New Board Layout

[T7RY B]

Just a thankyou and well done to all of you who have spent your weekend working on the LOC website to make the improvements that keep this forum running great.

Give yourselves a pat on the back lads.

Many Thanks for all your hard work.

Terry

[aztecbandit1]

yes lads do like it very much great job B) just a quick 1 has the shop gone now as havn't seen the link??

[Steve]

hi

thanks guys

I am still working on the other things such as links etc.

hope you enjoy the new features

[Monster-Mat]

brilliant, nice and fresh

[MacRS200]

Oops just read this one

[Rogue]

Some good mods to the site, thanks

[tdiplc]

Can we have a bullet point list of what has changed please?

Thanks

[Steve]

Note this is admin features as well as user features.

New Features in Invision Power Board 2.2

Invision Power Board 2.2 contains a huge selection of new features ranging from low-end code improvements to new features designed to enhance your community involvement. New features include:

Personal Profile Portal

Invision Power Board 2.2.0 has a totally redesigned portal page with the following features:

* Friends list - manage your friends for easier PMing, to see if your friends are currently online and display your friends on your profile

* Profile comments - allow visitors to leave comments on your profile. You can set to moderate all new comments before they're shown.

* Recent visitors - recent visitors are shown on your profile.

* Your content - show your recent posts / blog entries / gallery uploads on your profile

* Personal statement - add a short bio for others to read

* Member rating - rate other members

* Set your gender

* Easy access to edit your location, age and IM details

Note that you can optionally switch back to the old "classic" profile view in the ACP.

New Text Editor

New Style

The text editors, both standard and rich text (WYSIWYG) have been completely rewritten to make them more intuitive and faster to load. Clutter has been reduced with the new dynamic menus.

Switch

You can now switch between the rich text editor and the standard editor without the need to reload the page or visit your User Control Panel.

New Attachment System

Upload without the reload

IPB 2.2 has a new attachment system that enables one to upload attachments without having to reload the post screen. The new attachment area is directly below the text editor.

New Style

The attachment system has had a complete overhaul and is now styled along side the new text editor

Monthly Directories

IPB now saves uploads in a monthly folder, making FTP directory listings much easier.

Extensible

The new system is extensible via the attachments plug-in system. There is now one central attachments repository and plug in modules define space allowance and rendering options.

New Thumbnail Design

Attached image thumbnail previews now have information above and below the thumbnail offering original file size and original dimensions.

Inline message system

Invision Power Board has an on-the-fly message system to confirm actions taken place. This is an important new part to the user interface especially when using ajax when it's not always apparent that an action has taken place.

Help & Support Tab

In IPB 2.2 you will notice a new Help & Support tab. This tab adds some convenient methods for obtaining assistance, or troubleshooting Invision Power Board. We'll take a look at the links found on this tab below.

Submit Support Ticket - This section will open a window to your client area (Note: you must be logged in to access your client area - you may login when prompted after clicking on this link) so that you can view, update, and respond to your support tickets, as well as add a new request for support, or a request for an upgrade.

IPB Knowledgebase - This section will open a window allowing you access to our hosted knowledgebase containing many helpful articles on Invision Power Board and it's various settings and features. This section is updated constantly as more information becomes available, so be sure to check back often for new answers to common questions.

IPS Beyond - Resource Center - This section opens a window to our official resource site IPS Beyond, where you can download additional skins and modifications for Invision Power Board, as well as obtain customer-to-customer assistance for any issues you may experience.

Contact IPS - This section provides our contact information and hours of operation.

Feature Suggestions - If you have a suggestion for a new feature, or a way to enhance an existing feature, feel free to submit a new topic in our Feature Suggestions forum. This section provides you quick access to do so. Note that you must be logged into our company forums to submit a new feature suggestion topic.

Bug Report - If you think you have found a bug with Invision Power Board please feel free to report it in this section to our bug tracker so that one of our developers can verify and correct the issue in a future release. Note that you must be logged into our company forums to submit a bug report.

