vBulletin Community Forum - Blogs

Beta 2.0.0 Released to the public

Freddie Bingham — Wed, 01 Oct 2008 01:34:05 GMT

My plan is to release a public beta of Blog 2.0 this week, if all goes well.

[edit]It has been released.

3.8 on vbulletin.com

Darren Gordon — Fri, 19 Sep 2008 16:29:30 GMT

Hey everybody, just a quick update on today's news. Some of you may have noticed that vbulletin.com has been upgraded to 3.8.0 Alpha 1 :)

Have a look around and try out the new end user features. If you find any bugs please let us know.

I can now give you a full run down of the changes made in 3.8. Bear in mind that further changes will be made based on bugs and feedback.

Social Group Discussion Threads

Messages in Social Groups are now threaded into 'Social Group Discussions'.
Discussion are sortable by creator, replies and last post.
Discussions can be filtered with a simple full text search on titles.
Discussions can be managed with Inline Moderation to soft delete, physically remove, approve and unnapprove them.
Discussions are Read Marked using both database and cookie methods, with a jump to go to first new post.
Users can subscribe to discussions and receive email notifications on new messages.
Subscribed discussions with new posts are aggregated in the User CP.
Individual Discussions have social bookmarking links (user defined, such as Digg, StumbleUpon etc).
New 'Can Always' permissions to create and view both discussions and messages, simplifying access.
Fallbacks implemented for non javascript users.
Moderators can Quick Edit social group messages using AJAX.
Posts are now ascending, which is more intuitive in threaded discussions.
Users can configure their groups so that only the group owner can create new discussion threads.
Moderated and Deleted discussions are aggregated in the User CP where the user has moderator permissions.
Moderation permissions are seperated for discussions and threads, including deletion.
Some extra database cleanup is performed with discussion related data when a user is merged or deleted.
On upgrade from < 3.8, existing messages are moved to an initial discussion with the same name as the group.
Social Group info is hidden when entering a discussion or viewing pages of results to move focus to discussions.

Social Group Changes

Social Groups are Read Marked using both database and cookie methods, based on new messages or discussions.
Mark All will read mark all discussions in a group via AJAX.
Social Groups can be subscribed to, adding group aggregation to the User CP.
Social Groups now belong to a category.
A group's category is displayed in the navigation breadcrumb, group lists and group info.
A new overview page displays a random group, your groups, new groups and groups that you created.
Groups that you created are navigatable via AJAX and display further information about the group, including pending members and moderated items.
A category cloud is displayed in the group overview with popularity weighting based on the number of groups.
Categories can be created and deleted and merged in the Admin CP.
On upgrade from < 3.8, existing groups are moved to an initial 'Uncategorized' category, which can be renamed.
Groups can be filtered by category, via the category cloud or advanced search.
Social Groups can now have a group icon. The icon is displayed in the group info, and a thumbnail version is used in group listings.
Icons are displayed on the User Profile page for groups that the user is a member of.
Permissions control user abilities to upload icons for their groups, including file size and the ability to upload animated icons.
Icons can be stored in the database or filesystem.
A new permission can limit the amount of Social Groups an individual user can create.
Social Groups can now be transferred between users. The group will only be transferred if the recipient accepts the transfer.
Moderators with the appropriate permission can transfer any group. This is useful when a group owner becomes inactive.

Private Message Changes

Read receipts are automatically accepted when a PM is replied to.
A new Quick Reply can be used to reply to PM's.
A new user option is available to set the default value for 'Save Copy' which is also used with Quick Reply.
PM's can be ordered by Title, Date and Sender.
When ordered, PM's are grouped by:
- Title - Alphabetical ranges (A-H, I-P, Q-Z, 0-9 and other) - Non ASCII chars are grouped based on transliteration where possible
- Date - Today, Yesterday, individual day names, Last Week, 2 Weeks, Last Month, Older, etc.
- Sender - Grouped by Sender
Private Messages can be filtered by Sender, Title, a given date period, and whether the message has been read or not.
Message Throttling. Admins can define a time period and the maximum amount of message each usergroup can send within that period.
Message selections are remembered over multiple pages for bulk actions (Move, delete, mark as read etc).

Profile Privacy

With the appropriate permission, users can now configure which parts of their profile is visible, and to who. The configurable components are:
- Profile Picture
- Visitor Messages
- Contact Info
- Albums
- About Me
- Friends
- Recent Visitors
- Group Memberships
- Custom Field Blocks where the admin has allowed it
The components can be configured to be visible to:
- Everyone
- Registered Members
- Contacts
- Friends

Generally information is only hidden/displayed within the user profile page with the exception of Albums which also affects the ability to view the albums.
Also, custom field blocks can be configured by the admin as to whether they will be included in users' privacy settings.

Albums

Pictures can now be moved from one album to another.
Album covers are regenerated when moving images if the cover is moved, or the destination album has no cover.
The default albums view now displays recently updated public albums.

