EntropiaPlanets is now running on XenForo 1.1

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We just upgraded EntropiaPlanets to XenForo 1.1 beta 2, which brings a few features we have missed since we ported over:

• Ignore lists
• Custom profile fields
• Forum Prefixes

There's a whole lot of other new features as well, though. I figured it would make sense listing a few of the new features here with an explanation of what they do/how they work.

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.

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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.

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.

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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.

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.

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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.

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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 administrators 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 offenders.

Personal Conversation Attachments

You can now exchange certain files such as graphics via the personal conversation system. We used a third-party add-on for that before, but now this is part of the XenForo platform itself.

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Forum Prefixes

Prefixes are a way for us to categorize certain topics within a forum. For example, in the trading forum where members post things they are selling, and things they are buying.

When posting an item for sale, you can simply select the selling 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 forum will show you only the items that are currently for sale.

This saves weeding through a bunch of posts unnecessarily.

This feature has not been fully implemented yet, but will find it's way to EntropiaPlanets within the next few days.

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.

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!

 

Hey Dave,

See if that works better for you now? I changed permissions for the user group in your soc forum to be editable for an unlimited time. If this works for you, I'll update the other private forums to reflect these settings.

Peter

 

Please be advised that I'm currently working on removing some errors caused by templates that have been altered in the upgrade. This should remove a few of the visual bugs that have been around since last night :)

 

I'm calling it quits for today :) Most issues have been resolved, most noticably the notification popup balloons showing up even if you had nothing new happening in your inbox or alerts.

I have a bit of work remaining, but most of that is releated to specific CSS files. I'll see what I can do about that tomorrow :)

 

I have forwarded this to the XenForo team. I tried getting it to work, but somehow did not manage to. Let's see what they find :)