PTF open again; better than ever!

[AJ]

Hey everyone!

PTF is open once again after about 19 hours of work. As you can very obviously see, we have an entire new design. What you might not see right away is all of our new features. There are a couple of major changes and many, many minor changes for the better!

In addition to the old ones we have added over 140 new smilies for you. We don't have them all on the main message page where you type; to open a new window with all of the smilies, click the "more" link underneath them.

Every member got a brand new profile! To see and edit your new profile, click the "Quick Links" drop-down at the top of the page and select "your profile".

New "thank you" option. Next to every post but your own, you will see a "thank" button. If you like what the person said, please click this button and it will add to their "thank" count, viewable to all in their profile.

Below are more new features. Screenshots are not from PTF and are not our design, but will give you the main idea.

Thread Tagging

A new way to facilitate searching and grouping of threads, it is now possible for users to add tags to threads they post or read.



Tags can be added when creating a new thread, or to an existing thread by any user (with appropriate permissions).



Any users who then click on these tags will not only find all thread that have the same tag as the one clicked, but will also contribute to the building of a search tag cloud, which gives users a quick guide as to what has been searched for recently and most frequently.



Reciprocal Friendships Between Users

As part of our new social networking system, users can now request that people on their buddy list confirm their friendship, after which time a person's list of confirmed friends will be viewable to other users.



Public Messaging

While private messages between users have been in vBulletin since version 2.0, vBulletin 3.7 introduces the public messaging system, allowing users to communicate publicly via their profile pages.



User Picture Galleries

vBulletin users can now create albums and upload pictures to their account.



The ability to view these albums and pictures can be limited by the user to just board staff and people on their buddy list if they want privacy.



User-Created Social Groups

To further social cohesion between users and to encourage people to make friends, vBulletin now includes a facility to allow users to create their own social/interest groups.



These groups are enhanced by having their own public messaging system, and the ability to add pictures to the group from user albums.



New Member Profile Page

In order to accommodate all the new features in vBulletin 3.7, the member profile page has been completely redesigned from the ground up.

The new page presents information in a far cleaner and more logical manner, while dividing up information into manageable chunks using a tabbed interface.

Individual profile field categories can be displayed alone in blocks in the right column, in addition to appearing by default in the 'About Me' tab.



Member Customization of Profile Page

The administrator may choose to allow his members to use the profile page customization tool, which allows users to alter fonts, colors, background and borders etc. of their profile page in order to create a more personalized look.



The administrator can lock-down customization permissions, in order to prevent the personalized pages being made too offensively awful by aesthetically challenged members... nobody wants to see some of those really ugly MySpace pages on your vBulletin installation!





Inline Editing of Profile Field Values

The 'About Me' tab of each member's profile page has edit controls, allowing them to quickly change values without leaving their profile page.



Attachment Viewing Lightbox

Clicking on an attached image will now open a lightbox rather than open a new window, with the image scaled to fit the browser viewport. A click on the image in the lightbox will open it in a new window as before.




And many more!

Please note that we are still working on this. The forum is open now because we feel that it is good enough for you guys to now use. There ARE still some bugs. Please use these new features heavily and report any bugs so we can get them fixed! This is very important.

Also, we are not done adding certain features. One that comes to mind is the one that tells you how many posts there have been since your last login. This will be here soon, but not yet, along with others.

Anymore updates/fixes that we make to this concerning the members of PTF will be posted here after they happen.

Enjoy!

The staff of PTF.

[Brandon]

awesome aj, looking good i must say.

[AJ]

Thank you.

[TrevorL337]

mmm very good

[ComputerDude]

I like it ALOT. This site should attract many new members. great job AJ. (What I said about not liking the new smilies, well i lied I love em. there are so many.)(but in the quick reply box there are two smile boxs and only one works. The one on the far right does nothing.)

[AJ]

Originally Posted by ComputerDude

I like it ALOT. This site should attract many new members. great job AJ. (What I said about not liking the new smilies, well i lied I love em. there are so many.)(but in the quick reply box there are two smile boxs and only one works. The one on the far right does nothing.)

Lol. Glad you like them.

Thanks for letting me know about the quick reply thing with the 2 smilies boxes. Should be fixed now.

[ComputerDude]

Yeah, it is.

[AJ]

Updated editor buttons to look a little nicer:

[ComputerDude]

I like it, it's simpler, and most of all cleaner.

[AJ]

Originally Posted by ComputerDude

I like it, it's simpler, and most of all cleaner.

Thank you! I like it a lot more, too.