ZooBeat forums

[Sim]

Hi all,

I hope you don't mind this plug for a new discussion forum I've just set up: ZooBeat Forums: "The news on zoos".

It's a forum dedicated to discussing your local zoos, aquariums, wildlife parks and such - sharing information, new arrivals at the zoo, new developments, and chat about zoos in general.

Even if you are not interested in that topic, you may like to check it out and have a bit of a browse around, since I decided to install the latest beta release of vBulletin v3 for the ZooBeat forums.

I won't upgrade our Somersoft Forums until vBulletin v3 gets out of beta testing, as there are still some minor issues that will need to be addressed before I'm fully comfortable with the upgrade. They are currently hoping to have v3 available before Christmas, so I will hope to have us upgraded soon after. But in the meantime, feel free to have a look at http://www.zoobeat.org/forums/ to see what new features are coming in v3 - or to just join in the discussions (not that there's much there yet, I only set it up this morning !!)

 

[Jas]

Sim

I never knew you where into zoos!

Why did you decide to set this up?

Can we have a repuatation button too?

Jas

 

[asy]

Woo!

Fantastic Sim!!!

I am member #5...

asy

 

[jahn]

OK Asey
How did you find out you were # 5 ?
Well done sim -

BTW has the new rhyme got anything to do with a pieman
jahn

 

[paul_s]

looks quite good sim,

it probably a bigger niche than it may first appear, likely 10's of thousands of people who work for zoo's worldwide, conservationists and people who like zoos.

jahn if you click on the person's name in the member list it will give you the member number (will work for this forum also)

eg,

http://www.zoobeat.org/forums/member.php?u=7

so you are userid number 7

 

[Blitzkrieg]

asy
Junior Member





That is all.

 

[paul_s]

Originally posted by Jas


Can we have a repuatation button too?

I just figured out what you meant with the reputation thing in the userid, must be a new feature. I guess it bases it on number of posts. It says my reputation is "disabled" that doesn't sound good

 

[jahn]

Thanks paul-s
Not sure I like the idea of being a user, but I like the # 7 and its been a looong time since I've been a 'Junior'

Good luck with the 'disabled' thing
jahn

 

[Sim]

Yeah, reputation ratings are a new feature in vBulletin v3 that I am still coming to grips with.

It's a measure based on what people think of your contributions - but the way other people can influence your score depends on several factors - how many posts they have made, how long they have been members, and most importantly, what their own reputation rating is.

It will take a bit of fine tuning to get it working well, but I think it may be an interesting thing to add to our Somersoft forums when we upgrade to vB3 - although I will need to confer with the other moderators as to whether we wich to implement this type of feature.

Users can choose to not show their own reputation rating - it's configured in the control panel, so paul_s, if you check out the options in the control panel you should be able to find where to enable it.

 

[Aceyducey]

I LIKE the reputation idea....it works really well in sites like eBay & Expert sites....The forum being a knowledge-focused discussion site means that people do take away the information they learn on it and apply it & ensuring this is valid (one way by using reputations) is important.

Maybe disable reputations for forums such as Coffee Lounge though...

Cheers,

Aceyducey

PS: Member #9

 

[paulzag]

Isn't it an evolved form of karma (in other software).

We've had users in somersoft forums before whose reputations were awsome. It is earned and post counts don't normally influence. It's the content that drives it.

Of course occassionally you hear things like "I have karma to burn" when an illuminary decides to enter a fracas.



Paulzag
Dreamspinner

 

[Sim]

vBulletin Content Syndication

Well this is pretty cool…

Point your favourite RSS2 content aggregator at http://www.zoobeat.org/forums/external.php?type=RSS2 and you’ll get a synicated feed of the posts on my forum ! Cool huh ? That’s a new feature in vBulletin v3

(For those who didn’t realise, you can also get a feed of my blog - links are at the bottom of the sidebar menu on the right).

You can also do more with the feed:

http://www.zoobeat.org/forum/external.php?type=X&forumids=Y

X (type) can be JS, XML, RSS, or RSS2 .
Y is a comma delimited list of forumids to include. If you don’t include this part, then it’ll get from all forums visible to who-/whatever runs the script.

When we upgrade the Somersoft forum to vBulletin v3, we will be able to do the same thing here too ! No more logging on to the forum just to read the new posts - let your content aggregator do the work for you.

 

[abcdiamond]

Morning Sim

Can I please have an english version of your last post ?

I've re-read it a couple of times, and realised I am not understanding things as well as I thought I might be.

ABCD

 

[Sim]

If you don't understand it, you don't need to understand it.

Just keep doing what you have been doing

 

[Aceyducey]

Hey Sim,

When you gunna upgrade Somersoft so I can get a feed through here as well

Cheers,

Aceyducey

 

[Olly]

Are you wanting people who mind sick and injured wildlife to be encuraged to join? WIRES type people? 'Cos I know a few and could tell them if that's OK with you.

Olly

 

[Sim]

Yeah Olly, anyone can join in - WIRES type people would be great too. I don't know much about the organisation, would be good to have some people contribute. Caring for sick and injured animals would be an interesting subject to add too.

Just make sure they understand it's very new, and so there's not much traffic yet - will be a while before we get any sort of momentum.

 

[Sim]

Originally posted by Aceyducey
When you gunna upgrade Somersoft so I can get a feed through here as well

Not until vBulletin v3 goes gold - I don't want to run buggy beta software on such a busy forum like Somersoft, that would be just asking for trouble !

 

[Sim]

I've just upgraded my ZooBeat Forums to vBulletin v3.0.0 Gamma release (Gamma means the next phase of testing beyond Beta - the functionality is all there and tested, and they are now testing the user interface "skins" - especially for web browser compatability issues)

Please feel free to go and have a look around the forums (sign up too if you want !) to get a feel for how the Somersoft forum will work once I upgrade it.

When I get back from holidays in a couple of weeks time, I will be setting up a test version of the Somersoft forum for me to do all the configuration for vBulletin v3 on, and then once I'm happy it works and is stable, I will migrate Somersoft over to v3.

I'm hoping that there will be a Gold version or a Release Candidate version sometime in the next few days, which I would prefer to be basing my initial testing for Somersoft on.

If the final vBulletin v3.0 releases come within the next couple of weeks, I would hope to have Somersoft live on vBulletin v3 by the end of January.

The whole thing is complicated by the need to also upgrade the photo gallery at the same time (since they share a database). So please be patient - I will be doing lots of testing and many backups to make sure I don't mess anything up too seriously !

 

[geoffw]

Without having explored in detail-

The "preview" of a post or thread is great. Hovering the mouse over the link gives a "hint" of the contents, without having to open the post or thread. I'm sure that will save heaps of time for forumites.

But I find the "threaded" mode less than useful. You can choose to look at a "tree" of responses- which is a lot better than we have at the moment- but, if you have chosen to view in non-threaded mode, there is no indication as to which post you have replied. If there had been something in the title bar for each post "posted in reply to post #x" it would have been a lot more useful.

Even the "tree" view requires you to click on a "more posts" branch if there's more than about five levels, to see further branches.

On the positive, attention of the webmaster has been good

Is there a "What's new to vBulletin v3"?

And there does appear to be a discrepancy between post counts on the user list and the board- Sim' is showing as having 80 posts, but there's only 53 posts in the forum (according to the intro page). Ruby's shows 16 posts- but a search for her posts shows only five posts.