GPWA Forum Software Upgrade

[MichaelCorfman]

We are going to be upgrading the software used to run our forums from vBulletin version 3.5.3 to vBulletin version 3.6.4 between 7am and 8am EST tomorrow morning (Tuesday February 27, 2007). We expect the forums to be unavailable for a period of approximately 1/2 hour during that time period.

This upgrade is an important one that includes support for a variety of new features such as RSS feeds. Thus the upgrade taking place tomorrow morning will provide us with the framework to launch a number of new features on the GPWA website over the coming weeks.



Michael

[MichaelCorfman]

The upgrade of the forum software to vBulletin version 3.6.4 was completed successfully about ten minutes ago. One site effect I didn't realize yesterday is that you will need to login again. Evidently vBulletin does not remember logged in users across this version upgrade.

Michael

[chalkoutline]

Can we have the 'quick reply' mod added back in again please? I think it helps encourage people to post their views if it can be done as quickly and easily as possible. Thanks!

[MichaelCorfman]

Yes, we're trying to track down what is causing the problem with it, and will enable it again as soon as it is fixed. We realized there was an issue after it was too late to roll back. I'd be suprised if we don't get it fixed during the day tomorrow.

Michael

[citytech]

Yes, we're trying to track down what is causing the problem with it, and will enable it again as soon as it is fixed. We realized there was an issue after it was too late to roll back. I'd be suprised if we don't get it fixed during the day tomorrow.

Michael

We have tracked the issue down and made a correction, so Quick Reply is working once more.

[MichaelCorfman]

The new version of vBulletin has a lot of new features, and we will be turning many of them on over the coming weeks.

One change that is effective right now is that e-mail notifications of private messages now include the text of the private message.

In the future there will be changes to allow you to easily quote multiple prior responses in a single post, and also changes to let you thank someone for a post at the click of a button in addition to the availability of rss feeds that I mentioned in the initial post announcing the upgrade.

Anyone interested in a sense of some of the features offered in vBulletin version 3.6 can take a look at the following thread on the vBulletin forum: www.vbulletin.com/forum/showthread.php?t=186803.

Michael

[chalkoutline]

Excellent! The new features sound really useful. I missed being able to see the contents of private messages when away from the forums.

[Everygame]

Hi Michael,

you should really look into installing

http://www.crawlability.com/vbseo/

as well. It does a great deal in getting the content into the search engines.

[MichaelCorfman]

you should really look into installing ... vbseo

I guess great minds think alike. I'm generally in the habit of announcing things after they are complete. But, we currently have already licensed vbSEO and have it installed on a test site with the GPWA forums. We're just worrying about making sure we are happy with the configuration, and then we have to retrofit some of our other changes into the vbSEO environment before it is deployed to our production server.

Michael

[Everygame]

Hi Michael,

I'm generally in the habit of announcing things after they are complete. But, we currently have already licensed vbSEO and have it installed on a test site with the GPWA forums.

I am seeing all this nice URLs while reading the forum, very well done! I like it a lot and I am sure, Google will do so too