I'll be starting the board upgrade mentioned in SP Happenings shortly. During the upgrade, the boards will be closed for posting, and once I turn them back on, THINGS WILL NEED TO BE FIXED. The board styling etc. will need to be redone, so please be patient while all that is sorted out.

Thanks you for your understanding, and I'm sure you'll love all the extra new features that we'll be introducing.

And we're back! There were some bumps along the road so it's taken much longer than it should have, but what can you do...

It'll take me a while to get everything back to normal, but most of it should already look familiar. With this board upgrade, we've got a ton of new features. Not all of them are active yet, but I'll be looking into them gradually and enabling what isn't yet soon. Here's just a small list of new (mostly) user-end additions:

* Thread tagging
* Search cloud / tag cloud
* Thread prefixes
* Reciprocal friendships between users
* Public visitor messaging on profile pages with 'conversation' feature
* User picture galleries with user comment facility
* User-created social groups with invite only and moderated membership options
* Extended member profile pages
* Customizable member profile pages with admin-controlled styling abilities
* Inline editing of custom user profile fields
* Lightbox viewer for attached images
* Notices system for navigation bar
* Multiple human-verification systems including reCAPTCHA, image verification and Q/A
* User change history
* Social bookmarking integration

The quickest way to delve into most of this new stuff is to go look at your profile. There is now a link to your profile on your username in the top right corner, where it says "Welcome, USERNAME." Clicking on the USERNAME will bring you to your profile. From there you can add friends, picture albums, see who's visited your profile, edit your details, etc. For Myspace and Facebook users, this should be familiar territory. :D

The board FAQ (http://www.sorcerers.net/forums/faq.php) has been completely rewritten, so you can find answers to most of your questions and explanations of the new features there. I'll also be providing more information here later on.

For additional new settings and options, check your User CP (http://www.sorcerers.net/forums/usercp.php)!

Have fun checking out the new features. ;)

Holy mother of upgrades! This is too much to take in....system...error....ERROR.......... :skeptic: :rolling:

I didn't see any mention of the psychic upgrade. :p

I didn't see any mention of the psychic upgrade. :p

I guess no one made the necessary brain donation. Since you're still nagging about it, I suggest you do the honors...but we all know there's nothing in that massive cavern between your ears except dusty old cobwebs. :evil: :rolling:

Yay, I can appear to have friends! It's almost too much to take in! :D

Excellent features! I've already uploaded several photos of my baby to a photo album. I, of course, would encourage everyone to have a look. He's only the cutest baby ever! (IMHO opinion, of course. And yes, I realize the inherent bias in my statement.)

While these features are nice, what I really need is a board upgrade that understands the binary language of moisture vaporators. :tie:

And I'm supposed to have friends now?

I've made a separate thread for profile promotions (http://www.sorcerers.net/forums/showthread.php?p=637834#post637834), so I encourage everyone to promote their profiles there.

When I have a chance, I'm going to have to create "The SP Conservative" group. Although, it may be a small group. :D

Depends on your area of conservatism, Snook. I consider myself fiscally conservative, but that's about it.

Interesting features, although the usefulness of some is a bit questionable. The profile picture album system feels quite clumsy. Something similiar to how Coppermine works would be great.

You can't have everything in the first version, it's going to get better with time.

Hang on, does this mean that SP is turning into . . . Facebook?

Will we be able to send Vampire bites to each other soon as well?

That'd be pretty much in keeping with the theme... :evil:

When I have a chance, I'm going to have to create "The SP Conservative" group. Although, it may be a small group. :D

I'm in. Is that a South Park user-name?

Hmmmmmmmmmmm.... all those new functions add a lot of weight in the conspiracy theory of SP hiding a dating site....

Thinking about starting a new social group? Please read this (http://www.sorcerers.net/forums/showthread.php?t=46294).

Thinking about starting a new social group? Please read this (http://www.sorcerers.net/forums/showthread.php?t=46294).

Ooh, very cliquey.

I notice that in the firends list, instead of showing pictures of the avatar, as I expected, all I get are qustion marks in the boxes. Is this how it is supposed to work, (I can't imagine it was planned that way), or is this something that a later upgrade will address, or am I just doing something wrong?

The questionmark image is something that I'll be fixing shortly... it's to do with how we've done avatars/portraits to date. It's worked fine for display only in basic profiles and in posts, but I'll need to redo it differently to make it look proper for all the extended profiles now.

