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Print versionWSF Forum and Article Changes
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.
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