June 11, 2011
New message board software
Filed under: — Dan Balash @ 8:31 pm

The staff of Illinois Marching Online is pleased to announce that we have upgraded our forums software from Zetaboards to Simple Machines Forum.  If you are a former user of the Zetaboards message board community, please log in to your account at Zetaboards to view your private messages to change your password on the new forums located at http://www.ilmarching.com/forum . If you have not received this PM, please contact Mark or I (at the bottom of this post) and we will fix this for you.

We believe this is a huge upgrade and will continue to improve our site.  Here’s why:

  • We have been alerted to some inappropriate advertising thanks to Google Ads.  This will never happen again, as there is no outside advertising on Simple Machines Forum software.
  • Topic/Private Messaging email notifications.  This was my biggest pet peeve in Zetaboards.  If you wish, you can subscribe to all of your topics (or posts), and be notified when there are responses.

My favorite part of these new forums is the fact that they can be modified to our heart’s content.  With Zetaboards, this was not possible at all.

Here are some of the modifications we have installed:

  • Member map.  I would like everyone on the site to go into their profile (Profile->Forum Profile->Member Map) and enter their location as close as they feel comfortable with, just so we can get an idea of basic locations of our users.
  • Each topic is now shareable on Facebook and Twitter.  In the first comment on each thread are buttons to “like” on Facebook, or to share on Twitter.
  • We now have Facebook and Twitter options in your profile.  Just enter your userid(s) in your user profile and they will show up.
  • Embeddable YouTube videos.  This will come in handy in the next couple of months.

 

There are some modifications that may be forthcoming, if we can get them to work on the site:

  • Reputation system. This is still in development.  Every time a thread or comment is posted, the person who posted it will get 1 point.  Other users can then either vote a comment up or down, based on if they feel the comment added to the thread or detracted from it.
  • Instant messenger.  Yes, you read that correctly!  We now have an instant messaging system that is available to all users.
  • This will allow us to tie in the site to the message board community.  More changes will be forthcoming in the near future.

 

Thank you to Mark for undertaking the project of downloading every post and transferring them over to the new site.  His work is greatly appreciated-especially after a slight hiccup in the process caused us to have to do the process all over again.

If you have a comment or question, post it in the “Upgrade of the Forums” thread in the Site Comments and Suggestions Forum.  Guests may post here as well.  In addition, email us if you have any problems or questions:

(full article)