System Overview - This section gives you a quick overview of your IPB installation and your server details, in the event you need to obtain this information or our technical support staff requests it from you.

The System Overview can show you the PHP Version (and server API), the MySQL version, the server software, the current server load, the total physical memory installed, the total available memory installed, and the current processes running (using shell exec - if this function is disabled, the information available will be limited). The information should be available on most *Nix installations, and Windows 2K and up.

Version Checker - You can verify all of your IPB files are up to date by clicking on this link - any files that are out of date will be displayed in red so you are made aware of the version mismatch. You can then upload those files fresh from your IPB download package if you wish.

Database Checker - This tool will verify your database schema matches IPB's defined database schema. If you get a MySQL error indicating a table or column is missing, this tool will help you determine what table or column is missing, as well as provide you a means to correct the issue.

Database Index Checker - Database indexes help your database engine in determining how to find the data IPB requests of it. This tool will verify none are missing to ensure the most optimized processing of your data.

File Permissions Checker - Certain files need to be set to have Read/Write access so that IPB can rebuild them when necessary. This tool will verify all of your files that need to have Read/Write access are writeable.

Whitespace Checker - Whitespace are spaces or newlines at the beginning or end of your php pages before the <?php or after the ?> tags in your files. Whitespace causes various odd effects, and if any is found you should open the files and remove it. This tool will check your files for you and alert you to any files that have whitespace.

Unauthorized File Checker - Checks for suspicious .php files in writeable directories

RSS Feed Validator

IPB 2.2 introduces an RSS Feed Validator, which you can find in the RSS Import section of the ACP. You can validate the feed in one of a few different ways.

The first method is to just enter a url to a valid RSS feed. IPB will advise you if it was able to connect (and the HTTP Status Code), if it found any channels, and if it found any items in the channel. IPB will also advise you what character set it detected in the RSS feed to assist you in determining which character set to specify when you add the RSS feed.

Another way to validate existing feeds is to click the menu next to any given feed and click "Validate Feed". IPB will validate the same information as before, however it will also check the member name you specified against your database to ensure it is (still) valid, and it will check the forum you specified to verify it is valid and allows posts (i.e. it is not a category).

When submitting a new or edited feed, you can also click the "Validate" button you will find at the bottom of the form to validate the RSS feed before saving it to your database.

Ability to Format Group Prefix and Suffix

IPB 2.2 introduces a new method via ipsclass to format a username based on their group prefix and suffix. The best part about this is that you can do this directly from the skin without any file edits (if the member name and the member group is available in the template you are editing, or if you are applying the formatting to the currently logged in member).

To apply the formatting to the currently logged in member, you can use the following in your template

CODE

{$this->ipsclass->make_name_formatted( $this->ipsclass->member['members_display_name'], $this->ipsclass->member['mgroup'] )}

If you need to apply the formatting to a member record in another template (where the group and username are available):

CODE

{$this->ipsclass->make_name_formatted( $members_display_name, $mgroup )}

Ability to use Full Editor in ACP

Certain areas of the ACP now allow you to use the Standard or Rich-Text Editor, rather than just a plain old textarea in most of the ACP areas

Guest Posting "CAPTHCA"

Under Tools & Settings, Security & Privacy you can now specify whether you would like to require guests to input a random image code when they post to prevent "spam" and automated postings in forums where guest posting is allowed.

Ability to control username characters

Under Tools & Settings, Security & Privacy, you can now specify which characters are allowable in a username. If you leave this setting blank, IPB will use it's own internal formulas.

Hint: For only alphanumeric character usernames, set this to "a-zA-Z0-9"

Additionally, there is a setting to control the error message that will be displayed if the user uses invalid characters.

Ability to set "Unblockable" PM groups

You can now control which groups cannot be "blocked" in the personal messenger system. The setting can be found under Tools & Settings, Personal Messenger Setup.

