Proboards v5 - What's New?
Jan 27, 2013 15:16:02 GMT -8
Post by zoi on Jan 27, 2013 15:16:02 GMT -8
[About]
Let me say this now; this is not something I am implementing on my own. This is the new system of forums that Proboards is putting into effect. I've read that the automatic transition of all forums is supposed to take place April 29th. So before that happens, I have converted the forum to a beta test zone that Proboards is hosting so people can test the new features and get used to it before the mandatory shift. What this means is, this is a whether you like it or not situation as far as the upgrade. I personally love a lot of the new features though many of the old codes do not work on the new system so I'm having to work that stuff out all over again meaning AK will probably have a new layout, though it might end up similar to the current one as I do have the plugin for side tables already.[Shoutbox]
If you want to check out the beta features yourself (and I suggest doing it so you can get use to navigating), you can find our test forum here. All you have to do is transition your current account over via their login process, so make sure you use your same account name/email. What you do on the test board WILL NOT be reflected on the main board, so do not do your character posts and the like there.
Now I know most of you tend to skim when it comes to longer posts, and this will be a long one, so I am giving you a list of headers so you can ctrl+f them to read things more relevant to your interests. I do suggest trying to read everything however, especially if you know you're going to have questions to ask. There is a lot of new content and changes with the v5 that I've found so far. Not all of it will be text as I will have some screenshots of new functions as well as comparison shots of v4.5 and v5 functions of the same items.
If you see something new that I haven't added here, go ahead and add it, because I've covered a lot of information here and my eyes are starting to cross. Also, I'll be doing a separate post about the new stuff found in the admin section once I get through that more thoroughly. I can tell you it does include the ability to set skins for certain members so only they can use it, so custom skins you design yourself will probably become one of our occasional rewards.
Topics:Shoutbox
Boards and Sub-boards
Mini-Profiles
Account Settings
Navigation
Personal Messages
The first feature I do want to address is the Proboards supported shoutbox since real time chat is a big part of AK. This shoutbox is integrated with the main site, meaning your display name and avatar are the same as your forum name and avatar. This also means that you must be signed into the site to chat in the box. It also has a 256 character limit per post similar to places like SL. This can be rather short, but most posts in the box rarely go over that length anyways. so it shouldn't be a big issue. While the name issue may upset people, from a staff POV, it means that passing trolls (and people who don't like AK for various reasons), cannot access the chatbox unless they have an account on the forum. If they do anything against the rules, it will be far easier to take action against them. It also eliminates the issue of not knowing who people are from switching names which makes things easier for newer members. There is an option to make the box guest user friendly, but in light of the security benefits of not doing that, I think I will be leaving it as is.[Boards and Sub-boards]
I will say that one issue I have with it is the filter. Much like names and avatars are integrated with the main forum, so too is the filter. Meaning words that I filter for the box would also be filtered in posts. The reason the cbox has an extensive filter on it is because some words are used excessively while others are used only in derogatory means. However, I have never filtered these words on the main site because I understand that they are in character terms and given the box to forum post ratio, they aren't used in a constant manner. With an integrated filter however, I don't want to use a full on filter because I feel this would take away from certain characters' posts. While many offensive terms will still be filtered as they shouldn't be used in posts either due to our graphic content rule, I will be leaving off certain curse words. However, if they become too constant in the box, I will have to add them back in. The responsibility to refrain from using the words overmuch falls to the members of the site, so please attempt to control the language.
Note to Lurkers: Logs are no longer available with this chat box.
Note to Others: So if you have an issue, make sure you screenshot.
With the new v5 system, you can now have essentially endless sub-boards (it's also much easier to make boards and sub-boards now from a staff POV); meaning you can have a sub-board of a sub-board under a main board and so on. In most cases this wont be necessary, but I do see areas where this would be useful and have taken the liberty of putting an example on the beta board.[Mini-Profiles]This is a small example of what our current game board looks like with all the polls, games, and even a mini-RP in it (the rest are drifting about in spam). Now different people are looking for different things when it comes to OOC forum participation. Some like to get down and dirty with games, others like the point and click precision of voting in polls, and some are real RP-over achievers and want to create more interactive stories. With our current board, it can be tedious to find what you're looking for.In this case, three sub-boards put into the Game Room sub-board of the General Board has created a sense of order. Polls are all in one little section, words games in another, and mini-RPs finally have a place of their own.
Polls, polls everywhere!
