We are pleased to announce that we have released the long awaited update to the forum software.
- Improved search. The underlying lucene search index is upgraded to provide better hits of information. Additionally, the search page provides options for users to search within a specific date range, sort the hits by date and specify whether to search only within the title, only the body or both.
- Unanswered threads. This feature provides a listing of threads that have no response. This allows users who want to help other users be able to quickly find threads where no-one has yet helped someone else out.
- XML, RSS and ATOM feeds. Users who are used to subscribing to news from a variety of sites using one of the many news readers will be able to easily subscribe to all the content in our forums or just the specific forums they are interested in.
- Quick Post: Rather than having to go to a separate page to make a post, users can now make a post directly from the text box at the bottom of the page.
- Change the sort order of how threads are displayed within a forums
- Improved indicator flags that inform the user which forums and threads have new content since the last time the user logged in.
- View other members that are currently viewing the same thread
- The 'watch' feature has been improved so that users can easily enable the watch for categories. The watch feature allows a member to be sent an email once a day that provides a list of threads that have new posts that the user has said they are interested in (globally, categories, forums or specific threads)
- Sticky Threads: These are threads that are locked to the top of the forum and always show as the first thread within each forum. This allows us to put information and news that we do not want slipping down below other discussion threads.
- Global Threads: We can set a thread to be a global thread. This allows a thread to be seen at the top of ALL forums. This can be used for a day if we want to highlight a special member news post or if we have a situation where there is a known problem.
- Improved performance
- Numerous usability bug fixes