vForums Blog

As a new feature for all forums we’re giving you the ability to customize the registration process. This enables you to firstly present a short message to your potential users:

And then on the registration form itself you can add or remove fields and  reorder them as you desire. This all links in to our existing custom profile fields functionality, functionality which enables you to add extra fields to a users profile.

This means you can have a shorter or longer registration form as desired, the image to the left shows a cut down version of the registration form.

To start using this feature, just login to your vForum, go to the admin panel and click on “Customize Registration Form” (right hand column).

From here, you can choose which fields should (and shouldn’t) be enabled and use the little arrows to change their order.

If you need any help using this new feature then just let us know via our support forum.

- vForums Team

When I announced the introduction of the WYSIWYG editor I had high hopes for what it could do and what it would bring to vForums. However things did not go smoothly from the start with one issue arising as soon as another was fixed. At first I was sure that these were teething problems and that after a little time users would adapt to the new interface and the core code would be adapted to work how the users expect. However it was not to be.

I admit now that I was wrong, something that I suspect other hosting providers would not do. The WYSIWYG editor was not to be. It was just not suited to the forum enviroment.

However the WYSIWYG experience was not wasted. We have been able to see what aspects were well received and what aspects weren’t. This is valuable information which we’ve used to develop a new system. It’s not a visual editor, but neither is it plain text. It’s what I like to think of as being in the middle ground. Giving enough tools to be user fiendly, but remaining light weight and error free.

This new system will be going live on the support forum this week and will be rolled out to all forums over the weekend. This may seem like a very quick implementation, and that’s because it will be But surely that is a good thing?

As always, I appreciate your thoughts, comments & questions.

Ross McLellan
vForums.co.uk Owner

A new (fairly small) feature will soon be released to all forums. Topic ratings. Allowing you to rate a topic from 1 - 5 stars with the average rating being shown. It’s a fully AJAX based system which makes it pretty easy and non-intrusive to use.

At the same time, I have been working on a few minor bug fixes and display tweaks. For example, the pagination system is having a little bit of an overhaul with improved functionality (jump to page…) and a new position opposite the navigation tree.

Check out our support forum (which has recently been moved to a new server for improved performance) for some live examples of this new functionality. We would appreciate any feedback you have on these changes.

Oh, and did I hear someone say “facebook”? ???

Over the past few days I have spent some time reviewing and updating all e-mails that the forums send out. This covers everything from their contents, to the way they are sent and even to their layout.

From now on, all emails get sent in both plain text and HTML formats so that they look good when they can but are still functional for those using plain text email readers. On the note of looking good, the HTML versions attempt to match the forums skin; this includes the background, text and link colour choices and the font family. Not all e-mail clients will display these styles, but many modern ones such as Google Mail do.

I’ve also standardized the contents of the e-mails. Because many had been written at various stages of the life cycle I thought it made sense for them to all undergo a review so that they use similar wording and structure.

Here’s an example of one such message. See if you can spot the new feature it’s showing

Another new feature announcement for you all We will be making some of your forum statistics available for you to view within your admin panel. This new section gives you an overview of your general forum activity. In the initial release this will include Page Views^*, Topics Started, Replies Posted and Members Registered. Although extra functionality may be added in the future. Click on the thumbnail below to take a peek at this new page.

Preview of our Stats System

* Note: These have only started being logged from 7th May onwards.

- Ross McLellan
vForums.co.uk Staff

We’ve made the decision to change the way dates are going to be outputted in our next version. This will solve two problems related to the current method.

Firstly, it’s in the interests of search engines. Some of you may be aware that Google has started indexing “Last Post” dates for forums. Unfortunately it’s not always getting them right as it seems to get confused with the “Joined” date from the mini-profile and even dates mentioned in the post body. The new method will help us better hide irrelevant dates from search engines and better format the important ones.

Secondly, it’s going to give you much easier control how dates are formatted. Just a couple of lines in the header would enable you to change all the formating for any date.

This functionality has been built on top of Steven Levithans Date Format class. Our version will extend it a little to allow the use of “Today” and “Yesterday”. I’m sure we’ll post a few examples of its’ usage once we’re ready to integrate it on the beta version of our software (which is the version our support forum runs).

This change will (probably) result in the “Timezone” option within profiles being removed as the dates displayed will be based on the users computer time.

As always, I’m ready to read and reply to any questions or comments you may have

- Ross
vForums.co.uk Staff

As some of you may have noticed yesterday evening, and others may have noticed friday evening, the support forum has been offline while I’ve been trying to implement some changes.

