Forum Updates

[Scarbrow]

This thread is only to announce and publicly discuss updates and changes related to the forum.

Please keep on topic, this thread will be kept as clean as possible, which may include deletion, modification and/or merging of posts.

[Scarbrow]

News and Announcements
The "News and Announcements" forum will now be accessible (read-only) for unregistered/logged out users. As the "News and Announcements" forum is not primarily meant for discussion, creation of new threads or polls on that forum is restricted to mods and admins. Registered users will be able to reply to existing open threads but won't be able to create new ones (just on that forum of course).

Change of name of the main section of the forums
The "Sryth Forum" section has been renamed "Kingdom of Tysa". This change won't have any impact on links, or forum organization.

[Scarbrow]

Now the user who started a thread will be able to change its name (useful, for example, if the conversation strays from the original topic and gets interesting on another one).

To do this, the user who started the thread has to edit the first post of the thread, "Go Advanced", and modify the title of the first post. Previously this could only be done on the first minutes after posting the new thread, now there is no time limit.

As usual, forum staff (http://www.srythforum.com/showthread.php?t=947) retain the power to change any thread's title, so if in need you can contact any of them.

[Doolipalally]

Just a couple of points:

News and Announcements
The "News and Announcements" forum will now be accessible (read-only) for unregistered/logged out users. Registered users will be able to reply to existing open threads but won't be able to create new threads or polls. Only mods and admins will be able to create new threads and polls.

Now the user who started a thread will be able to change its name (useful, for example, if the conversation strays from the original topic and gets interesting on another one).

To do this, the user who started the thread has to edit the first post of the thread, "Go Advanced", and modify the title of the first post. Previously this could only be done on the first minutes after posting the new thread, now there is no time limit.

As usual, forum staff (http://www.srythforum.com/showthread.php?t=947) retain the power to change any thread's title, so if in need you can contact any of them.

Can I please clarify this? You're saying that only mods and admins can create new threads and polls anywhere in the forum? That presumably means that your information about changing the name of a thread is only relevant to mods and admins.

I would like a little background on that decision. I wasn't aware that people starting new threads and polls was considered to be a problem round here. Mods have been doing a good job tidying up duplicate threads where necessary. I would like to know the reasons, as my immediate reaction is that it seems rather restrictive.

Change of name of the main section of the forums
The "Sryth Forum" section has been renamed "Kingdom of Tysa". This change won't have any impact on links, or forum organization.

It looks a bit odd to have 'Forum and wiki information' coming under 'Kingdom of Tysa'.

Could you also explain why this change has been made, and why 'Kingdom of Tysa' was chosen as a heading?

I do appreciate the work that mods and admins are doing to maintain and improve this forum, so please don't read this post as a complaint. It's just that it would be nice to know why things are happening, as well as what's happening.

[Oldschool]

Just a couple of points:

Can I please clarify this? You're saying that only mods and admins can create new threads and polls anywhere in the forum? That presumably means that your information about changing the name of a thread is only relevant to mods and admins.

I would like a little background on that decision. I wasn't aware that people starting new threads and polls was considered to be a problem round here. Mods have been doing a good job tidying up duplicate threads where necessary. I would like to know the reasons, as my immediate reaction is that it seems rather restrictive.

It looks a bit odd to have 'Forum and wiki information' coming under 'Kingdom of Tysa'.

Could you also explain why this change has been made, and why 'Kingdom of Tysa' was chosen as a heading?

I do appreciate the work that mods and admins are doing to maintain and improve this forum, so please don't read this post as a complaint. It's just that it would be nice to know why things are happening, as well as what's happening.

I can shed some light on some of this since Scarbrow's not currently logged on. For the rest I'll leave it up to him.

I think that the thread restriction only applies to News and Announcements but I'm not entirely positive.

Forum and Wiki Information will probably be moved to their own section with a couple seperate forums as it doesn't fit under Kingdom of Tysa and regardless of the section title it didn't really fit there imo.

Why Sryth Forum was changed. Clarity mainly. If you look at the top of the page when you're in this secion (Kingdom of Tysa) forum and thread you see the following.