Lightbox

Lightboxes can now be used to view all images in a post.
Next and Previous buttons can be used to navigate the attachments, and wrap when the first/last image has been reached

Other Changes and Additions

Options and permissions for Human Verification checks have been streamlined. There is now a single bitfield option to select which HV checks are used, and a single permission to select who must pass the HV checks.
Thread tags can now be merged and renamed, and threads are updated to reflect the changes.
Tag selection in the Admin CP is remembered over multiple pages for bulk actions (Delete or Merge).
A new Terms and Conditions link is configurable and displayed in the footer by default.
A new Community link replaces the Members List link with a submenu for Social Groups; Pictures & Albums; Contacts & Friends; and the Members List.
Deleted and Moderated items in the User CP menu have been collapsed into submenus to reduce clutter.
A New Items submenu is also available with the newest Visitor Messages; Group Messages; Group Discussions; Picture Comments and Album Pictures.
Some cleanup has been done on the User CP menu to ensure only links that the user has permission to are displayed.
A new permission to view thumbnails in posts has been added. This allows users to see thumbnails even when they do not have access to view the full image.
Improved RSS filtering for RSS Feed Forums. Terms can now be quoted into phrases, and a new 'match all' option is available.
Templates can now be compared with 'inline diff', reducing the screen space used to find differences while displaying line numbers. Diffs are wrapped in an optional number of lines for context.
Thread Prefix Permissions - Thread prefixes can now be configured so that only certain usergroups may use them.
Support for TypePad Anti-Spam
Username availability now checked via AJAX during registration
Notices can now be configured to be dismissible, allowing users to close notices that they have read.
Post edit histories can be pruned in Admin CP.
Forum rules can be viewed outside of the registration process, which is useful for logged in users when multiple registrations are disabled.
PM Reporting.
Subscription folders can be emptied with one click.
Quick Edit is available for Visitor Messages and Picture Comments, as well as Social Group Messages.
New UTC and user date and time criteria for Notices.
Improvements to Contact List editing. Show Avatars option is now preserved.

If you need any further explanation of any of the features, ask away below.

3.8 Feature Spotlight: More Discussions, Private Messaging

Darren Gordon — Fri, 22 Aug 2008 10:38:51 GMT

Discussions
Last week I was talking about Social Group Discussions. As RvG rightly pointed out, there was no screenshot of the discussions themselves. Mostly the view within a discussion is a lot like the message wall was previously, with the messages now being a little more self contained (like the comments here). Messages are now viewed from top to bottom like threads, with quick replies being added at the bottom. Social bookmarking is also available, and of course inline moderation.

When viewing a discussion, the group information is no longer displayed; allowing the user to focus on the discussion itself.

The discussion list is much like forum threads, or the group list view and has full inline mod, a quick select menu as well as a quick title search.

Private Messaging
This week I want to talk more about a few improvements to Private Messaging.

Previously PM's were only sorted by date. Most people will find this best for their default view, but sometimes you want to see what messages you've had from other people. PM's can now be sorted by sender and title as well as date. Interestingly, the PM's continue to be grouped based on the chosen sort method. For example, if you select Sender, each message will be grouped by the username of the person who sent the message.

...and if you select title, the messages will be grouped within A-H, I-P, Q-Z, 0-9 et cetera.

You can also find messages with a new filter that has been added to select messages within a date range, or by searching the sender or the message title.

Previously you could select several messages to perform an action on them (such as move to folder or delete). However, your selection was limited to a single page. Now you can search through all of your PM's, selecting multiple messages from multiple pages and folders before performing an action on all of them.

The 3.8 release is gaining momentum and you'll be able to see it in action here on vbulletin.com soon. As always, feedback and comments are usefull and welcome :)

P.S. Quick Edit is now available for Visitor Messages and Picture Comments, making moderator's lives that bit easier.

Blog 2.0

Freddie Bingham — Wed, 20 Aug 2008 17:15:04 GMT

Hello,

You may have already noticed that something about the blog has changed. That is because I have updated the blog on vBulletin.com to version 2.0.0 Beta 1. You may not notice a lot of changes at first, since most updates are only visible when you are managing your own blog.

Please take a look around and let me know of anything that appears to not be working by posting in the Blog Bug Tracker.

vBulletin Blog 2.0 will require vBulletin 3.7.3

3.8 Feature Spotlight: Social Group Discussions, Categories

Darren Gordon — Wed, 13 Aug 2008 17:04:41 GMT

I'm Darren Gordon and I've been with Jelsoft Enterprises Ltd for several months. I am currently tasked with bringing some new improvements to vBulletin with 3.8 later this year.

This week I'll be going over a couple of the most requested new features that have been announced.

Social Group Discussions
3.7 shipped with a flat, non threaded message wall in the social groups. The wall is great for leaving messages such as 'hey, nice group!' but isn't that useful when it comes to actually having a meaningful discussion about the chosen topic. In order to greatly enhance the ability of social groups to allow users to talk about their common interests, the social group messages have been threaded with the use of 'discussions'.