Trying is the key word in that sentence though. Over the past week my ISP has proven itself to be very unreliable. It seems I can’t stay connected to the Internet for any extended period of time (my record this week has been an hour) without then losing the connection for anywhere from 5 minutes to 2 hours (I gave up trying to post this message last night after an hour and a half wait).

With those kinds of circumstances it would be foolhardy to attempt any kind of upgrade on user forums. As was the case yesterday evening, I could lose connection whilst halfway through uploading a key file. For this reason I’m going to hold off on a few updates until I’m confident that they will go without any issues and when I’m sure I’ll be online to help with any issues which do arise.

For anyone who is interested, these updates will mainly be backend changes. I’ve been attempting to give all admin pages a more standardized layout. I’ve also been looking into a few search engine optimization issues, ones often related to forums and am trying to find the best possible solutions to these. I’ll keep you updated on when we plan to implement them.

Also, while doing all this, we’ve been looking at the main website and intend to give it a complete revamp. And then there’s still one big feature in development but it still has some security issues to deal with before we can show you a working demo. Watch this space!

First off, I’d just like to inform everyone that most chatroom updates will be posted here in the blog.

Before I talk about recent additions, I’ll give you a little history on the Chatroom…

If you’ve been around for a while, you’ll remember that the chatroom was first released to vForums Support back in April. However, development of the chatroom goes way back to December 2007 if you include the planning stages.

For the first few months the chatroom was simply something I did as a side project, but as it neared completion (at least to a state where it could be implemented), I began to focus more and more time on it. Finally it was at a stage where it could be integrated with the Support forum and tested out, so Ross took on the implementation; fixing up aspects of the coding in order to make it work with the system, as well as making some other changes.

After integration, however, it became a side project for me again; something I would work on when I got the chance. A few months past, and people began asking for a release date, so I began working on it bit by bit again, trying to get it closer to full completion.

Then recently, somehow the main file for the chatroom became replaced with a really old version of it, causing a lot of Ross and I’s work to be lost. Luckily though, Ross had a recent backup which he uploaded, bringing it back to a properly functioning state.

Since then, I have began working on the chatroom more often, and have made some recent changes.

The most noticeable addition would most likely be the option to have a sound play for new messages. It is still a bit buggy at the moment, but shouldn’t be too hard to fix.

Most of the other changes were things with the backend of the system, in an attempt to make the coding more efficient, so would not be physically noticeable to end users.

As the project nears the stage where it can be released to all forums, I was hoping to get input from all of you out there as to what you would like to see implemented into the chatroom. If you have any suggestions, simply comment below and I’ll be sure to review them all.

I’ve just processed the monthly stats which I do at the end of every month to see how we are performing. I was pleasantly pleased to see that the number of new signups for July has set a new record. In fact, July has had more new signups than May and June combined!

Lets hope that we continue to grow at this rate

After a pretty short discussion we (which refers to the other vForums Support Mods & I) agreed that a blog could be a good addition to the website. We’re hoping it’ll enable us to give users a better insight into what we do, both on vforums and elsewhere. Hopefully you’ll be seeing some posts from the others from time to time, as lets face it, who wants to read me ramble on all the time

Thinking of which, maybe I should introduce myself & my history for those who are new to vForums. I first got seriously interested in web development when I was 16, I was writing a lot of Javascript mods for existing remotely hosted software at the time. Unfortunately (or I suppose this should be “fortunately”) this didn’t fulfil my hunger for knowledge, and I started to learn PHP with MySql. I started to make a few pieces of software with this new knowledge to help expand my experience, this ranged from hit-counters to image randomizers and eventually to a guest book.

12 months down the line I had finished my A-Levels and I was looking for a career to move into, the career I felt best suited me would be one in web development. Unfortunately most web development companies don’t like taking on people who haven’t already got experience and a strong portfolio, so I l knew what I had to do.

Since it’s original creation my guest book script had undergone some major improvements and core changes, it was now a message board. I spent a lot of free time over the following months improving the software. I have a feeling that having that software listed on my portfolio was a big influence in securing me the web developer job which I’ve been doing since September 2007. It was because of the positive comments I received from my colleagues that I decided that vForums could be a worthwhile business, it was then in November 2007 that virtualforums.co.uk received its first sign-up.

Since it’s primitive start the software has undergone many changes and has grown massively, larger than I would have thought possible 12 months ago. Lets just hope vForums continues to grow and thrive! I think that’s all to say at the moment, apart from I’m sorry for anyone who got bored in all that, I have a terrible tendency to get carried away. If anyone has any other questions about the company or me then you can post a comment, although I can’t guarantee I’ll be able to answer all questions