Sryth Forum > Kingdom of Tysa > News & Announcements > Forum Updates

Before the change it was,

Sryth Forum > Sryth Forum > News & Announcements > Forum Updates

The duplicated title besides being redundant was a bit confusing. A little more so and a bit aggravating when moderating. As for why "Kingdom of Tysa" was chosen. It was mentioned in the Round Table (staff only section) and a couple staffers thought it fitting and I made it a third so we went with it.

I'll share the blame equally for not running that and the rest of what and why by the rest of the membership in "open forum" so I apologize.

As for what and why (off to check double check some staff posts then I'll edit accordingly)......

EDIT:

First and before I forget. I'm more sure (still not positive) that the thread restriction only applies to News and Announcements. I also think that that is not a change. I think that only staff could create threads/polls there before it was opened for guests to view. Again, I think Scarbrow only mentioned the thread restriction as a reminder especially since I don't recall it being mentioned before.

As for what and why the above pretty much covers both; new main section title due to confusion, possible moving of the Wiki/Forum forum to a section of it's own for better "logistics" as a better term escapes me at present.

Again I apologize for not being proactive on this and will try to be more so in the future.

[Doolipalally]

Thanks for that, Oldschool. Like I said, it wasn't meant to be a complaint, just a request for clarification.

I still find 'Kingdom of Tysa' a little odd as a heading, just because the threads in that section are about playing the game, not about the Kingdom of Tysa, but I freely acknowledge that I'm unusually picky about things like that :). I'd probably have called it something like 'Game information'. But I do see that a change is needed to minimise confusion. The duplicate heading in the breadcrumbs was one of the things that took a little getting used to when we first changed over to this forum, but I'd stopped noticing it. Good to have it made simpler for new members.

[Scarbrow]

I'm really sorry about the confusion, I've edited the announcement to make it clearer (I expect). You're right it sounded rather misleading. I hope it's better now.

As Oldschool explained, the thread creation restriction only applies to the "News and Announcements" forum, and this was already true, just never officially explained. I found out by pure chance when I tried to post a poll there before I was made admin. This measure has been kept from the previous setting Havoc set up. We're discussion on the staff section about the convenience of moderating new threads instead of completely restrict them, but since right now no part of the whole Sryth Forum is moderated before being allowed to show, this change would mean a considerable change in the spirit of moderation, so the consensus should be clear, ideally unanimous.

About the change of name of the "Sryth Forum" section to "Kingdom of Tysa", Oldschool explained it perfectly. I'll only add that for me, the "Kingdom of Tysa" name is a complement to the "The Real World" name. After all, it's all about things that happen in Sryth, and most of Sryth takes place in that kingdom. It sounds better than "Northern Sryth", doesn't it? :p

Dooli, thanks for your advice about explaining the why along with the what. I'll try to keep it in mind for future updates. I forgot in my urge to be concise that not everybody have participated on the previous discussion.

[Elrond]

Instead of Kingdom of Tysa, please consider the option of "Game Section." That way, we'll have "Game Section," "Fan Section," and "The Real World" as the main sections in the forum.

[Scarbrow]

Group Announcements
From now on, when there are several announcements on the same forum (this includes the general forum-wide "Forum Rules" announcement by Havoc) all of them will be shown, instead of grouping them on the same box with only the most recent showing.

Reason: To avoid new announcements obscuring important ones (like the aforementioned general Forum Rules) and to allow for several announcements to exist in case it's needed. Anyway, it's going to affect few forums (right now, only the "News and Announcements" one)


Sticky Threads
From now on, Sticky threads will only show on the first page of each forum. The previous setting was to show sticky threads on every single page.

Reason: To avoid cluttering the pages, especially on forums with a (relative) high number of stickies. It's assumed that when you move through the pages, you expect to see new threads, not always the same ones. I personally found the previous setting confusing at least. Hope necrothreaders like it ;). Another side benefit is to allow more threads per page after the first page.


Page Navigator
I've added a new "jump" to page navigator for large threads. Have a look at the Talderus Redborn (http://www.srythforum.com/showthread.php?t=74&page=54) thread to check it. Previously you could jump 1, 2, 10 and 50 pages (either back or forward). I've added an intermediate 25 pages jump. There are also jumps for 100, 500 and 1000 pages, but I really hope we never need them!

Reason: Comfort when parsing large threads. If you need any other size of jump, it can be added (or removed).


