Welcome to EntropiaPlanets of the Future

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In August last year, after many months of planning, we made the switch from vBulletin 3.8.* to vBulletin 4. The license for that was bought back in November 2009, during a pre-sale event. When the product finally came out in January, it was a major dissappointment to us, as many of the promised functionality was lacking, and the product was riddled with bugs.

Still, come August, the product seemed to have stabilized enough to upgrade and away we went. Spicing up the process by means of a storyline, a 12 hour upgrade marathon commenced. Shortly after completing, we started noticing the server slowing down, and we had no other real explanation other than this being the result of our upgrade. Search for vBulletin 4 also was a mess, and with IB (the company owning vBulletin) releasing updates at almost a monthly basis, we suddenly found ourselves forced to spend hours and hours every month attending to bug fixes and styling issues. Worse yet, with every update, new bugs were introduced.

Clearly, this was not a desirable situation, and we started looking around for alternatives. In fact, things were so bad that despite buying a license for vBulletin 4 for afterworldforum.com as well, we left it running the old (and now discontinued and unsupported) vB 3.8.6. Around that time, we first heard of XenForo, and decided to check it out. It turns out to be a very addictive forum-experience, and so that's what we decided we woyuld settle for. XenForo has only been released in October 2010, and as such, not every piece of functionality that vBulletin offers is available yet, but this will undoubtedly improve over time.

As it stands, for the time being, we will be lacking the following features for a while:Arcade

• Classifieds system
• Conquest system
• Gallery
• Ignore lists
• Thread prefixes
• User profile customization

... as well as some other things that you undoubtedly will find that you might actually not miss that much anyway.

In exchange, though, XenForo (and a few additional add-ons we run) offers you the following abilities:

• Alerts - As seen on iPhones and FaceBook, an alert will be visible in the form of a little red icon at the upper-right of the screen, indicating there is something relevant to you (i.e. Someone you follow made an update, or someone quoted a post made by you, etc.).

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• BB Codes - A plethora of BB codes is available in XenForo. To see an extensive list with instructions and examples, check under Help (from the navigation bar), and then BB Codes.
• Event registration - At the top, you will see a new Events tab. Event organizers can register events in there, and users can RSVP a spot in them.

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• FaceBook integration - This is one of those features that was promised to be on vBulletin 4, but never fully got implemented in it. You can link your FaceBook account to your forum account, and "recommend" or "like" anything on the forum. It is also possible to use a FaceBook account to log on to our forum.
• Follow users - Instead of having friends, you can now follow people. Whenever your friend is doing something, you will be able to find it in your personal settings under 'News Feed' Like - Just like FaceBook, and the recently introduced like system on the old EP. In fact, the like system there was introduced after XenForo launched, so undoubtedly was copied. The like system replaces both the original reputation system, as well as the Gratz system. I will try and see if I can find a way to import old reputation messages. There is a plugin available for this, but I just have not had the time to test it yet.
• Media library - The Media tab in the navigation menu will allow you to actually search videos placed in there. Videos can be tagged for even easier and more extensive searching.
  Moods - It is possible to select a mood to indicate what mood you are currently in. You can do this (among others) from your profile page.

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• Report private conversations - Private messages have been renamed to "Private conversations". Should another member be disruptive, it is now possible to report such a message to the moderating and administrating team.
• Styles - Lykke has been busy creating 5 styles; 1 for each of the known upcoming planets. In the lower left, you can choose a style of your liking. Small preview pictures are available to give you an indication of what to expect. For those viewing or browsing the forums from work, there is also a neutral style available, which uses the default XenForo colors.

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• Trackers - The EntropiaPlanets Trackers (achievements, missions and teleporters) have been recoded from scratch to the XenForo framework. All existing data has been converted over. The new trackers can be found in the navigation menu under the Trackers tab. We have taken into account the feedback received from you, and as such, you will find the new trackers to allow for quickly and easily registering multiple achievements, missions and teleporters in a single go.

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• Twitter-like @user ability. I.e. you reply to a message by admin, by using @admin. I will then automatically be alerted of this (by means of the alert system) the next time I refresh a page.
• Zodiac signs - Those of you who have read the EntropiaTimes magazine will know the Horoscope section in there written by yours truly. We got permission from @kalanen to use the images on the forum, and so we have added a zodiac calendar. If you enter your date of birth, the system will assign the proper icon to you.

There is a new Blogging functionality available in the new system as well. At this very moment, it will not yet contain old blogposts. However, all blog posts have been stored in the new system, and I will be working on getting them to be made available to their authors so they can be migrated over to the new system.

We are aware of some issues with security settings due to the import process not working 100% correctly with the forum permissions. We've secured all private areas from pyring eyes, and will be fixing permissions to these areas ASAP. You might experience not seeing some of the familiar sub forums. This will be addressed.

Obviously, switching forum software is not a small thing, so there are bound to be some things we overlooked. Should you find something out of place, please let us know so. You can report it in this thread, and we will try and address it ASAP.

Thank you for your understanding, sorry for any inconvenience, and we sincerely hope you will enjoy the new and improved EntropiaPlanets.com.

Peter and Lykke

 

Thanks :) Remember to redo your signatures btw ^^

 

Awesome, and it even transfered all the pictures too ^^