WSF Blog

We have taken on board a lot of what our readers and members have said over the past few months and having finally collected all of the suggestions and comments together, we can now formulate a plan for WSF for next year.

Lightboxing
Many of you have commented on “lightboxing” techniques that are used in articles on other web sites. The technique involves clicking a thumbnail and then the image is increased in size in a separate layer. The makers of our backend software, Vivvo, introduced this technique into their software in March and we have been testing it since on a very small number of articles. All the feedback from our readers suggests the majority don’t like this method of displaying articles. Preferring our standard site wide use of large images buried into the text of an article. We should have learnt our lesson from 2006 when we first introduced the technique and almost had a mini rebellion on our hands...so this technique on most of our articles is now officially...ditched!

The technique however seems to have been successful on the WSF Forum Boards. Jelsoft, the creators of vBulletin, introduced the technique over a year ago and we have been messing with it on our forum boards since, it was fully rolled out at the beginning of May. Indications are that members like the way it displays attachments so we will be keeping “Lightboxing” in the forum, thanks Kier and all the team at vBulletin :)

Upgrading to vBulleting 3.8
Very shortly WSF will be undergoing yet another upgrade. Jelsoft are about to release vBulletin 3.8 which is their next major release. We like to keep on top of all Forum upgrades, so as soon as the stable release is available we will be upgrading.

There are quite a lot of cool new features that Kier and the team have been working on, which should make using the WSF Forum an even more pleasurable experience for many of you. There is a full list of new additions and changes further below, but having used the Beta version, I can tell you the additions are spot on and fix a lot of nuisances from 3.7.

New Look Articles
WSF was started as an online sea angling magazine all the way back 1998, and it has always been at the core of what we do. Well before we had Forums and a Shop, we would be slaving away preparing articles for “print” in our Magazine Section.

For the last couple of years we have neglected the magazine area of our site, and whilst it contains nearly 900 articles, some of them are starting to show signs of aging. Over the next few months and well into next year we will be updating and modernising all of our articles that are on WSF. This includes our entire compliment of How to Guide and Tackle Guide articles. Not only that but we will be expanding those sections too.

All of our How to Guides will become fully illustrated and with a useful “Article Index” that can be used to find various parts of the article with ease. You will also start to notice that all articles will have certain keywords such as fish species and rigs that will be linked to their corresponding tag. This means that clicking on these links will take you to a page that lists all of the articles that are related to that keyword. So clicking Cod, will bring up all of our articles that feature cod!

Our first article to get the WSF Makeover is our Lugworm Bait Profile.

There are more updates...but as usual, times running out so I’ll detail the rest next week!

As always, my “door is always open” so if anybody has any suggestions regarding the site, what you would like to see and any other comments and suggestions, don’t hesitate to get in touch!

vBulletin 3.8 New Features
Social Group Discussion Threads

• Messages in Social Groups are now threaded into 'Social Group Discussions'.
• Discussion are sortable by creator, replies and last post.
• Discussions can be filtered with a simple full text search on titles.
• Discussions are Read Marked using both database and cookie methods, with a jump to go to first new post.
• Users can subscribe to discussions and receive email notifications on new messages.
• Subscribed discussions with new posts are aggregated in the User CP.
• Individual Discussions have social bookmarking links (user defined, such as Digg, StumbleUpon etc).
• New 'Can Always' permissions to create and view both discussions and messages, simplifying access.
• Fallbacks implemented for non javascript users.
• Posts are now ascending, which is more intuitive in threaded discussions.
• Users can configure their groups so that only the group owner can create new discussion threads.
• Social Group info is hidden when entering a discussion or viewing pages of results to move focus to discussions.

