The New Forum Layout
by BioWizard on May 4th, 2009, 4:09 pm
As you may know, the forums underwent a comprehensive upgrading and redesigning of epic proportions. With improving your experience as a user in mind, a very large number of new features has been added to the forums, which include but may not be limited to:
User control panel
Customizable profiles
Consolidated news page
Email-like private messaging system
User customizable blog
User definable access to posts or other users
Post drafting system
File attachment
Topic bookmarks
Please note:
1- Like any major upgrade, there is bound to be some kinks that we'll iron out over the next few days. Hopefully, everything will work smoothely and no problems are encountered, but if you do encounter a problem, please let us know.
2- In the next few days, take care what you click and don't assume that everything is still exactly where it used to be. If you're submitting a new post, make sure you're hitting the submit and not the save button, and so on. It will take a few days to get completely used to the new layout. Be patient, breathe, and give yourself at least a day or two to adjust, because once you do, you will realize how much improvement the new layout brings to your forum experience.
3- Review your profile, make sure all your information was transferred correctly. You will need to re-enter the information in your education field.
4- The forums have been reorganized to reflect 5 major sections.
Announcements: This is where all announcements and policy related posts are made.
Discussion forums: This is where all the science and philosophy discussion forums reside
Live Chat: This contains the forums for discussions related to either one of our two chatrooms
Community: This contains common interest style forums
Technical Help: As the name indicates
The feedback of every section now is contained with that section. For example, the SCF feedback forum is now located in the SCF subsection, along with all the other SCF forums (biology, chemistry, etc...)
5- Some of your topic subscriptions may have changed. Make sure to resubscribe to your favorite topics. You may also bookmark topics now.
6- The old links in all the imported posts from the old forums will open in the same window. This was enforced by the phpbb3 release for some XML validation reasons. I have however installed a modification that allows links to open a new window, thus preventing you from being navigated away friom the forums, but this will only apply to newly made posts. It cannot be applied retroactively to old posts, until further notice.
Enjoy!