Ability to set groups who can override "Inbox Full" error

You can now control which groups can still send a message to a member even when their inbox is "full". This setting can be found under Tools & Settings, Personal Messenger Setup.

Control group download permissions

Just like the per-forum, per-permission masks settings for uploading files, you can now control which permission masks can download attachments on a per-forum basis. This can enable you to show guests that an attachment exists in a topic, while not allowing them to download the attachment.

Separate Forum and Category Management

In the ACP, it has been reported by some new users that the forum and category management was a tad confusing for first time users. As a result, we've split off forum and category management, and streamlined the overall process of adding a new category. Likewise, we've added a notice that will appear on categories that do NOT have any forums assigned to them. Additionally, you need only apply "Show" permissions on categories, so we've made the permission management for categories much easier and quicker to manage.

Applying image sets and skins during import

Previously when you imported a skin or an image set, you had to do each one individually, and afterwards you would need to edit the skin's settings to tell it which image set to use.

With IPB 2.2, when you import a skin your existing image sets are listed and you can select which one (or none) to apply to the new skin. Likewise, when you import an image set, you can select which skins(s) you would like to apply the image set to.

Disable anonymous login

You can now completely disable anonymous login in your ACP. Just set the option under Tools & Settings, Security & Privacy and users will not be able to login anonymously.

Internal Improvements

A lot of internal improvements have been implemented to help performance. Profiling has been done on many errors of the board as well to outline bottlenecks and focus efforts on the areas that need it most. Some highlights:

1. A caching class system has been installed. eaccelerator, disk caching, turck mmcache, and memcache are directly supported. Other caching engines can be used, however many do not have API's allowing IPB to take further advantage of them over their default behavior.

2. The main calendar display has been reduced from 12 queries to 6 queries (general)

3. Most of the E_NOTICE errors have been eliminated, causing many less (hidden) calls to the IPB error handler function

4. IPB has been tested for XHTML validity and the default skin with default content passes the XHTML validator at W3C.org.

5. The messenger section now does not load the UserCP skin, language, and library file (reducing memory usage and processing time). This should eliminate problems users with memory limits occasionally hit with the messenger function.

6. Unused SQL columns removed

7. Duplicate group calendar permission settings removed

8. MySQLi driver support (automatically detected and selected) as well as MySQL5 support

9. The ACP now operates completely independent of the board skin - this means if your board skin has a failure, you can still access the ACP to revert to a working skin, or to recache the board skin

10. Member signatures only parsed once per page load in a topic now

Updated CAPTCHA

Due to the increasing rise of spam bots flooding forums that allow guest posting, and the increasing capabilities of scripts to bypass CAPTCHA protection by parsing the image for the registration code, our CAPTHA output has been updated to make it harder for scripts to read the CAPTCHA code IPB generates (when using GD2).

Per-Forum Capability to remember sort options

There is now a checkbox under the forum sorting options in each forum allowing you to select your preferred sort options, and have these options be remembered when you leave the forum and come back (or when you read a topic and return to the forum, for example). This option uses a cookie to remember your individual selections.

Additional Developer/Mod Author Options

When running IN_DEV (not recommended for a production board), modification authors will now have two new options available to them. The ability to export a setting *group* will allow them to quickly export all settings in a setting group. Many modification authors create a setting group with settings for their component or script - now instead of manually selecting each setting individually you can just export the group with one click (the individual export option is still available).

Additionally, you can export entire skin files with ease to XML. Previously you had to export skin sections by checking each one, and you were presented with an SQL file. Now you can type in a name at the bottom of the Manage Skin Sets page (i.e. if you make a component and have a skin called skin_component, you would type in "component") and an XML file with all of your skin elements will be exported. If you have a skin_component_global and a skin_component_display file, for example, entering just "component" will allow you to export both. You can select which skin set to export from (commonly skin set 1 when you are working under IN_DEV mode).