Social Group Changes

• Mark All will read mark all discussions in a group via AJAX.
• Social Groups can be subscribed to, adding group aggregation to the User CP.
• Social Groups now belong to a category.
• A group's category is displayed in the navigation breadcrumb, group lists and group info.
• A new overview page displays a random group, your groups, new groups and groups that you created.
• A category cloud is displayed in the group overview with popularity weighting based on the number of groups.
• Categories can be created and deleted and merged in the Admin CP.
• Groups can be filtered by category, via the category cloud or advanced search.
• Social Groups can now have a group icon. The icon is displayed in the group info, and a thumbnail version is used in group listings.
• Icons are displayed on the User Profile page for groups that the user is a member of.
• Permissions control user abilities to upload icons for their groups, including file size and the ability to upload animated icons.
• Social Groups can now be transferred between users. The group will only be transferred if the recipient accepts the transfer.

Private Message Changes

• Read receipts are automatically accepted when a PM is replied to.
• A new Quick Reply can be used to reply to PM's.
• A new user option is available to set the default value for 'Save Copy' which is also used with Quick Reply.
• PM's can be ordered by Title, Date and Sender.
• When ordered, PM's are grouped by:
  • Title - Alphabetical ranges (A-H, I-P, Q-Z, 0-9 and other) - Non ASCII chars are grouped based on transliteration where possible
  • Date - Today, Yesterday, individual day names, Last Week, 2 Weeks, Last Month, Older, etc.
  • Sender - Grouped by Sender
• Private Messages can be filtered by Sender, Title, a given date period, and whether the message has been read or not.
• Message selections are remembered over multiple pages for bulk actions (Move, delete, mark as read etc).

Profile Privacy

• With the appropriate permission, users can now configure which parts of their profile is visible, and to who. The configurable components are:
  • Profile Picture
  • Visitor Messages
  • Contact Info
  • Albums
  • About Me
  • Friends
  • Recent Visitors
  • Group Memberships
  • Custom Field Blocks where the admin has allowed it
• The components can be configured to be visible to:
  • Everyone
  • Registered Members
  • Contacts
  • Friends

• Generally information is only hidden/displayed within the user profile page with the exception of Albums which also affects the ability to view the albums.
• Also, custom field blocks can be configured by the admin as to whether they will be included in users' privacy settings.

Albums

• Pictures can now be moved from one album to another.
• Album covers are regenerated when moving images if the cover is moved, or the destination album has no cover.
• The default albums view now displays recently updated public albums.

Lightbox

• Lightboxes can now be used to view all images in a post.
• Next and Previous buttons can be used to navigate the attachments, and wrap when the first/last image has been reached

Other Changes and Additions

• A new Community link replaces the Members List link with a submenu for Social Groups; Pictures & Albums; Contacts & Friends; and the Members List.
• A New Items submenu is also available with the newest Visitor Messages; Group Messages; Group Discussions; Picture Comments and Album Pictures.
• Some cleanup has been done on the User CP menu to ensure only links that the user has permission to are displayed.
• Improved RSS filtering for RSS Feed Forums. Terms can now be quoted into phrases, and a new 'match all' option is available.
• PM Reporting.
• Subscription folders can be emptied with one click.
• Quick Edit is available for Visitor Messages and Picture Comments, as well as Social Group Messages.
• Improvements to Contact List editing. Show Avatars option is now preserved.

The bulk of the server move is now completed. This is our second such move in the last nine months and demonstrates just how quickly the site is expanding. We are working with our service providers and data centre so that in future we can put in “in place” upgrades that will reduce the impact of the site going down on our users.

As you all know the WSF Forum was given an upgrade a couple of weeks ago, more can be read on that here.

The main new feature regarding the magazine side of WSF is the ability for WSF Community members to now offer their own articles and marks. This is designed to promote the community spirit of the site further, for you to contribute and be more involved in how the site evolves.

If you want to get those creative juices going with an article or fancy submitting a mark then you can do that either via the WSF Where to Fish Guides, or by clicking here. It might be worth having a look through our other mark guides to get a feel for what how the marks should be formatted.

There are a few other plans in the offing, we’ll announce those as and when they are ready for release!

Happy Surfing!

Finally, the new forum board software is in place! Whilst the new software is going to take some time to bed down, tweak and get used to, it offers many advantages over our old versions, making WSF more fun and interactive for our users. More on that later...

Over the next few weeks you will notice various changes to the WSF Site. One of the first things you will notice on the Forum pages is a new “Drop Down” navigation bar. This gives users easy access to all of the site features including all of our articles, blogs, marks, tips and features.