Member list
On the Member List (http://www.srythforum.com/memberlist.php) page, I've added a couple of columns: Last visited and Contact. The first one will be useful to check for availability of members. The second one makes easier to get at some member. I've also reworked the order of the columns, from the previous Name, Contact, Posts, Last Visit, Reputation, Avatar to the new Name, Avatar, Posts, Reputation, Last Visit, Contact

About security and privacy concerns: The last visited information is publicly available on user's profile, so it really doesn't give any new information. The Contact column will only contain a link to PM the user (also available from the user's profile) and a link to email the user only if both the user and you have specified emails on your profiles. Your email is not publicly available, since it uses a webform, and only the recipient of the mail will be able to see it to reply.

This last change has really no reason... I just thought it would look better this way.

I have also removed the display of the green dots for Reputation (only on the Sryth skin) but that is for accessibility reasons and I will fully explain it on the next post.

[Scarbrow]

Instead of Kingdom of Tysa, please consider the option of "Game Section." That way, we'll have "Game Section," "Fan Section," and "The Real World" as the main sections in the forum.

That's a good suggestion. I have another one from Thingirl to change the "Fan Section" to "Creative Arts Section". Opinions anyone?

[Scarbrow]

Some of you have already noticed, and I'm going to explain the reasons behind this.

The really short explanation is that is an accessibility measure. Sryth and the Sryth forum want to be friendly for all, including blind players. And I haven't been able to do it with a less drastic measure (and I've been trying for several hours now)

Now for the long explanation, which will include the technical details. As I said previously, I'm in contact with Trogg, an old forum member. He's also a screen-reader user. When talking to him, he mentioned that on every post the "ranks" show repeated many times. It took me a while to realize he meant the reputation meter. The reputation meter is composed of several green dots, and each one of them is an image. Nothing wrong there, except each image also has an "alt" text, stating the title of the reputation level of the user. For example, smv1973 with 566 reputation has the title "smv1973 is a name known to all". Same as Thingirl, right now. The problem is that screen-readers read the "alt" text for every image, making each post from each user to have several times (up to six or seven times, for the moment) the repeated title. Something like: "smv1973 is a name known to all""smv1973 is a name known to all""smv1973 is a name known to all""smv1973 is a name known to all""smv1973 is a name known to all""smv1973 is a name known to all""smv1973 is a name known to all""smv1973 is a name known to all""smv1973 is a name known to all"

Now, to correct that I had several options.

One of them would be to change all the titles to much shorter versions. That option has two problems: First, too short means losing the meaning, and second, the user's name is part of the text string, so I can't really shorten it much. Also, remember the number of dots is bound to rise with time as reputation accumulates.
Another option would be to reduce the number of dots. However, there is no administrative option to do that. The only way, as I discovered in this article (http://www.jimwestergren.com/changing-reputation-image-values-for-vbulletin/), is to directly edit the installation files, and I don't have access to them (the same problem we encountered with the forum add-on (http://www.srythforum.com/showthread.php?t=812)).
The third option would be to somehow remove the alt text. I've tried desperately to find it, but the bar is created by an internal forum function ($userinfo[reputationdisplay]) and I haven't been able to find a way to edit the way it's created without one more time editing the PHP config files.

Finally, the only option I was left with was leaving it as it was, and letting screen-reader users with no option but to scroll past the block of titles, or completely removing the titles and the graphical reputation bar with them. I have opted to remove the bar from the Sryth skin, but of course this decision is just mine: please give your opinions about it. If there is a consensus about restoring it, I can do it quite simply.

For the record, the modification involves changing the "postbit" template, specifically the bit "<span id="repdisplay_$post[postid]_$post[userid]">$post[reputationdisplay]</span>" is changed to "<span id="repdisplay_$post[postid]_$post[userid]"></span>". Also the template "memberlist_resultsbit" was changed to remove the bar, replacing the "$userinfo[reputation] $userinfo[reputationdisplay]" part with just "$userinfo[reputation]". The "memberlist" template was changed along with "memberlist_resultsbit" to account for the columns order change I talked about in the previous post.

The way I see it, the comfort and accessibility of blind players is more important than a small graphical interface. We still have the same reputation and the reputation is shown as a number on every post. I have acted on my best faith, but now is your moment to comment on this.

[zmflavius]

Personally, I'm going to have to say that it was probably necessary, given the liabilities it caused.

Just my opinion.