Finally, two new API files have been introduced - api_skins.php and api_settings.php. With these API files, you can

1. Import settings by specifying the path to an XML file exported by IPB (which you can include with your installers).

2. Import skin xml files (such as the ones exported by the new developer tool described above).

3. Import macro xml files (i.e. by exporting a macro xml file with the new XML Macro import/export, and stripping any macros you do not want to be included, such as default IPB macros, and providing this)

4. Ability to recache skin templates afterwards

This can help modification authors to easily distribute skin changes and settings, while at the same time providing installers to make it simpler for users to install modifications.

Link Whitelist/Blacklist Options

IPB 2.2 introduces link whitelisting and blacklisting. With this setting you can specify which domains (using wildcards) you CAN or CAN'T link to. Of course you can only use one or the other at any given time. The settings apply to both links and images, anytime the BBCODE parser is used. For example, you could whitelist the following:

CODE

http://*.mydomain.com*

http://www.myfrienddomain.com/images/*

or you could blacklist your competitors:

CODE

http://*.somecompetitor.com*

You could use this to stop linking to images on sites like photobucket, or files on rapidshare, as an example.

Remove IPB Version from your Board Footer

You can now easily remove the IPB version from displaying in your board footer by selecting a single setting in the ACP. Often times when a malicious user discovers a reported vulnerability in a given software, such as IPB, they will search for boards with that version - if you do not display the version in your board footer, you will be protected from searches of this nature.

Ability to delete Components

You may have installed a component to test it out, but then decided you did not want to use it. Or perhaps a component is no longer compatible with the version you are running. Whatever the reason, components not (internally) marked as being undeletable can now be deleted under the Manage Components section in the ACP.

Ability to search members by "secondary group"

The member search form now provides the ability to search for members by their secondary group, as well as their primary group. Additionally, clicking on previously unviewable groups (groups not displayed in the member list) from the "Manage User Groups" page in the ACP will now allow you to view those members.

Registration form custom field errors clarified

Previously if a custom field produced an error during registration you were shown the error at the top of the page but had no indication of which field generated the error. With 2.2, errors related to custom fields will be displayed immediately above the field that generated the error, and will style the field in the same manner as if the username or email address caused an error to be displayed.

Minor Requested Enhancements/Changes

The following are not necessarily new features or bug fixes, but are changes commonly requested by members implemented in 2.2:

1. The category a setting is in is now indicated in the search results when searching for settings in the ACP

2. Guests are blocked from viewing poll results when members are required to vote before being able to see the results of a poll

3. The setting "prune registrations after [x] days" now operates from the task manager (as opposed to being kicked off only as new members register on the board).

4. The calendar you are viewing is now included in the breadcrumb (navigation) bar

5. The link to "Manage validating users" was added back to the admin page providing quick/easy access to the validation queue

6. IP addresses for users in the validation queue are now clickable, performing an IP lookup for you

7. Some rewording of the permission mask area has been done to help clarify what permission masks do and what their functions are

8. Multi-check boxes have been added to the permission ask area (just as they are in the per-forum global permissions) to make managing permission masks easier

9. Better reporting when saving template changes - if the template saves but cannot be written to disk you will be notified, for example.

10. The "Merge concurrent posts" setting is now set to 0 by default (disabled) - this is to avoid confusion by many new users as to why their posts are merging.

11. The query to pull cache stores now included in the SQL debugger output.

12. Per-member setting "open quick reply automatically in settings that allow it" now saves in the database instead of in a cookie to remain persistent

13. Subscript, superscript BBCODE added (with clickable buttons), and "unlink" button added to the RTE to easily allow you to unlink a link

14. Ability to globally enable/disable group signatures (useful for debugging purposes)

15. Added some additional debugging capabilities for the Subscription Manager

16. Only one email will be sent for topic notifications until you visit again, unless you have your email setting set to send the full post in your topic notifications (in which case you will get a notification for each new post)

17. Forum warn notification emails now will appear to come from the board outgoing email address instead of the individual member's email address

18. Forum read markers now updated via AJAX

19. Added a do_delete database driver method

20. Added group by support to database driver files.

21. Search link now has a context sensitive drop down box. If you're in a forum you can search directly in that forum otherwise you can perform a global search.