As part of an overall upgrade of the entire site we have totally replaced our content management systems that look after all of the articles and blogs. The new software is now in place and we are working extensively on a new, easier to use, space efficient WSF. The homepage will become less cluttered and easier to navigate, placing an emphasis on new articles and features.

We are going to re-look at our entire article archive and replace and modify features to be more modern. With widespread broadband use and our extensive and ever expanding digital image library – we feel we can do our articles more justice visually than we have before. Watch out for these new features soon.

Anyway...to the Forum!
Firstly, our forums have had some re-organisation. The General forum is now back – use it for its intended purpose and don’t abuse it please! The Announcements and Help Forum has become Help and Suggestions. The European forum has now come out of “The International Angler” and is now a standalone forum on its own.

The WSF Forum has plenty of new tweaks, tools and widgets for use by our members. The new forum software is designed to increase user interaction and to promote friendship and “social networking”. Below is a list of tweaks and additions to the new WSF Forum.

Tags! Each thread has a more relevant and robust tagging system. Threads can now be tagged with phrases and keywords which enable subjects to be found quicker.

Thread Prefixes: Over the next few weeks we will be adding thread prefixes to all of the “New Thread” pages. This will enable you to categorise you threads with words that describe what the thread is about. For example if you thread is a question, there will be an option of labelling your thread thus. We are working on “prefix” labels at the moment. If anybody has any suggestions, let us know!

Friendships: You can now form friendships with other web site users and have them shown on your profile page as “confirmed friends”. If you have ever used Facebook or Bebo, you’ll have seen this system in action before.

Public Messaging: Whilst you have always been able to Private Message each other, you can now Public Message too! This system enables you to posts public messages on each other’s profile pages, and opens the door for multi user conversations between friends.

User Picture Galleries: Whilst we have had a standalone gallery for a while, WSF now incorporates a picture gallery for each user. This will mean the eventual discontinuation of the old gallery in preference to “User Albums”. The Pictures and Albums setting can now be found in your User CP under the title Networking: Pictures and Albums. Picture Albums can be set to public or private and all public albums can be visited by clicking the “All Albums” link on the forum NavBar. Brand new images to the gallery are also displayed at the bottom of the Forum Homepage.

Social Groups: Members can now create social groups of likeminded individuals. This is designed to increase the social cohesion between various groups that are formed on WSF especially for clubs and anglers who regularly fish together. Social groups can be created for any topic you wish provided it’s all legal and above board. Each group also has its own public messaging system and the ability to add images to the group from members’ own image galleries.

All New Profile Page: The profile pages for members have been re-designed in order to integrate a better social networking aspect to the forum. The page presents information in a cleaner and more logical fashion and divides the information up into manageable chunks. The interface is now tabbed which will help members navigate around each other’s profile pages better. The new page will show who your friends are, your photo album, any useful or profile information, your group memberships and various other widgets to help you get the best from the forum.

Users can customise this page to their own style including changing fonts, colours, borders and background images.

Image Attachments: All image attachments will now show in a Light Box instead of the users being re-directed to another page. This is a very cool feature for catch reports and we are now considering opening up the full storage potential of the server to make sure you can upload images of a reasonable quality and size. We acknowledge the present rules are a bit limiting!

Avatars: Avatar sizings have now been increased to 150px X 150px. You will need to upload a new Avatar to this size spec if you wish to take advantage of the new Avatar size.

Important: For you to get the best out of these new features we would recommend that you update your e-mail addresses to your most current e-mail address. All of your friend notifications and social group invitations will be sent via e-mail. You can do that here.

Above are the main new features of the software. There are plenty of other changes too numerous to mention here but you will no doubt notice them as you make your way around the new software changes.

All settings for the above items can be found by going into your User Cp.

Alan Wright a sea angler and fellow member of the World Sea Fishing web site, from Weston-Super- Mare was recently lost to the sea at Birnbeck near his home. After some discussions between the WSF Moderating team it was agreed that we should help to raise some money to help Alan’s family through this tragic and uncertain time.

