give you some ideas.

[ethan]

Homepage - you will see a slight change with the pic in the middle and with the addition of "Recent Topics"

[ethan]

After logging in with your username and password, you will see a new header that has BBM greetings, links to your account settings and snapshot of forum stats.

[ethan]

The upgrade will enhance the profile that changes the layout and other additional fields.

Click on "profile" on the menu and you will see the following.

[ethan]

To edit your profile, click on  "edit profile" on the header. Here you can set up your avatar, country flag, BBM anniversary, signature, etc. You can also enter links to your Facebook, MySpace, and Twitter. If you have livejournal or other websites, you can enter it in the website field.

Important note - after the upgrade, the forum will not have the Member Map and it will impact your country flag currently displayed in your profile. To have your country flag, you will need to modify your profile and choose the flag after forum upgrade.



For more details on how to add your avatar, click HERE

Two new flags were added for your selection - if the flag you are looking for is not in the list, please let the admins know.

[ethan]

Changing your preference setting for look and layout of the forum.

In this section, you can personalize the look and layout of the forum. First, click on "Look & Layout" in the header and you will see the options.

If your Internet speed is slow, you can check the following three options.

Don't show pictures in posts, only links.
Don't show users' avatars.
Don't show users' signatures.

Three useful settings are

1. Return to topic after posting by default - check this if you want to the thread which you are replying instead of the entire forum.

2. Don't warm on new replies made while posting - check this if you don't want to receive warning that there are new replies to the thread after you click "post"

3. Use Quick Reply on Topic Display - With Quick-Reply you can write a post when viewing a topic without loading a new page. You can still use bulletin board code and smileys as you would in a normal post.

[ethan]

Account setting allows you to hide your email to other members and your online status and change your password.

[ethan]

You have the option to include email in your profile.

If you choose to hide your email address, it will show "hidden" to others viewing your profile and not allowing other members to contact you directly via email. When you see your own profile, you will still see your email but it is italicized like myemail@ennisjack.com

If you choose to let others contact you by email and not to hide it, your email address will not be visible to other members but showing an email icon.

When members send you an email, they will be entering an online form. After the form is completed, you will receive an email directly from the sender.

[ethan]

To change your notification setting,

If you prefer not to receive any notification from the forum by email, un-check the first option.

[ethan]

Update your PM setting.

[ethan]

You can add other members to your buddy list by entering their usernames or adding them from their profiles. It will display a list easier for you to communicate with your buddies online.

[Mars]

Thanks Ethan for this job you did, for the explanations and reminders

[ethan]

Auto Video Embedded in the post

When you insert a video link such as YouTube, the video will be automatically embedded like the one below. Currently, the forum is set up to include 30 embedded videos per page. Increase the number will add more loading time.

In addition to YouTube, it also supports many video sites, for example

Dailymotion    Google Video    MetaCafe       Veoh
Vimeo       Apple Trailers    Archive.org   Bebo      Brightcove network       ESPN
Facebook       Flickr      GameSpot    IGN       Imeem (Video)      ImageShack
JustinTV       Kewego network      MegaVideo    MSN Live/Soapbox       MySpace    photobucket   TinyPic       Truveo      Yahoo Video
 
You can check the following thread - http://ennisjack.com/index.php?topic=4685.0

[ethan]

Page dropdown menu - the menu will appear in all areas when there is more than one page to browse.

Font type, size, color dropdown - during posting, you can select font type, size and color from menus.

[ethan]

Topic filter - In the topic view, you can filter the topics by date, number of replies and number of topics per page.

Please don't forget to reset or you will filter topics inaccessible to you

Enhanced search dropdown

The search bar includes dropdown menu to limit the search area. In a board, you will have the option to search in the entire forum or that particular board. In a topic, you will have three options to limit the search.

[ethan]

Flashing icon when receiving new PM - when you receive new PMs, a flashing icon will appear.

New Emoticons - we hope you will enjoy them. The forum currently has sufficient number of emoticon for the time being. We will evaluate the usage and make any adjustment as necessary.

 

[ethan]

Adding links in the bottom of navigation menu

The following three links on the top header are also placed in the bottom.

[ethan]

Extra field to enter a reason when editing/modifying your own post

When a post is edited, there will be an field to enter the reason why it is edited.

[ethan]

Another improvement for the forum stats. The archive boards and topics will not be listed in the top 10 boards, topics both by replies and by views. This improvement may eliminate some popular boards/topics once they are archived. Such elimination won't be permanent as their replies and views grow fast and will be on top 10 soon.

As you can see below, the current forum stats list duplicates which make the top 10 less useful. In the testing site, you will see that there is no duplicates.

Current stats in the forum

Stats in the testing site

[ethan]

Updated the testing site with hpv's suggestions. The ones in a box now all have links.

0 Posts | 0 Messages - links to all of your posts and all your PM inbox. (it will show the number of posts and PMs you have).

Please welcome - link to http://ennisjack.com/index.php?topic=7817.0



Also, you will see "Monotype Corsiva" font type in the dropdown menu when you post.

[ethan]

Added the code

Code: [Select]

[img width=600][/img]
Just click on the icon 



When you click the icon, the posting screen will display

Code: [Select]

[img width=600][/img]
You can edit the number to increase or decrease the pixels of image. If you don't want to resize, either click icon or remove "width=600" part.

[ethan]

Just to clarify the request to save PMs as some of you have asked.

Your private messages (PMs) won't be deleted after the upgrade.

The forum will be upgraded to a later version of software. Before doing so, the forum will first backup all the data. PMs take space and it would really help the forum to export them to your computer and delete them from the server from time to time.

Now it is a good time to do it.

How often should you export your PMs? As soon as you are about to reach 70 pages (that is about 2000 messages).

Thank you very much for your understanding and help!!

[ethan]

Change of Avatar setting

After the upgrade, the option to upload your own avatar will be disabled in order to conserve the serve space. If you upload your avatar to the forum, please save a copy and upload it to photo site such as photobucket before the upgrade by modifying your profile and insert the URL. There will be more BBM avatar lists to personalize your profile. The list includes BBM, its characters and cast members. If you don't like any of them, please feel free to use others hosting at other sites.

To modify your profile, click "profile" and then "Forum Profile Information" - you will see the option to either choose from the list or enter the URL of your own pic.

[ethan]

If you use mobile device that has Internet connection and browser, you can browse the forum using a text version without graphics.

Set your URL to

http://ennisjack.com/index.php?wap

or

http://ennisjack.com/index.php?wap2

[ethan]

Condense the header. - you can hide the header to give you for forum space by clicking +. To expand, click it again.

 

After it is hidden.

 

[ethan]

If you prefer, below are the links to google translation.
(translations may not be accurate but they will give you an idea).
click on the flag for your language.

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The topic is locked for the time being.

If you have any comment/feedback/question, we would be glad to hear them in the following thread

http://ennisjack.com/index.php?topic=8710.0

[ethan]

You may notice time difference in the forum. To adjust the time based on your time zone,

you will need to go to "Look & Layout"  on top section of "My Settings."

In the field of "Time Offset" click "auto detect." It will show the hour difference.

[ethan]

The forum added a few options for adding various social media website plus Skype.

Skype   
Facebook   
MySpace   
Twitter   
Google+   
LinkedIn   
Youtube   
DeviantArt   
Pinterest

To add them, simply go to edit your profile.

http://www.ennisjack.com/forum/index.php?action=profile;sa=forumProfile

[titabeille]

OMG !  Thanks Ethan but I will change nothing as member !