[Doolipalally]

I agree. I'd rather have improved accessibility than green dots!

[scout1idf]

Group Announcements

Looks good to me

Sticky Threads

Great idea

Page Navigator

Don't use it much, seems fine to me

Member list

Love this change.

Removal of the green dotsWhat do we need dots for when we have a number. I say remove them to help our blind friends.

[texlaw1992]

I don't recall ever seeing it (where is it?), so I hardly care whether it's there or not. I'm certainly in favor of anything which assists our visually-impaired brethren.

[scout1idf]

I don't recall ever seeing it (where is it?), so I hardly care whether it's there or not. I'm certainly in favor of anything which assists our visually-impaired brethren.
It was right under the rep number.

[Lightwielder]

That's a good suggestion. I have another one from Thingirl to change the "Fan Section" to "Creative Arts Section". Opinions anyone?

Agreeable. At the very least, it SOUNDS more sophisticated.

As for the reputation bar, that makes sense to me. Why make Sryth blind-friendly, if the Forum isn't going to be?

[Meduwyn]

Yeah, I can't see the importance of having the green bar, either, when the same information is given with a number. Hadn't noticed it was gone until I read this thread! The green bar wasn't all that informative anyway, as despite all my great efforts, I still just had one little green square! lol

[thingirl]

Group Announcements
OK, sound's good.


Sticky Threads
THANK YOU!!!!!!


Page Navigator
Again, THANK YOU!!!!!

Member list

Cool. I like that.

-------------
As for the repp bar, I liked it, but I like being friendly to everybody MUCH more. I don't think it needs to come back.

[Young Ned]

I like eliminating the "Sryth Forum > Sryth Forum" business, although I agree that the "Forum and Wiki Information" and "News & Announcements" boards should probably be in their own section -- "Administrative section", perhaps?

Also agree that "Game Information" or "Game section" would be clearer than "Kingdom of Tysa". I like "Game Information" slightly better, but either would be fine.

All the other changes seem quite reasonable, including removing the green dots. I had never realized that each green dot had its own alt text, and I can certainly see how that would clutter things up for screen readers.

[Scarbrow]

I like eliminating the "Sryth Forum > Sryth Forum" business, although I agree that the "Forum and Wiki Information" and "News & Announcements" boards should probably be in their own section -- "Administrative section", perhaps?

Don't forget the "News and Announcements" section also host threads for Game Updates. When the new section is done, we'll need to migrate the non-game-related threads to that one, but leave the rest where they are.

Also, I'm planning to send a massive PM to all active forum users so they can contribute their ideas for new names for forum sections. In the meantime, you can keep suggesting names here. I'll put up a poll with the suggestions for everybody to vote on a few days. "Administrative section" sounds good once know what it's inside, but maybe new/casual users might think it's some kind of admin-only section, when in fact is open to all.

EDIT: PM Sent. I hope to be overwhelmed by all kind of answers... :D

[Scarbrow]

Following a report by Thingirl (thanks TG!) I discovered green bars were appearing again when you added reputation to a user. They disappeared again when you reloaded the page, but momentarily, they were there.

Tracking them I luckily found what have been eluding me before: the place to remove the alt text of the images. Turns out that's controlled by the "postbit_reputation" template. Easy to see, once you know it's there. So I just changed the
<img class="inlineimg" src="$stylevar[imgdir_reputation]/reputation_$posneg.gif" alt="$post $post[level]" border="0" />

part to
<img class="inlineimg" src="$stylevar[imgdir_reputation]/reputation_$posneg.gif" border="0" />


reverted the previous changes to "postbit" template, and voilà! We have our green bars again but without the alt text, so our fellow screen-reader users will just skip them.

For users who don't know, you get a green square for each 100 reputation points, and after 500, you earn a new one for each 200 additional reputation.


[U]About sending email to other forum members
To be able to send an email to other forum member, in addition to both members having a registered mail address, the receiving member must have the "Receive Email from Other Members" option checked on Control Panel --> Settings and Options --> Edit Options. So you can enable/disable that feature for you at will.

[texlaw1992]

That's what you meant by "reputation bar." I would have realized what it was had you said "reputation dots" (lol).

As long as our visually-impaired members are no longer affected, I'm fine with them.

[thingirl]

As long as our visually-impaired members are no longer affected, I'm fine with them.

