Mod 1, it’s edging up on a year since you asked your questions about what we would like to see in an upgrade. When are we actually going to see the upgrade? 
The development crew/tech folk are actually polishing up the development site this week, and we’re going to be starting beta testing with some “real” users shortly thereafter.
The first step of the upgrade process has involved updating the forums’ software several versions, to the most current one. We’ve turned on a few new stock features and have finessed a couple of custom goodies in response to some of the feedback we received.
There will be some slight format changes to the site, but the overall look and feel should be the same, so it hopefully won’t be a drastic adjustment for anyone.
Once we get the new version of the software/site up and running live, we’re going to evaluate how it’s running and resolve any glitches that may arise.
There are a couple of requests/issues that we’re going to address after the software upgrade – such as improving our search engine – as we want to make sure everything is running smoothly and see how the new software operates for us first before playing around further.
The next big step after that will be to bring the forums’ and main site’s separate registration systems/user databases together under one log-in system (something that will be easier to manage once we have the new forums’ software in place).
Once that’s taken care of, we’re planning to tweak how we handle our Premium forum memberships and some of the benefits therein.
Thanks for your patience – sometimes progress is slow!!
Mod 1
We’re ready for beta testing!
The main reason for the upgrade was to bring the Forums’ operating software up to date, as we were several versions behind. This will not only improve some of the behind-the-scenes functionality of the site, but also will enable us in the future to offer a single log-in system for all of our web entities (the Forums, cothclassifieds.com and the free and subscription-based editorial content on chronofhorse.com).
Our tech crew has gotten a beta version of our site up and running using the new software and incorporated a few new standard and custom features that we hope you’ll like.
The new version of vBulletin (the software we use to run the Forums) has some differences in appearance to what we were using, but we’ve worked hard to keep the changes fairly minimal. This change was intended to be a necessary software upgrade with some new goodies, not a big redesign.
We wanted to give real users a chance to do some test posting on the site to make sure there aren’t any functionality glitches once we get some traffic on it from real people who are used to using the current site. We sent out an email directly to our Premium members asking for their input as they’re an easily selectable subgroup of posters, who are avid supporters of the site, but wanted to post something here too, as you all took the time to give us input leading up to the update.
Here’s a link to the beta site: http://vb4test.chronofhorse.com/forum/forum.php
We would like to have your input by this Thursday, Oct. 18th so we have time to review it and make changes before we release the upgrade later this month.
It’s populated with content taken from the real site, but any posts you make or PMs you send will only appear on the beta site, so feel free to post whatever, wherever you want. You can log in using your regular username and password.
Please use the Help forum on the beta site to make comments, ask questions, etc.: http://vb4test.chronofhorse.com/forum/forumdisplay.php?67-Help-Forum
Feel free to go play now, but here is some info on some of the changes we made if you’d like to check/try them out:
- Post rating system: Add your thumbs up to posts you appreciate. We're debating the pros and cons of offering a thumbs-down option – What do YOU think? Will it be too divisive or will it provide folks the chance to disagree or express displeasure without getting "into it" on a thread?
- Original poster differentiation: The person who started a thread is identified by a special subtitle under their username for subsequent posts in that thread (we're going to tweak this one a little, in terms of appearance)
- Additional smilies (no, still no vomiting ;) )
- Similar threads of potential interest displayed at bottom of existing thread
We started with these changes and are going to look into further features after we get the upgrade implemented, functional and everyone’s relatively happy.
After we get the universal log-in system working, we will be able to manage our user databases more effectively between the sites. At that point, we plan to move forward with tweaking our Premium Membership benefits to give those folks some more bang for their buck too…possible special Premium Member-only forum(s), giving all magazine subscribers Premium Member status on Forums, etc.
In the meantime, we’ve done one easy tweak to double Premium users’ Private Message storage capacity, so they can archive more PMs for future reference.
We’re also phasing out the Forums’ classifieds sections. Originally our only online advertising option, they get very little activity and are unwieldy to manage. We now have www.cothclassifieds.com, where users can purchase online and/or print classifieds all in one place.
Premium users will now receive credit on www.cothclassifieds.com instead.
Thank you so much for your support of the Forums, and for any input you’d like to offer prior to the upgrade!
I’m going to temporarily close this thread, so all the beta testing input stays on the beta site, so we can find and address concerns more effectively all in one place.
Mod 1