Taluntain: I just noticed that I have two identical photo albums on the profile page. I only made one. I visited profiles of Kitrax and DotW, same thing, doubled albums.
Is this a temporary glitch that will be fixed, or do I just delete one of the albums and it's business as usual? :)
Thank you.

Sorry about that, looks like we've hit a bug there. I'm looking into it. Please leave everything as it is for the time being.

Question about "Friends" (the Board version, not the TV show). What are the implications of being a designated friend? Can I have different communications with them? Am I able drive their car? Access their bank account? Force them to buy me dinner?

Or is it just a way to let someone know that you think you have a kind of relationship with them that you don't neccessarily have with everyone else?

The reason I ask is that I've had a few requests already, but I don't actually like any of them. However, I accepted their requests so as to lull them into a false sense of security, and I now want to know ASAP how I can exploit those friendships. :p

Check this FAQ entry (http://www.sorcerers.net/forums/faq.php?faq=vb3_user_profile#faq_vb3_friends_conta cts) for more info.

Basically, friends are just an extension of contacts. Whereas contacts are just one-way, friends are reciprocal. Certain permissions can be enabled or disabled on a contact or higher status only. For example, in your profile options, you may limit the usage of visitor messages on your profile to just moderators and your contacts. The same goes for viewing of any given picture album you have.

Taluntain: I just noticed that I have two identical photo albums on the profile page. I only made one. I visited profiles of Kitrax and DotW, same thing, doubled albums.
Is this a temporary glitch that will be fixed, or do I just delete one of the albums and it's business as usual? :)
Thank you.

I my photo album isn't displaying any pictures - although it does appear that I only have one, and not two.

Fixed, sorry for the inconvenience.

All of the avatars/portraits should now be showing properly for everyone in their profiles. If anyone notices anything not working properly, please let me know.

And to partly correct an obvious deficiency as far as album promotion goes, check the bottom of http://www.sorcerers.net/forums/index.php ;)

I haven't decided yet if I should make it show random or latest pics, but it's showing random ones for now.

Tal, that's too much mixing real life and SP for me... :confused:

I liked it better when the pics were in profiles. That way you could only see how someone looked like if you wanted too. This is ruining the illusion, sort of.

But I've been awake for way too long. Don't mind me.

In a way Loreseeker is right- sometimes finding out what a forum member looks like can be disappointing as they don't match up to how you imagined them. Still, we can just remember not to scroll too far down if not in the mood.

And this way there is the amusement of two of Aldeth's pictures appearing, yet both are of his son rather than him (Note: not that there is anything wrong with Jack, Aldeth, it merely suggests that he is the one doing all the posting!).

Actually, there's a very easy way around that. Simply make any album that you don't want to share with the general public into a private one. On your album listing, click on "Edit Album" and make the album type "Private - Only visible to contacts and moderators". That way no one except people on your contact and/or friend list will be able to see them.

All it takes is slightly more thought put into how you organize your albums... for example, you can make several albums public where you put in the kind of pics you don't mind everyone seeing, and one private that you only want to allow your friends and contacts to see.

The option to safeguard your privacy is there - I wouldn't enable the picture display otherwise. And if anyone has any other concerns, please let me know - I don't want anyone to be unhappy or to think that they have no choice when it comes to new features such as this one.

Oh, and if you don't want to look at the pic display for any reason... click on the arrows icon in the top right corner of the display. This will collapse the display and even remember your setting, so until you click it again, it will remain collapsed.

I think it's a good idea - It gives me a good reason to scroll all the way down to the bottom of the page now (which I never used to).

I've had a good night sleep, logged on, and... the picture slide is actually fun.
As a result, my complaint hits the basket bin.

Have fun, everyone. :p

Well, first I noticed of all this was someone making a friend request to me - I've been playing Oblivion too much to stop and talk about it. :heh:

It looks interesting; I've got no interest in 'social-networking' sites like MySpace or FaceBook, but I know they can be quite useful and desirable.

After skimming over the changes to the CP and profile, I'm heartily impressed...although the level of detail to which that one can configure things makes me think of it a 'work'. ;)

Nice work, Tal! :thumb:
(Oh, and disregard my 'friend invitation' - I wasn't paying attention to what I was doing :hahaerr: )