forum updates and changes

[Bruceper]

An issue with the forum necessitated an upgrade, so here is the list of items that have changed recently on the forum

The issue was that moderated posts were not able to be moderated.

Upgraded to latest version of vbulletin. We were running 3.6.8 previously and there have been a number of changes with vbulletin since then. It might take me a few days to get this all sorted out.

Installed vBulletin Project Tools. I will get that configured over the next few days I hope.

Upgraded and repaired VBSEO. The installation was broken from when Dody did the last forum upgrade.

Some plugins require updating due to the new vBulletin features. I think I updated them all but if you notice any issues please let me know.

I think that's everything, my apologies for the downtime during the day but it's necessary when doing the upgrades.

[Bruceper]

So here's a quick list of the new features on the forum

1) Social Groups. You can start or join social groups and pass messages to members of those groups

2) Visitor Messages - Users can leave you a message on your profile

3) Biography - Your profile has an expanded biography section where people can learn about you

4) Friends List - You can add friends from the forum and they will be shown on your profile

5) Albums - You can create a photo album and upload images

6) Project Tools - The project tools are essentially a reporting system to manage bugs, issues and feature requests. This will become an important part of Nicecoder as users can publicly track bugs in one place for all of our products.

One other quick note about forum changes was the removal of all calendars and the removal of the link to the calendar area. The calendar was filled with spam since it was never moderated. There is no real point to having an events calendar anyways so the decision was made to remove it completely.