Ditto. (And just when I was getting used to them not being there... :))

[Badstench]

Jumping in a bit late... I like Elrond's suggestion for "The Kingdom of Tysa" to be re-named "Game Section". It's accurate, clean and meshes well with the other sections.

[thingirl]

I actually think that "The Kingdom of Tysa" and "The Real World" mesh just fine. But since it looks like I'm gonna get out voted...

How about "gaming section"?

[Oldschool]

Just a friendly reminder bump folks. If you're like me you tend to read PMs and then sporadically remember them and then usually when you're not at the computer.

And if for some reason you fell in the inactive group and didn't receive a PM or aren't registered we'd still like to hear your input. You can post here or I don't think Scarbrow would mind a few more PMs. Just remember you have to be registered to post or PM.

After all this is our forum - thanks.



Also, I'm planning to send a massive PM to all active forum users so they can contribute their ideas for new names for forum sections. In the meantime, you can keep suggesting names here. I'll put up a poll with the suggestions for everybody to vote on a few days. "Administrative section" sounds good once know what it's inside, but maybe new/casual users might think it's some kind of admin-only section, when in fact is open to all.

EDIT: PM Sent. I hope to be overwhelmed by all kind of answers... :D

[Doolipalally]

If you're like me you tend to read PMs and then sporadically remember them and then usually when you're not at the computer.

Thanks, Oldschool - you've just described me exactly!

[Scarbrow]

As frequently requested, I've added to all posts a functionality we had on the old forum: a link to the top of the page, like the one at the bottom of the page.

For the record, the original link at the bottom of the page was on the "footer" template, and looked like:

<a href="#top" onclick="self.scrollTo(0, 0); return false;">$vbphrase[top]</a>

I've added that code to the "postbit" template, just after the icons for reply, multi-quote and quick-reply.


As a reminder, I'm still waiting for your contributions about names for the sections, redesigns, etc. I'll post some kind of poll with received suggestions on a few days. Thanks to everybody who have contributed so far.

[Scarbrow]

I've added two new custom BBCodes to the forum. Sadly, I'm not able to add icons for them, so you'll just have to write them directly.

In addition to the [ /s] tags (without spaces, of course) for [s]strikethrough text, there are now two options to add horizontal rules

The tags [/hr ] (exceptionally among BB tags, you can leave them blank) will create a "regular" rule, like this one: [hr]

The tags color[/hr2 ] will create a colored bar of the specified height. You can use any color from the W3C Color Chart (http://sryth.wikia.com/wiki/Color_Chart) on the wiki.

For example:
[hr2=1 ]black[/hr2 ] gives [hr2=1]black
red[/hr2 ] gives [hr2=6]red
coral[/hr2 ] gives [hr2=12]coral

[Oldschool]

Nicely done Scarbrow. And thanks for the color chart. Have a colorful rep.

[Lightwielder]

Just a quick test to see if I've got it correctly.

blue
blue
gold

AWESOME! It gets tiring having to use hyphen lines to do that like this:
------------------------------

Thanks much, Scarbrow.

EDIT: Does it work for Signatures, too, or have you not gotten that far? Regardless, great job.

[Scarbrow]

EDIT: Does it work for Signatures, too, or have you not gotten that far? Regardless, great job.

Works everywhere you can put BBCode in, that is the whole forum including comments, signatures, PMs and everything, as far as I know.

[Lightwielder]

Works everywhere you can put BBCode in, that is the whole forum including comments, signatures, PMs and everything, as far as I know.

Awesome!

[Oldschool]

Although there are more than enough color combos in the link you provided Scarbrow I was wondering if other colors are "available" via using the hex code (if that's the correct term)?

[scout1idf]

Although there are more than enough color combos in the link you provided Scarbrow I was wondering if other colors are "available" via using the hex code (if that's the correct term)?
To answer your question.....
#ccccff
....was created using #ccccff, and hex code is what I call it.

I couldn't get the rgb value to work though.

To bad, if it would support it, it might have supported the rgba value (depending on the browser you use) as well and that would allow transparency. The thought boggles the mind what you could come up with......

[Scarbrow]

THIS IS THE FINAL AND OFFICIAL ANNOUNCEMENT

New Icons
I've added an icon for the "strikethrough" function called by the [s ][/s ] tags, just at the right of the Spoiler one.