I'm sure some of you are saying, "Meh, you could have just added three sub-boards to the General Board instead of making a separate Game Room sub-board to house the sub-sub-boards." Yes, yes I could have, but then the General board would have more sub-boards on its main page. By using sub-sub-boards, the over all appearance is cleaner and the overall feel and effect is more organized. Believe it or not, appearance and organization can be a big part of a board's success. Compare even our current layout with significantly less boards on our main page to back when we first started with all the categories, and you'll probably cringe at the past form. Though this is a small feature in terms of who cares and overall effect, it's one of my favorites.
If you have any suggestions as to where you think more sub-boards would work well, feel free to let me know! I haven't really looked into more areas to implement it (except blogs) because I still don't want to overload the board with multiple sub-boards, but there's still probably a place or two where they could help out or make things more interesting.
The changes made to the mini-profile aren't just going to add a new dimension to the social aspect and personalization of your own account; they also a couple of nifty features to make navigation and posting easier which should making RPing a bit smoother. While these new features are best experienced for yourself, I will do my best to explain and give examples. First, let me start by showing you the current layout for a mini-profile compared to the new one.[Account Settings]Ignore the birthday; it's Sounga's not mine.
One of the most obvious things about the differences are the tabs and we'll cover those shortly, but first let's discuss the differences on the main page by itself. Of course, the follower section pops out with the avatars to the right. Yes, you now have the ability to 'follow' other people. If two people are following each other, that makes them friends in the system and they will show up in the friend tab. Now with a forum our size, it's not necessarily a big addition, but imagine if we did have a large member base. It would be a lot easier to keep track of people's posts that are relevant to you either OOCly or ICly. I'm not sure yet if there's any other spiffy reason for the following/friends feature, but if I find one I'll be sure to add it. If you discover something first, don't be afraid to share!
The update status feature is more or less a twist on an existing feature. On the current model, you'd have to go to edit your profile then find the section where it allows you to change the text. In the new version, you simply type it into the field on your main mini-profile and hit Update, much like you would do on a social networking site. Right below your current status is what your custom title is. For most people it's their character's rank or job except in the case of those who have won a contest allowing them to change it. On the current mini-profile, this is actually displayed beneath the name and group.
Birthdays, date registered, and post count are pretty much the same as they were. The last online section has been moved above followers and social media has been moved to its own section below the standard information; beneath that we can find something similar, but updated to what we have in the current mini-profiles - the user's last posts. In the current mini-profile, you have links to the user's last five posts and the options to search a custom number of their last posts. In the new mini-profile, you get a link to a page displaying not on their most recent posts, but also their most recent threads. The recent thread option, even on the main board, is much cleaner and more useful than the most recent post option, so I am really glad to see this implemented for individual accounts. These options also appear to have no numerical limit. They are displayed per page, so if you go through enough pages, you can see every single post and thread the member has been a part of, if you have access to the area in question for the respective post or thread. A very useful feature from an admin POV.
Now on to the new tabs!
Activity Tab - It basically shows some/all of the user's recent activity from posting, status updates, following a user, and joining groups (such as shinigami/hollow), and most likely when a user changes their account name. It however does not show if a user has voted in a poll (though I can see that info via admin powers in the poll itself). There may be other information it gives out, but none of it too important overall. From an admin POV, this is once again a nifty feature that will help me keep track of activity better.
Following Tab - This tab contains a list of the activities by the people are are following. It also has a link to a list of the names of the people you are following.
Friends Tab - This tab lists the people who you are considered friends with in the forum system. This means that you are following them and they are following you. It appears to show online friends in a larger format than offline friends. It also contains an "Other Members You Might Know" feature. Right now it's not of too much use as I said, but if we get to have a larger community it would definitely come in handy.
Group Tab - This simply shows what groups the member is a part of. Yes. Plural. Members can now be added into multiple groups. What this means as of right now is that staff can be in their respective staff group and also their character's faction group. What it means for the future if we get a larger member base and say their is a rift in a faction, you can have the main race faction, then the sect faction set on your character. Nothing big, but a neat addition in my opinion. I know on my account at the very least, I can pick which member group is displayed on my main mini-profile page by going to edit my profile. I'm not sure if regular members have the same option, but I'm fairly certain they do, but it isn't an issue at this point anyways. There is also an ability to set group leader's now. Useful for the Gotei now and perhaps other factions in the future.
