Massive upgrade and add-ons coming.

[Dave A]

I've queued up a number of really cute add-ons for the site, but I've also been aware that there is a major vB upgrade in the pipeline.

vB 3.6.6 is being released on Friday - so the time has come. I'll be carrying out the basic upgrade on Saturday morning, at which point there might be some disruption to service for up to an hour.

From there I'll bring the other changes on-line - who knows how long that will take but it won't affect service, just bring in new features.

[Dave A]

The upgrade stage has been completed. The board is back and ready for action.

The remaining fixes and additions should not affect normal functioning.

Please report any bugs or issues you might experience here.
I can already see one in the breadcrumb - a new image that is not in this skin.

[duncan drennan]

It looks like there is a formatting issue with the right hand side navigation column on the forum pages.

What are all the "odd-ons" that have been added?

[Dave A]

It looks like there is a formatting issue with the right hand side navigation column on the forum pages.

Thanks for spotting that.

What are all the "odd-ons" that have been added?

There is some tweaking which can be seen already. For example, there are now direct links to subforums available from the forum home page. Although I've still got to sort out that ugly little icon...
There's also the Top 5 add-on at the bottom of the forum home page.

I've been working on three fairly powerful add-ons which I'll announce as they come onstream. The one looks like it's ready to go live now - I'm just tweaking a few of the subtler settings.

It's been a fairly slow process because I also took the opportunity to tidy up and clean out some of my dropped experiments.

[RKS Computer Solutions]

? Any more news on this Dave?

[Dave A]

Yeah. The area under the hood has been quite busy, but not exactly where I wanted it to be. vB.com is awash with upset people and patches are coming out every other day. I've managed to keep things looking normal for users here, but I can see areas in the background which aren't exactly what they should be still.

Whilst a lot of the new software is loaded to server already, I'm not hooking up the bridges until the vB base code changes have stabilised. Even then, I'll probably feed them in one at a time every other week.

At this point I think we should chat about the links and downloads manager. What I've got in there so far hardly qualifies as a demo of what can be done with that area.

Are we going to have a public member's directory?
Are we going to link to gov forms and brochures or have them available as downloads?
Are we going to have a "useful free software" section? What sections should we have under that?
How about Word templates for useful business documents?
Spreadsheets for various forms of business stats analysis?
What areas do we make public and what do we keep for members only? (Members deserve bonus content don't you think)

As we identify between us as to what categories should be introduced, I'll get them loaded and members can start adding their favourite links etc. As soon as it starts looking vaguely "resourceful" and I'm happy it's ready to be crawled, I'll take it public.

[RKS Computer Solutions]

Whichever categories you do go for, might I suggest that you orchestrate with certain key members to help in keeping the fluff out... Maybe get members to be assigned to one specific category and have them keep it up to date, with you still in overall control of the entire thing...

IRobot posted an article from the guy from Hubspot re: Fremium software and business model, might want to throw and eye over that in order to help you decide what should be available to whom....

Let me know if I can help

[Dave A]

I wonder who is going to be the first to notice the new add-on...

[RKS Computer Solutions]

No idea, but the forum seems quicker...

Q? for the Reputation module, why does it not display who added to your reputation?

[Dave A]

Q? for the Reputation module, why does it not display who added to your reputation?

So that we can slag you without fear of retribution

More seriously, I think the theory is that it is more effective a system that way. I can get a report of who gave whom reputation scores in the Admin panel, but I think it's only there to help if there seems to be mischief afoot.

[RKS Computer Solutions]

so whats the new mod?

[bullfrog]

I never really browsed around the site a little more, so not sure if it was there before or not. Is it the wiki?

[Graeme]

Well there's always tech. support:

[Dave A]

And the winner is bullfrog
I reckon that deserves a pen. Bullfrog, could you PM me a postal address?

I think this wiki business is going to be a bit of a learning curve. What fascinates me is the software that drives it is about double the size of vBulletin and yet it is arguably less user friendly and linking structures pretty well need to be built from scratch

Anyway, I expect we'll learn as we go. Anyone a real wiki buff out there?
Any particular tips on managing that area we should know about?

I've already learnt how to do basic editing and to protect pages, but that just has to be the first baby steps
At least I've got registration managed by the vB software, so there I'm on familiar ground.

[duncan drennan]

Hey Dave, not sure if you've been messing with things, but I just noticed that the nav bar links (Home | News | Articles | Forums) seem to be a bit confused.