The lovely group over at vBulletin.com (and the developers behind this awesome forum software) are currently beavering away at a new version of vBulletin, v3.7. And it's beginning to look very shexay indeed. I'll highlight some of the more interesting looking features that stand out for me since the list of updates is pretty extensive and the majority of which benefit the staff and administrators mainly.
I'm sure that some of the MySpace users here will enjoy some of the new features, too:
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1. Enhanced vBulletin Buddy List System
"As part of our new social networking system, users can now request that people on their buddy list confirm their friendship, after which time a person's list of confirmed friends will be viewable to other users."
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2. vBulletin Personal Profile Commenting
"While private messages between users have been in vBulletin since version 2.0, vBulletin 3.7 introduces the public messaging system, allowing users to communicate publicly via their profile pages."
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3. vBulletin Photo Galleries
"vBulletin users can now create albums and upload pictures to their account."
"The ability to view these albums and pictures can be limited by the user to just board staff and people on their buddy list if they want privacy."
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4. User-Created Social Networking Groups
"To further social cohesion between users and to encourage people to make friends, vBulletin now includes a facility to allow users to create their own social/interest groups. These groups are enhanced by having their own public messaging system, and the ability to add pictures to the group from user albums."
*I think the whole social networking groups sounds really interesting. It means we could perhaps start creating Fable based guilds such as Will users, good and evil usergroups. I dunno. I'm sure we can come up with something!*
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5. Revamped Profile Page Layout
"In order to accomodate all the new features in vBulletin 3.7, the member profile page has been completely redesigned from the ground up.
The new page presents information in a far cleaner and more logical manner, while dividing up information into manageable chunks using a tabbed interface.
Individual profile field categories can be displayed alone in blocks in the right column, in addition to appearing by default in the 'About Me' tab."
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6. MySpace Style Profile Personalization
"The administrator may choose to allow his members to use the profile page customization tool, which allows users to alter fonts, colors, background and borders etc. of their profile page in order to create a more personalized look.
The administrator can lock-down customization permissions, in order to prevent the personalized pages being made too offensively awful by aesthetically challenged members... nobody wants to see some of those really ugly MySpace pages on your vBulletin installation!"
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I'll definitely be coughing up the cash to renew our vBulletin license in order to update to the latest version so you guys can enjoy the brand new social bookmarking and social networking features.
Full details over at the official vBulletin website can be found
here.