New BBCodes
The new BBCodes are and [Youtube ] (remove the spaces). Check http://www.srythforum.com/misc.php?do=bbcode for the complete list of this forum's allowed BBCode. It's impossible to have more than two variables for a single BBCode, so don't expect anything much more sophisticated than these ones (nothing near as powerful as wiki templates).


HR tag
[HR ] is for Horizontal Rules. There are two variants, a "standard" horizontal rule and a "colored" one, with two separate icons. The black rule icon is for the standard rule, and does not ask questions. The red rule icon asks for an option. Keep in mind that when the Coloured HR asks you to "Please enter the option for your [HR ] tag" you must enter the desired width of the line, and then specify the color between the two tags. As of now, if you specify:

[HR ][/HR ] tags without anything - A standard horizontal rule will be shown
[HR ][/HR ] tags with something between the tags - Whatever you put there will be ignored (but kept on the code), and a standard horizontal rule will be shown
[HR=number ][/HR ] tags with nothing between the tags - The tags will be read as "empty" and won't show anything (as with empty [b ][/b ] tags)
[HR=width]color[/HR ] - An horizontal rule of the specified width and color will be shown.


And to answer scout1idf:
I couldn't get the rgb value to work though
You can specify color by either name, #HEX, or rgb, but to use rgb you have to use the full rgb(255,0,0) or rgba(255,0,0,0.5) syntax. For web designers, the attributes set by the BBCode are hr's "color" and "background". Take a look at the wiki's color chart (http://sryth.wikia.com/wiki/Color_Chart) or an even more detailed (http://www.w3schools.com/html/html_colornames.asp) version allowing subtle shades.

The previous code [hr2 ] will still work (the same as [HR ] with options, in fact) to avoid having to rewrite posts using it, but will have no icon. Please use the new one.


Youtube tag
The new Youtube tag is a way to quickly embed Youtube videos on your posts. Just take the bit after the http://www.youtube.com/watch?v= part, you may have to remove some of the "&feature" parts of the URL if you've been browsing for some time, or if you arrived to youtube via a RSS or related link. For example, from this one (http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=aghKlg_6OgM) the last part is "aghKlg_6OgM", so the tag would read aghKlg_6OgM and show like this:
aghKlg_6OgM

Remember to add a new line before using the tag, or you risk having the video in the middle of a line. Try to preview before saving to avoid this kind of mistakes.


Technical notes:
I've taken a stab at trying to make the new [HR=width]color tag behave more like the system-provided [URL ] tag, but the task exceeds my abilities. I've located two .js files, counting total 33kb of code in just two lines :eek: I'm not so practiced on JavaScript to understand what's going on there, much less alter it.

[scout1idf]

rgba(0,0,51,0.1)
rgba(0,0,51,0.2)
rgba(0,0,51,0.3)
rgba(0,0,51,0.4)
rgba(0,0,51,0.5)
rgba(0,0,51,0.6)
rgba(0,0,51,0.7)
rgba(0,0,51,0.8)
rgba(0,0,51,0.9)
rgba(0,0,51,1.0)

This is an example of the RGBA color system. All 10 lines are the same color with different transparency levels set.

[hr=5 ]rgba(0,0,51,0.1)[/hr ]
[hr=5 ]rgba(0,0,51,0.2)[/hr ]
[hr=5 ]rgba(0,0,51,0.3)[/hr ]
[hr=5 ]rgba(0,0,51,0.4)[/hr ]
[hr=5 ]rgba(0,0,51,0.5)[/hr ]
[hr=5 ]rgba(0,0,51,0.6)[/hr ]
[hr=5 ]rgba(0,0,51,0.7)[/hr ]
[hr=5 ]rgba(0,0,51,0.8)[/hr ]
[hr=5 ]rgba(0,0,51,0.9)[/hr ]
[hr=5 ]rgba(0,0,51,1.0)[/hr ] or [hr=5 ]rgb(0,0,51)[/hr ]
(remove the spaces between the tags[])@Scarbrow. Cool changes....
Thanks for clearing up the need for the zero for the 'a' to work (0.5).
Outside BB code, the zero is not mandatory so that's why it didn't work for me before.

Rep ya when I can... Rep'd

[Scarbrow]

Just a bumping post to warn everyone my previous post has reached its final form and is now the official announcement of these new features.