22. Modified top navigation area with subtle separators to break up the links into cleaner sections

23. Enhanced 'mini-profile' drop down when clicking on an author's name in topic view or when reading a PM. This drop down includes the member's photo and current rating

Topic Rating via AJAX

When rating a topic your submitted rating will be sent to the server via AJAX allowing you to save your rating without having to refresh the page. Additionally, you will now be able to see two more pieces of information when viewing the rating menu drop down: total number of ratings, and your individual rating.

Multi-choice polls + Ability to create a 'poll only'

Admins now have a setting in the ACP to allow and/or disallow members to create a poll as a "poll only" (disallow other members from replying to the poll, but still allow them to vote). Members who have permission to post in closed topics will still be able to reply to the polls, just as if a topic was locked.

Additionally, you can now create multiple-choice polls. There is an additional checkbox next to the question line(s) in a poll form so you can do this on a per-question basis (e.g. - you could have one multiple choice question, and one single-choice only question).

Log Pruning Task

There are settings to control which tables you would like to prune, as well as a task setup to run weekly which will prune tables based on those selections.

Forum Password Exempt Groups

When creating or editing a forum if you elect to require a password to access the forum, you can now select groups exempt from this restriction. This is useful for administrators, super moderators, and moderators to ensure they can access all areas for which they are expected to moderate. Of course, you can select no groups and the behavior will be identical to IPB 2.1 and below (all groups will be required to enter a password to access the forum).

Ability for members pending validation to change their email address

A member who registers on a site and is in the validation group will now be allowed to change their email address. It is possible for a user to register an account, and mistype the email address (twice) or use an email address that is filtering email from the particular domain, and so on. In this case, the user will be stuck in limbo since they will not be able to validate their account, and cannot change their email address.

With this change, a user can change their email address while validating, without breaking the validation process or status. This was previously not allowed.

Calendar - Ability to set week start as "Monday"

Many users have requested the ability to format the calendar so that the weekday starts on a Monday instead of the traditional Sunday. This is a common weekday starting point in many countries/religions.

With IPB 2.2, there is a setting in the Calendar/Birthday's configuration to switch the board to a Monday start week. Existing events and data are not affected by making this switch if the administrator decides to do so.

Auto resizing of large linked images

Posted images are automatically resized on-the-fly if they are larger than the available screen width of the browser. Clicking the image displays it full size in a pop-up window. Each reduced image has information above stating how much reduction has taken place and the dimensions of the original image.

ACP validating member management changes

A couple of changes have been made to the validating members page in the ACP to make it easier to manage members with validation requests:

1. An "unapprove" link has been added to Email validation rows. Unapproving an email validation will revert the member's email address to what it was prior to the member requesting to change their email address. This link only shows up for email validation rows.

2. The IP address has been made clickable, taking you to the IP tool and looking up the information that would normally be presented if you had manually typed it in.

3. A "Resend validation emails" option has been added to the drop down of actions available allowing you to send context-specific validation emails to the members you select. That is, if a member is validating their email address change, it will send the proper email with the necessary information, while a member validating a new user account will receive the correct "new user" validating email.

ACP Log in Logs

Records and displays every single log in attempt to the ACP and whether it was successful or not.

Ability to set default editor

Admins can now set the default editors members will use when they first register (or when a new member account is added via the ACP). The setting is found under User Profiles.

Ability to reset password by email or username

If the login type is 'username' a second field on the reset password screen will display to allow a user to reset their password by their email address. That is, they can enter their email address (i.e. if they forget their username) and the process will proceed as normal.

[Unregistered_User]

Top notch work, Steve :)

J

[Bulldog]

So theres not much changed then :iraqi-info-minister: :shruriken:

[Kazi]

Looks good, top work fellas! :D