After several months of dabbling around with IPB3, we've finally decided to upgrade, and here we are on nice shiny new improved forum!
The Skin
As you can see we've already made modifications to the default skin. Apologies to those of you who liked the old one better, we weren't able to convert that. What I've done is integrate the forums into the main website layout, keeping the site 100% consistent throughout.
New Features
IPB3 brings with it a decent amount of new features, I'll give a brief overview here, and Gerard will also go into detail about a few important changes in the following post.
Private Messaging
PM's are now Private Conversations between you and up to 6 other members. It's pretty much the same as the old system really, with the added ability of sharing the conversation with multiple people.
Statuses
Those of you who are active Facebook users will know doubt enjoy using this. From the index page or your profile page you can now tell users what you're currently thinking/doing etc. This will be shown on your profile page.
The Sidebar
On the index page you will have noticed there is now a sidebar. This displays the latest user status updates, recently posted topics, and any forums/topics you are watching (subscribed to for updates).
If this annoys you, you can always hide it by clicking the little X to the top right of it
Of course there are many more. A topic will be posted later with a more in depth explanation to some of the features you may not be aware of or understand fully.
Found a Bug?
Something not working/looking like you expected it to? If you find a bug, let us know here.
You may find that every single post on the forum shows up as "unread" for you. To fix this, you can click "Mark board as read" right at the bottom of the page.
Staff Changes
We've re-shuffled the staff a little.
Retired staff members including Slayer and Jared have now been removed. Forum veteran Mike, whom you know as Righty, has been reassigned to the more appropriate position of Super Mod.
Finally, joining me at the top is @Gerard (once again!). Gerard will be playing a much more active role on the forums now, and you'll see him implementing a number of changes soon.
And on that note, Gerard will help explain some of the more important changes to how we're running this forum...