[Oldschool]

Reps to Scarbrow and Scout. Nice crib sheets posts. :rolleyes::)

[Scarbrow]

I was looking at several options on the Admin panel and found the limit for tags. I've increased it so regular users can now add up to 10 tags per thread, up from the previous limit of 2. The maximum number of tags is 25 per thread, but I don't think we will reach that. I've reduced the minimum length of tags from 3 to 2 characters, so you can now tag with MR, SP, and such.

Also, the polls now can have any amount of options, the previous limit was 10.

Also, now you can change your rating on a thread. Previously you could only rate each thread once, and could not modify that value.

Another thing: I've found the option for "Words to be Included Despite Character Limit" for searches. You can now search for these terms even in they are too short (less than 4 characters). I've included "AT XP AG AC BHC BM BoP BoB LoO BOG CHR EoT FoD GL GM MoD MP MR SP NR NvR QS RoL TD KB ToA WoD XP AS&P", for the moment. They may require some time to be added to the search indexes. Some other important term to add?

[Oldschool]

Good deal Scarbrow as three two tags is too few. Good thing with the tags is they have a search assistant which is really helpful. It also kicks in when tagging threads.

[Tetracapillactomist]

All I can say is: that function will now be functional!

Well, maybe a tad more: I cursed at some of those restrictions after I signed in to the forum, long before my first post; they resulted in my neglecting to use it most of the time.

I just accepted the limits as facts - so thank you, Scarbrow.
Repped.

[Oldschool]

Nice changes on your edit Scarbrow. As for idea re: "Words to be included despite character limit" if you haven't already (looks like you got 'em covered) you might check the acronym/slang thread. The only one that sticks out is AS/P which I think I'm the only one that's used it and then not too often, usually when I'm in a hurry and on my non-regular computer/keyboard so it's probably not necessary. And in light of your post I'll try to remember to completely stop using it since it just throws an unnecessary "log on the fire".

Again nice changes Scarbrow - repped again and when permitted.

[shadowblack]

It is now possible to attach files with extensions rar and 7z to your posts.

[Oldschool]

Nice additions Shadowblack. Folks to do so click the upright/vertical paper clip on the post icons - not the crossed out horizontal one which is related to links. If for some reason you're editing and need it you have to go to advanced.

Thanks Shadowblack - handy file extensions and a very interesting file (folks the file is in a post in the Festival of Blades Rememberances thread).

[shadowblack]

I admit I have no idea which icon you're talking about. To attach files I use the Manage Attachments button: scroll below the Submit Reply and Preview Post buttons and you will see the Additional options. There you will see several things, including the Attach files section where you can see a list of allowed extensions. Click on the Manage Attachments button and the rest should be easy.

It sounds like you're referring to the Insert Email Link icon, which has nothing to do with attachments.

[Oldschool]

D'oh why didn't I see that before. :rolleyes::o

Actually the icon I'm talking about is on the shorter line above the one with the insert email - actually just about directly above the email icon (for me at least).

It's to the left of the undo and to the right of the smilies icons (separate from the smilies in the right margin).

And I'm not sure but icons might be dependent on which message editor interface under miscellaneous options you have selected. I have had the Enhanced Editing (What You See Is What You Get) interface selected.

Edit: Had as I now have the standard editor selected - for now at least. I'll tinker some more but at first glance the only difference between the standard and enhanced is if you copy/paste things (MP results are a good example) it copies and pastes the [stuff] like bolded text, etc.... hence what you see is what you get.

However I'd always switch editor modes via the upper right hand corner icon (two A's seperated by a slash) beside the arrows to increase and/or decrease your text box size when copying pasting a lot of stuff.

Changing it to the standard should be better as I've very seldom (if at all) used the differences the enhance mode allow. Actually much of the time I'd have to switch it to the standard mode for copy/paste jobs.

A good visual is to use enhanced mode and copy something like an mp result then paste it then switch the editor mode via the upper right icon to standard.

[shadowblack]

Ah, THAT one! Would you believe I never looked at it long enough to realize it even exists? I learned something new - thanks!

[scout1idf]

Just in case anyone is still not sure what Oldschool is talking about.....

http://www.srythforum.com/picture.php?albumid=11&pictureid=240

Maybe this will help.....