UBB.threads 7.0 beta 1 is now available in the Members Area. You will also find the importers for both UBB.classic version 6.7 and UBB.threads version 6.5. You can use this site for any questions or bugs concerning this version.

Note: This is beta software. As such it isn't recommended that you use this in a production site. Your best option is to setup a seperate install for testing version 7 while your main board remains untouched.

We'll recap some of the changes here. Remember, this is not a complete list. Since this was pretty much a rewrite just about everything has been changed so we'll only touch on some of the major changes for now:

AJAX

We've added some AJAX to various pages. When previewing a post or using the Quick Quote option, those are both using AJAX. The shoutbox is also fully AJAX'd. No more refreshing endlessly over and over in an iframe. It checks periodically to see if there are any new shouts and updates accordingly without having to reload the entire page.

For those that aren't familiar with AJAX. Basically it allows you to use javascript to talk to the webserver without needing to reload the page. For example, when previewing your post. It will show your preview right below the textarea. It actually talks to a backend script to markup your post properly and returns the results without needing to reload the page.

New File and Poll Management

We've totally changed the way files and polls are handled, which you can try out in the Test Forum. We've added some popup menus in various places to clean up the interface a bit.

Announcement Blocks

Another addition is the ability to add a global introduction that displays on the main category/forum listing page. This can contain HTML or PHP code. You can also create these for individual forums as well.

More Markup Panel Options

We've added more options to the markup panel and more functionality. If you highlight some text and then click bold, it will put bold tags around your selected text. This works with all of the markup options such as font color, size, etc.

Other changes of note:

• Fully customizable portal and side columns. Ability to turn columns on/off and move column boxes around. The portal utilizes alot of caching to keep things fast.
• 10 fully customizable portal boxes. These can contain php code, can be cached for a certain amount of time, or be a static file for things like Google's Adsense. The flexibility of the custom boxes will allow users to pull all sorts of data from the forums, trade portal boxes with other users, etc.
• The portal boxes, including the customized ones, can be used on other pages outside of UBB.threads if they are php enabled.
• Much easier RSS syndication. Options to create the RSS feed while editing a forum. Forums that are RSS enabled have the proper RSS headers sent to the browsers. Ability to make RSS feeds that span multiple forums as well.
• New ActiveText feature. This allows you to translate certain keywords into links or images when the posts are being displayed rather than entered into the database. This allows you the flexibility to turn this feature on and off as needed. A variety of ways this can be used to empower your site. What's different about this than a standard censor list? When turned on this will be activated on posts already in the database, unlike a censor list that is done when the post is added.
• Ability to watch topics, users and forums, with options to be notified via email when a new post is made that matches your Watch Lists. The old subscription model that required a cronjob to be setup has been removed. In fact you no longer need to setup cron for any of the features to work.
• Unlimited levels of subforums.
• Full Text indexing on search data.
• Option to allow one of the custom portal boxes to be placed between the 1st and 2nd post of individual forums. This is normally the best place to put ads.
• An updated markup-panel with better javascript and more functionality including, admin definable font-size/font-family markup and a php markup tag with syntax highlighting.
• All new markup routines to allow nested markup, like lists inside of lists.
• Private messages have become Private Topics so the whole history of the conversation can be viewed.
• Ability to lock profiles to only be viewable by registered users.
• File attachments can be turned on/off on a per forum basis. Also now allows for multiple files to be attached to a single post.
• Polls can be turned on/off on a per forum basis.
  * Allowing polls in replies or only in topic can be turned on/off on a per forum basis.
• All User IPs visible to admin on the who's online screen.
• Ability to lock forum into flat or threaded mode.
• Front end templates rewritten to now use the php Smarty template engine.
• Moderator option to receive notification of new posts when a post is made in a fully moderated forum.
• Better ability for moderators to approve posts and manage members when they have the permission to do so. This utilizes the control panel to make the moderators job much easier than the prior method.

Congratulations Rick. You've worked your tail off for the past several months.

Now just sit back, relax and watch everyone break their junk. Just kidding.

Let the upgrades begin!

I beat you to announcing! :x...

We loves you rick... Especially those who kept saying this would never happen :x..

Any idea on how long will it be before we can use version 7 in our production site?

When it goes Gold Of course if you like living on the edge, then use the beta - of course Rick could never recommend it

Ian is pretty much spot on My official stance is that it's beta software. With any beta software you never know if you're going to run into something unexpected, so for the sake of safety I'll always recommend that beta software not be used in a live environment. The main reason is we can't guarantee that there isn't some major problem that hasn't been caught yet and we don't want anyone to put their live forum in jeopardy.

There are those that like to live on the edge and don't mind fumbling around with the code and fixing problems if necessary and are already running it on their live site

including this forum of course.

UBBDev will be running Beta1 as the "main forum" soon, additionally, there may be a UBB.T7 addon forum ...

probably

We'll be up/ merged with threadsdev/ and running at some point tonight Right now I'm on 9 of 32 forums for classic, then it's on to threadsdev data

yey!