This site never fails to amaze me for all the ups and the downs it creates the recent AKWBERTO appeal shows what an excellent community the WSF site has with many likeminded anglers all over the country willing to help out others in times of need.

I wanted to just write a little something to thank all of the members who have contributed and donated money or prize items to the appeal. All of the money, donations and auctions created a combined pool total of just under £6,850.

I would like to pay special thanks to Henry Gilbey, Dave Lewis and Shane Pullen of Sea Angler Magazine as well as Davy Holt, Hamish Clarke, The Codfather of Sole, Ticketty Boo, Terry Hill, Sea Donkey, Poppajoe and Lilbrit who have offered their own personal time in order to raise money for the appeal.

I would also like to thank all of those who have put time into organising matches and meets all around the country in order to raise money for Alans family, especially to the organisers and attendees of the England vs Wales Rematch Event, The Shoreham Angling Squad, The organisers and attendees of the Eastney Beach Meet, all of those who took part in the South East Meet run by Jassyfa. I would also like to thank Patester for organising the Brean Meet and to Reel Fun of Portishead who donated prizes to the raffle.

A special mention to forum member MrFishJersey who ran a collection in his Jersey tackle shop.

Many thanks to Ian Houlton for finding prizes and funds from a variety of sources for the appeal.

Finally the most special mention of all, has to go to Terry Hill (Cascars) for organising the appeal and helping to co-ordinate the money and eventually hand it over on the 20th of March.

World Sea Fishing would like to thank the following members, meets and clubs for donations to the appeal:

Mr Fish Jersey, BobJameson, Nicknobananas and Customers
Mr S Bantock
Mr and Mrs Winterburn
D Simpson
England vs Wales Rematch Event (Roamer)
Shoreham Angling Squad
The Eastney Beach Event
Mr and Mrs Sprigg
Mr John Crane
Mr and Mrs Oswick
The South East Meet (Issy)
Mr Kennedy Cooke
Mr R Burgess
Mr Keith Andrews
Predator Charters Ltd
Mr and Mrs Swansborough
R N Sykes
David Nelson
Norman Southam
Susan Wilkinson
Jeremy Clarke
Stephen Isgar
Kim Hine
TML Trading
Richard Cowling
Thomas Usher
Jeremy P Green
Liam Agnew
Nick Snow
Nicholas Brancher
Simon James
Jan Rigden
Philip Ashman
Rudi Grest
Vicky Griffiths
Kevin Hamilton
Moira Brown
Victor Lilygreen
Ian Phillips
Gary Richardson
James Worrall
Keith Munn
Brian Sandison
Daniel Phillips
Ade Kell
Keith Young
David Wright
Paul Sutton
David Beales / Weightmaker
Shonet McCormick
Hugh A Potter
Phil Meloy
Garry Humphreys
Solo Plant Ltd

World Sea Fishing would like to thank the following members and individuals who donated prizes to the appeal auction:

Henry Gilbey
Dave Lewis
Davy Holt
Hamish the Predator
Sandeel King
Shane Pullen
Stan Massey
The codfather of sole
Patester
Ticketty Boo
Cascars (Terry Hill)
Millser (Ian Mill)
Sea Donkey
Kevinhearn
Jas1972
Big_Haddie
Jas1972
Fishyrob
Poppajoe
Udderman
Bassface
Lilbrit
Sharpshooter
Wilba
gazthelad
basspopper666

World Sea Fishing would like to thank and congratulate the members who won the appeal auction items:

Stampy
NickNoBananas
Mjiamnot
Kenny the Joiner
marknj
Nick Snow
mickj
originalphish
Pelamid
NJJ
GroomyD
Ron
Hubba Bubba
Jas1972
NickNoBananas
David Caulfield
Ryehorse
Skippy
Dontforgetme
Patester
zziplexmad
vespaman
cascars
Andy C
ms1000
wilkybarkid
NigelB
sshorepunk
football-to-fish
Tackletart
Tonycccc
Harrysailor
Hubba Bubba
Pedro the fisherman
jeff1960
wilba
marknj