UBB.threads PHP Forum Software Community Forums News and Releases Announcements UBB.threads Version 7.3 Released

We've just released the final version of 7.3 to the Members Area. It's been a fairly long development and beta cycle due to the amount of changes in this release. We appreciate your patience and hope you enjoy all of the changes.

The standard Upgrade Guide can be used for this upgrade with one difference. Normally, on an upgrade you do not upload any files in the styles directory. For this upgrade there is a styles/common.css file that you will need to upload. This is a css file that contains some common elements that get applied to all stylesheets.

You can discuss this announcement here

We'll go through the new features in the posts to follow.

Website updates and Documentation updates coming shortly.

User Level Changes

• All displayed links now pass through a central function. This provides the functionality to add a fake .html extension to the end of urls, along with making search engine friendly urls, even more friendly.
• The Who's Online Island has been rewritten to include color codes, search bots, etc.
• The shoutbox will now show username colors where appropriate. Also added an IRC like /me functionality.
• You may now change the Markup type while editing a post.
• New option on Active Topics to show Topics that do not have any replies yet.
• The following changes were made to the Text Editor:
  • Smiley popup will no longer stretch to the skies imagination.
  • PHP, SQL, Code and HTML sytnax highlighting.
  • Popups now show correctly positioned in all browsers.
  • Aligned image bbcode is now much easier to discover.
  • The bigger/smaller images are moved to be vertically related.
  • Popups autohide when you click the textarea.
  • Modified spoiler and list tags. Spoilers now have spoiler=Message and list tags now support list=(circle|i|I|a|A|1|disc|square)
  • Several media options, such as YouTube, Google Video, etc, which can be disabled or extended via the CP BBCode editor.
• The Member List has been reorganized to more closely resemble the UBB.classic version. This will also show the user's current online/offline status.
• The pagination code has been redone to make it easier to jump around forums/topics with multiple pages.
• Abbreviated subjects on the cfrm/postlist pages will now show the full subject when hovered over.
• Moderators and Styles will now be listed alphabetically when shown in list form.
• You can now set your notifications to only notify you when a new topic is created, instead of for every post.
• In the footer bar there is now an option to change the Stylesheet or Language settings, this is available to guest users as well.
• It is now possible to just search the body of a post, excluding the subject.
• When emailing a post, you will now get the option of emailing just that single post, or the post and all of it's replies as well.
• It is now possible to email a Private Message to yourself.
• Added the capability to email the entire topic to oneself.
• 'My Stuff' menu option to have it as either a drop down or as a left navigation menu.
• 'My Buddies' is back, but with more functionality. You can check multiple users, and then launch a PM to all selected (within limits). Multiple delete. View Posts and Profile from same screen.
• Viewmessages (PMs) has been enhanced to additionally include: Emailing of multiple selected PMs as well as deletion.

Control Panel Changes

• It is now possible to limit the number of images that can be contained in a single post.
• New option to hide post counts from being viewable.
• New option to disable the Invisible preference for the Who's Online screen.
• It is now possible to designate certain forums to not count towards a users total post count.
• It is now possible to set a sort order for graemlins.
• When saving a query, it is now possible to provide a description for the query.
• Added a variety of Content Rebuilders in the control panel. These can be used to recalculate post counts, rebuild content based on censor word or ubb code changes, etc.
• The admin can select a 'category only' mode, which tells cfrm to display only categories as the starting point. this is very useful for boards with tons of forums.
• It is now possible to change the starting day of the week for the calendar.
• There is now a toggle to exclude certain forums from the Active Topics display.
• You can now specify if you want the last post information to show for Teaser Forums.
• When an admin clicks on Edit User, they are given 3 more bottom tab options of: Viewing User's Profile, PM the User and Viewing User's Posts.
• Added a config option to designate how many Usernames are displayed in the Who's Online portal box. Setting this to 0 will make it display all Usernames.
• Added a Control Panel option so Admins can designate to show both the Custom Title & Post Based Title, or only the Custom one.
• A configurable tooltip hover for topics with adjustable style settings has been added.
• New control panel option to display the "Hop To" select menu in a popup on the postlist and showflat screens.
• Added the ability for users to be automatically added to a certain group once they reach a certain number of posts.
• Added a Custom tag editor that allows admins to add new tags for their board: Tags can be video tags like youtube, google video, yahoo video or can be other things that they might find useful. The admin control panel editor allows both import and export of tags, so sharing amongst UBBT admins can be done very easily. No need to edit code, since it's all done from the admin cpanel.

Moderator/Admin Changes

• Added inline moderation to the postlist pages. This allows admins and moderators to manage multiple topics at once.
• Global Moderators added. This allows users to be added as Global Moderator, where they will get moderator permissions for all forums they have access to without needing to be assigned to individual groups.
• If you are a moderator and can edit a user, or are an admin, you will now see an Edit User link in the popup when clicking a username.
• When an admin, moderator or user with sufficient permissions replies to a topic, they have a new option: "Lock this topic" where they can save their reply and instantly lock the topic at the same time.

General Code Changes

• The entire UBB Code parsing engine has been rewritten to be much more flexible.
• The entire front end is now fully XHTML 1.0 Transitional valid.
• A variety of code cleanup finished, which includes some unused variables, php notices, etc.
• Language file entries that contain variables have been totally redone. They now have the syntax of %%VARIABLE_NAME%%, which will make it much easier to change language strings that contain variables without the need to dive into the actual code.
• The full text search queries have been optimized.
• Emails will now send out both an HTML and plaintext copy. HTML emails can be styled with the addition of new classes.

The New Group Permission System

It is now possible to assign a variety of permissions based on groups. Here is a summary of the new permission list.

Forum Specific Permissions

Can Use HTML
Can Use Markup
Total # of File Attachments
Maximum File Size for File Attachments
Can Post Polls in Topics
Can Post Polls in Replies
Posts are Moderated
Can See the Forum
Can Read Topics
Can Read Replies
Can Create Topics
Can Create Replies
Must fill in CAPTCHA to post
Can Download Attachments
Total # of Gallery images per post
Maximum size of Gallery images allowed
Display Ad Island if it's configured for forum
Can Edit Own Posts
Can Delete Own Posts
Can Lock Any Topic
Can Move Any Topic
Can Delete Any Post
Can Edit Any Post
Can Sticky Any Post
Can Approve Posts


Site Permissions
Can use the img markup in signatures
Can view the Member List
Can view Member Profiles
Can Mail Posts to others
Can Vote in polls
Total # of Private Topics allowedMaximum number of people that can be invited to a private topic
Can add public events to the calendar
Maximum signature length
Can specify a remote avatar
Can pick a stock avatar
Can Upload their own avatar
Can Email their favorites
Can Use the Shoutbox
Can Make Global Announcements
Can Use the Search Engine
Minimum Time between searches

Subscription and Donation Groups

It is now possible to add subscription and donation groups. This allows users to join a group by either paying a one time donation or on a subscription basis ( X amount of money for X amount of time ).

The Admin can configure this to allow payments via PayPal or regular mail. We will be adding to the available payment gateways in upcoming versions.

In order to use PayPal for automated subscriptions you must perform the following steps:

1. Log in to your Business or Premier account in Paypal.
2. Click the Profile subtab.
3. In the Selling Preferences column, click the Instant Payment Notification Preferences
link.
4. Click the Edit button.
5. Select the checkbox to activate IPN.
6. In the Notification URL text box, you can either leave this blank or enter the url to the paypal-ipn script, ie. https://www.ubbcentral.com/forums/ubbthreads.php?ubb=paypal-ipn
7. Click the Save button.