Site Updates & Changes

[Gavin]

Big things are coming to BGWFans, and to get there changes (and updates) are going to have to be made to the way certain things are handled. This thread is to track the minor changes to the site that may, or may not, affect you. If you have any issue with these changes, please either PM one of the Administrators (Zachary, Shane, or I) or post it here.

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[Gavin]

• 
  Thursday; July 12, 2012
• A, Tera Sized, Virtual Private Server (VPS) from Hexxeh, has replaced HostMonster as the web host for the Forums.
  
  What this means to you: Improved performance from the site overall, the return of the Wiki in the coming weeks, and improved site stability. Also, the forums have moved from http://bgwfans.com/forum/ to http://forum.bgwfans.com with redirects for all urls from the previous location to the new one.
  NOTE: The Main Site is still on Hostmonster, and will be making the move in the coming weeks.

Please report any issues at all either by PMing an Administrator, or by posting in this thread.

 

[Gavin]

• 
  Wednesday; July 18, 2012
• A Six Flags America subforum has been added, but instead of discussion taking place at BGWFans, all the threads will link to current hot topics on our affiliate site, SFAFans.
  
  What this means to you: An easier way to stay up to date on the big things that are happening at Six Flags America.

Please report any issues at all either by PMing an Administrator, or by posting in this thread.

 

[pandorazboxx]

Eh, I don't like it.

 

[Zachary]

There's a little more detail provided at the top of the forum itself. They've been great to us and we feel like we should do our best to help them out as well. If you really want to talk about SFA here, you still can in the general Six Flags forum, but I'd recommend at least checking up on whats going on over there from time to time. Their admins are great and they provide amazing coverage of their park (a lot of times better than we do of BGW if I'm completely honest). We want to promote the people who we think are doing a great job. In my perfect world every park would have its own fansite run by the people who care about their local park. Locals do it best. Always.

 

[Gavin]

• 
  Saturday; July 21, 2012
• New MyCode is now available for you to use, allowing you to: embed songs and playlists from SoundCloud, embed songs from Grooveshark, force a line break if needed, and to insert an indent before the start of a paragraph.
  
  What this means to you: You are now able to enrich your posts with better formating, and have the ability to embed tracks from SoundCloud and Grooveshark seamlessly.
  
  
  Spoiler: [color=#006400

  How To Use The New My Code[/color]]
  
  Click on one of the options below for instructions on how to use each new piece of MyCode.
  
  

  Spoiler: [b

  SoundCloud[/b]]
  
  The Raw MyCode
  

  [soundcloud]<TrackCodeSnippet>[/soundcloud] - For Tracks
  [soundcloudpl]<PlaylistCodeSnippet>[/soundcloudpl] - For Playlists

  
  How to implement it
  
  

  
  
  
  

 

[pandorazboxx]

can we get a thanks-meter or something by our names? just a thought

 

[Zachary]

I've actually attempted adding that before but, well, I'm not talented enough for such things. Maybe I could beg Gavin to try to hack something together. Hmmm...

 

[Gavin]

It's in my list, but its a long list and I start a new job tomorrow. So it'll be awhile, sadly.

 

[destroyer421]

Good luck with your new job

 

[Gavin]

• 
  Monday; September 3, 2012
• You can now embed Twitter Tweets into posts using some new MyCode.
  
  What this means to you: You can now cite Twitter Users' Tweets inline in your posts, using Twitter's Embedding Widget.
  
  
  Spoiler: [color=#006400

  How To Use The New MyCode[/color]]
  
  

  1. Simply click on the Embed this Tweet link on any public tweet, and copy the LINK to that tweet (should look something like this-"https://twitter.com/BGWFans/status/240938754901147648").

  2. Next, paste that link into your post and put "[tweet=" in front of the link, "]" at the end without the quotes.

     It should look like this when you've done that:
     

     [tweet=https://twitter.com/BGWFans/status/240938754901147648]

  3. That's it, submit the post when you are all done and it should look like this:
     [tweet=https://twitter.com/BGWFans/status/240938754901147648]

Please report any issues at all either by PMing an Administrator, or by posting in this thread.

 

[Zachary]

BGWFans Version 3.5 is nearing completion and should be launching soon. 3.5 brings a new header and menu bar, a completely redone version of BGWFans Pictures (will be in an early beta at launch), the full BGWFans Wiki relaunch, an integrated store page, and tons of smaller tweaks around the site for dramatically better performance and an improved user experience. While things will look a bit different to users, the biggest changes are going on behind the scenes. When 3.5 launches, everything will be off the old shared hosting server and onto the new VPS (Virtual Private Server) that the forums have been running off of for a little while now. As you've probably been able to tell, the forums have been rock solid as of late and hopefully, with this move, we'll be able to say the same for the main site. Lastly, our new Wordpress install is setup for Wordpress's multi-site features. This means that, in the future, it will be very easy to launch sites for other parks if the community desires (as it sounds like you do).

More soon...

 

[redsoxfan787]

I think it would be pretty neat if you got a notification when someone comments after you like on Facebook. I forget what threads I've commented on sometimes

 

[Gavin]

You can get email notifications already, just set up subscriptions in your User Control Panel. There's even an option to do exactly what you are asking.

 

[Zachary]

As you may have noticed, BGWFans 3.5 is live. Not a major overhaul, but there are plenty of little tweaks and changes all over the place. If you'd like to know more about what the big deal is, read this post. There are some bugs we're working on getting fixed, but for the time being, everything should, more or less, work as expected. BGWFans Pictures (link in the menu bar on the main site) is still in a very rough state but you're more than welcome to check by every-so-often to see what's happening. Editing will be done while the page is live so don't be surprised to see things that are (sometimes very) broken. Additionally, the wiki is, finally, officially, back. Again, link in the menu bar on the main site. By the way, the wiki holds some hints about where all of these changes are slowly bringing the site. *hint* *hint*

So, with all of this attention on the main site, where's the love for the forums you say? Well, as you may have seen, today I finished up converting the Shows and Previous Shows forums in the Busch Gardens Williamsburg section of the boards over to a structured system like what you've become accustom to with the Attractions board. If you know of any missing shows or dates of the shows that are there, please PM me. Lastly, but certainly not least, we're in the early stages of a few things. The one I'll mention now is a full re-theme of the forums. We've used the default MyBB theme for too long. It's time to start making the forums look like they belong with the Wordpress side. More on that soon...

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can we get a thanks-meter or something by our names? just a thought

I played around with this again today. I'd love to add one, but my PHP skills are (very) limited. Gavin said he'd have a go at it sometime soon-ish. It's one of those things on the list of little changes we'd love to make... eventually.

 

[b.mac]

I caught a glimpse of the thanks meter yesterday, although it's very rough it does look really cool (please change the description for thanks given and thanks received) you'd be surprised just how many thanks some users have.

 

[Party Rocker]

I would say its more of a "Like" button rather than "Thanks" or more of an "Agreed" button.

 

[Zachary]

I would say its more of a "Like" button rather than "Thanks" or more of an "Agreed" button.

Agreed. We'll look into changing that as well. I believe we're going to need to make some changes to the plugin anyway with the overhaul that we're working on. Speaking of which...

Hmmm....

 

[Party Rocker]

Is that a hint at what the new forums will look like? If so, I am glad to see it looking so welcoming

 

[I305Evan]

The version now says "Welcome Back, {insert name here}." I like the look of the little corner that is shown . I think it looks nice.