New Features in Upgrade to vBulletin Version 3

[Chris Kelleher]

Here's a list of some of the new features in this newest upgrade (I just posted a better more organized list below)....

 

[Chris Kelleher]

Here's a compiled full features list from the completed todo list. This is by no means exhaustive, and should not be regarded as perfectly accurate: not everything was recorded in the todo and some things were changed too.

Added Features:

--to the user interface

General

• Quick registration system...username, password, email and any required custom fields and timezone
• Pop-up auto-refreshing buddylist with ICQ-style alerts when new buddies come online. You'll find a link in the temp buttons top right in the nav bar.
• Show the title of the last posted to thread for each forum on index.php
• Subscription to Threads/Forum without receiving e-mails
• Favorite threads - you don't get email from these either.
• User rating - Karma
• User ranking
• Password break-in watches -- too many failed attempts warning with a preset wait after too many failures.
• Threaded view
• Password protected forums
• Similar threads display
• Send an email "thanks for registering and welcome to .." on user registration (welcome email)
• Validity check for homepages
• Search engine friendly archive of open forums
• Happy b'day emails
• Much improved calander system (too many changes to mention)
• hit counter on announcements
• Digests: new posts/threads in selected forums daily/weekly/monthly
• "excerpt of message:" are now in the new reply email notifications
• 'report post to mod' sends anonymous copy to the original poster of the message
• Restyled FAQ section now looks similar to a forum

Posting

• WYSIWYG Editor for major text input fields (IE 5.5+Only)
• Minimum number of characters in post
• Insert smilie/vB code where cursor is (IE 5+ Only)
• Preview on edit
• Ability to add attachment when editing a post instead of just when creating
• Reason for editing
• Reason for deleting(for admins and mods)

User CP - Profile

• User Pictures - user can upload a personal picture. This picture is shown in the profile of the user.
• Completely revamped PM system (currently in work)
• Longer signature field with optional limit

Search

• Get daily for just one category
• Search only in subscribed forums
• A list of ignored words or words used in a search are added to the results page
• Option to find only started by 'username'
• Display matching forums in results
• Support for searching custom profile fields
• Search for exact username (e.g. turn off wildcards)

Polls

• Option for users to see who voted for which option (public vote)
• When you vote your name is highlighted when viewing results
• Poll results ordered by most to less voted
• Ability to post a poll AFTER a thread had started

--to the admin interface

General

• New admin cp front end
• Language Manager and vB Language packs (in work)
• Context sensitive help
• Improved attachment system. Statistics, Attachment types editing. Ability to delete old attachments. Ability to limit users to X number of bytes in total attachments. Option to "expire" attachments in CP.
• New FAQ System
• User ranking and karma admin
• New settings manager
• Help topics manager for the context sensitive help
• vBCode descriptions in the "What are vBCodes" link are now the actual descriptions in the database. No more editing the template.
• Add options to pick which groups appear on the memberlist, birthdays, etc
• Categories for Avatars and Smilies
• Ability to restrict "view new" to certain forums and groups of forums.
• Admins are exempt from the custom avatar post limit
• A "forum" can be just a link to something or somewhere else
• New merge/split/delete posts system
• A more complete set of subscription options for daily/weekly/on new posts updates, for forum, thread and board.

Utilities

• Admin can run REPAIR and OPTIMIZE on tables as a group or singularly (using mysql 3.23+)
• An SQL box in the admin section for executing general queries
• vBcron system
• Diagnostic tests for testing system compatibility and settings

User administration

• Admin editing of User's Avatar is more user friendly.
• Additional user profile fields - you can now add profile fields which can have either a single line text box, multi line text box, single selection radio buttons, single selection menu, multiple selection menu, or multiple selection checkboxs.
• Add user option in the admin CP to change the user's referrer
• Allow users to change usergroups automatically based on postcount
• Option to merge user accounts
• Search members based on custom profile field
• Email members based on custom profile field
• User notes -- A field for the admin to keep notes on the user
• Admin can designate moderators who can themselves set forum passwords.
• Place user under moderation
• Extended Moderator Activity Logging
• Add usergroup with permissions initially set as set for another group
• Improved email address ban
• Signature length control
• Resend for registration confirmation emails

Styles

• Completely revamped Style system
• You can place $post[postcount] in your postbit template to see each posts position in the thread
• Conditionals in templates. Also called vB Conditionals, these are "if" "then" "else" statements built directly into the templates. This gives the admin/designer improved flexibility in creating dynamic design

--to the programming

Code

• Autoselect forumid for search when clicking search button on toplinks from the forum.
• Todays birthdays to not always refresh the cached template when someone submits a profile.
• Improved post storage to reduce resource usage when showing threads.
• Use gmdate() and NOT date()
• All bbcode/smilies are stripped from posts BEFORE indexpost()
• Quoted text excluded from search.
• Associate searchid with userid so people can't insert searchid's and get results they're not supposed to see
• Who's Online code is moved to a function so that it can be used to figure out a single user's location, to be used in the user's profile and other places if need be
• Meta tags -- forum descriptions (and keywords?) are added to the Meta tags for each forum page
• Infinite parenting system for templates/replacements
• Attachment images (.gif,.jpg,,etc) are no longer in the database.
• Search system is improved with regards to speed. Even faster now!
• No more "nosessionhash" setting.
• No more use cookies setting
• MD5 password by javascript before it is sent to the server
• A second phpinclude template to be executed at the same time as dooutput() - to allow manipulation of elements already generated by the page
• An API for posting functions (newreply, newthread, newpoll, editpost)
• An option to have thread views updated hourly rather than immediately
• Improved bbcode parser
• An option for allowing a regex option to be specified for a custom profile field
• Moved banned email addresses out of the settings
• Remove check for attachments from mass-prune

Design

• Back to Top link at bottom of page
• "Want to register?" and "Forgotten your password?" before user/pass form fields, for using tab
• All user info cells are combined into one template

Usability

• Hitting the back button no longer necessary when you have too many images
• Option to save cookie *on this computer* when logging in
• Login/logout ability in all pages, with user/pass form -- single login system