Notifications Tab - This does just what it says; you get notifications when certain things occur. You can change these settings via editing your personal profile. You can also set it to send you an email if you so desire. This is good for those who don't necessarily have access to a computer, but check their emails on their phone. Notifications you can receive include; when someone likes your content, when someone quotes you, when someone tags you, when someone follows you, when someone becomes your friend, when a new registration is pending approval (admin/staff), when a new member joins the forum (admin/staff), when a user requests to join a group you lead (group leader), when a user joins a group you lead (group leader), when you unlock an achievement, when you receive a Badge as a gift, when a bookmark is updated, when you receive a Personal Message, and when there are reported posts (admin/staff).
Gift Tab - This is a tab that allows you to use real money to buy online badges for members. I ask that no one use the badge feature because I plan on using it for rewards for things like CotM/MotM/WotM and certain contests.
There are a few really cool features you can access by going to edit your profile. Some of them don't have anything to do with your profile, so I've separated this section off.[Navigation]
First of all, v5 has its own avatar maker! While most people have pictures they like to use for their icons, some of us love playing around with customization in various things and the avatar maker allows you to use a variety of features to create your own head-shot of yourself or a character. You can also use your uploaded avatar as the background for the character you create with the avatar maker!
The image above also shows the different tabs you see when you go to edit your profile, so let's go over those as it's the easiest way to make sure each of the new features for your individual account is addressed.
Personal Tab - This is pretty much what everyone is used to as far as personal mini-profile info. You can change your display name, location, status, and personal website via this tab.
Social Tab - This allows you to add your personal social sites to your main mini-profile if you so choose. It's completely optional. The sites you can link to in this tab are; Facebook, Google Plus, LinkedIn, Twitter, and Youtube. The messengers you can link to are; AIM, ICQ, YIM, MSN, and Skype.
Settings Tab - This has a couple of settings we're used to seeing, being choosing your skin and time display format, however, it is full of some very useful ones as well! The first option let's you enable or disable the 'Participated' link that I will discuss in another section. It then goes on to offer you the option of enabling/disabling signatures and/or smilies. This is also where you find the group display option if you're in more than one group. These are all nice enough, but it's the final three that are really useful.
I know pretty much every person on AK has experienced the tragedy of losing the post they were working on in the middle of or at the end of it. Proboards v5 now has a feature you can enable that will auto-save your drafts periodically! In addition to that, people who use a lot of standard coding in their posts (blockquote, font style, font color), now have an area to preset this information so that it automatically appears in your post area. There is also a new feature as far as previews go that allows you to real time view what your post looks like, so the third feature allows you to set your preferred view; either real time or code view. You can manually switch back and forth via your post screen when posting though.
Privacy Tab - These are the basic features such as hiding your gender, age, and online status. However, you can also choose to hide your activity from various groups (staff excluded), hide your profile from guest viewers, and even block certain users from interacting with you. Before blocking members, I am going to have a rule that you must request permission before doing so, so that it is not done for childish reasons or for a situation that can be resolved.
Notification Tab - As I said earlier, it allows you to change what you get notifications for.
Staff Options Tab - This allows staff with access to do certain things such as change custom titles and the like. It also now has a feature that allows staff to disable a member's access to PMing people. This is useful in cases of harassment which can now be dealt with more effectively.
Badge Tab - It allows you to create a wishlist of badges and manage the ones you have.
There are three nifty features as far as navigation goes that I want to point out. I don't know how many of you used the forum jump box on the current system, but that has been replaced by a type of navigation tree that stems when you hover your mouse over the portal links.[Personal Messages]
The second is the nifty little 'Participated' button that you can see near the top right of the above image, right below the logout prompt. It shows up on every single page and opens a popup box that shows your the threads you have participated in and which threads (at the time of refreshing as far as I know) have new posts in them. So no more of that "I forgot I was in that thread" or "I didn't realize you posted in it" excuses. :B
The last is the new functions of the member category that is displayed below the banner header. Not only do you get a list of members, but it now has a sort function.
We now have three new options that I have noticed with PMs.
First of all, you can have a multiple person conversation via PMs now. This is good for stuff like werewolf roles and the like. Secondly, you can now archive messages. Finally, you can also add labels to PMs you have received. For someone like me who gets a lot of PMs over different job related subjects, this is a very useful feature because I can mark them with their respective categories such as otM, complaints, requests, and the like. You can also allot each label a different color so that they are also color code and pop out to catch your eye if you have a full inbox or you can just choose the view by option specifically for the label you created.