By default, the user who created the group can moderate their discussions and the messages within them. Another permission allows users to configure their social groups so that only they can create discussions within that group. This allows users to create social groups with greater control over the subject matter (kinda like a forum with limited 'Can Post Threads' permissions such as the Announcements). Because users can take control of their groups and can be given the primary responsibility for maintaining them, this also reduces the potential extra work for board moderators.

Discussions and messages now also have several features from forums and threads. This creates an interesting scenario where group owners can now see how moderators work with the forums, and allows them to get involved in their own space. Features included:

Full inline moderation (Discussions and Messages)
Quick Editing (Messages)
Subscriptions (Groups and Discussions)
E-mail Notifications (Discussions)
Social Bookmarking (Discussions)
Read Marking (Groups and Discussions)

With read marking, users can mark discussions or entire groups as read, as well as automatic marking when users have read the last post of a discussion, or the last discussion of a group.

Social Group Categories
Each Social Group now belongs to a category. Categories allow users to find groups that are relevant to them, especially on larger boards. The categories are predefined by the board admins. As well as providing suggestions to the users for the kind of groups they could create, this also allows admins to encourage users to create social groups that are relevant to the board as a whole.

Categories are included in the advanced search filters, and can also be viewed individually. Selecting a category displays only the social groups that are in that category.

When upgrading to 3.8, any existing social group messages will be moved into an initial discussion named after the group, and all groups will belong to the inital 'Uncategorized' category, which can then be modified by an admin.

The feature list for 3.8 is pretty much locked down now, but comments and feedback are always welcome :) I'll be posting again soon about as yet unannounced features in vBulletin 3.8. For now, you can take a peek at this...

Blog Development: Sidebar Blocks

Freddie Bingham — Fri, 25 Jul 2008 19:13:04 GMT

Another popular request has been allowing for the manipulation of the user's sidebar. Requests have been put in for custom blocks as well as moving the blocks around. I have added an interface that fulfills both requests. Take a look:

Here we have a list of available blocks. We may move the blocks up and down, as well as disable blocks that we don't wish to display. The forum administrator may set specific blocks so that they can not be moved and can not be disabled. Say, for example, you want the search block to always be at the top.

From here you may also add and edit your own custom blocks. You can see my custom blocks in the above picture, where I had added a links block and a block that just says BLOG.

The block editor is the standard vBulletin WYSIWYG editor.

The allowed number of custom blocks is a usergroup permission, where the ability to create custom blocks can be disabled.

Attached Thumbnails

Blog Development: Group Blogs

Freddie Bingham — Thu, 17 Jul 2008 21:55:37 GMT

The purpose of Group Blogs is to allow multiple forum members to post to the same blog. For example, one could create a new forum user under the name of 'Development Team' and then use one blog for all Developers to post.

How does one join/leave a group blog?

Members must be invited by the blog owner to join a blog. The simple act of inviting someone to your blog and having them accept the invite, makes your blog a "Group Blog". The blog owner must have the "Can Have a Group Blog" permission before being allowed to invite members.

Within the blog control panel, a form similar to friend management is used to invite members. Current blog members are listed, from which you may modify permissions.

Any group blogs that you may belong to, or have been invited to join, are displayed above the form. From here you may join a blog, decline an invite, or leave an existing group blog.

Who can join a group blog?

Anyone with the "Can Join Group Blogs" permission can be invited to join a blog.

What actions can a member perform in a group blog?

The blog owner has several permissions to control the actions that your blog members may perform. Blog members will always be able to post new entries. Beyond that, the following permissions are available:

"Own" refers to entries posted by the member to your blog. All entries still appear under the owner's name but a subtext of "by john doe" now appears throughout the blog.

The Can Manage Other Group Member' Entries permission gives the group member the same permissions as the owner. Group members will never be able to perform an action that the blog owner can not perform. If the blog owner is not allowed to delete entries, then blog members will not be able to either, regardless of what Can Delete Own Blog Entries is set to.

Identifying a group blog

A group blog has a small sidebar block that notifies the viewer that the blog is a group blog. From here, a list of the group members is accessible.

Member profile intergration

A block has been added above the recent entries in the blog section of the 3.7.0 profile. This block lists each blog that user is a member of. Of course, any blogs that can be viewed by the viewer won't be listed.

Release Timeline

Development of the next major release of vBulletin Blog is going to wrap up soon. A public beta will be released shortly after that.

I will post another development update next week.

Attached Thumbnails

Blog Development: Featured Entries

Freddie Bingham — Fri, 27 Jun 2008 15:08:44 GMT

With our first release of vBulletin Blog, you were limited to having only one featured entry. Many of you asked to be able to feature multiple entries at the same time. With that goal in mind, I moved the featured entry settings from the vBulletin Options into a more robust Featured Entry Manager.

Featured Entry Manager

There are three options for choosing an entry to be featured.

Random Entry - An entry is randomly chosen from the defined criteria.
Specific Entry - Blogid of the desired entry is given.
Latest Entry - The latest entry based on the defined criteria.

The 'defined criteria' is the meat of the system, the various aspects of the entry that allow you to limit the results.

Defined Criteria

You will be able to limit entries based on

Username (Random and Latest)
Primary Usergroup (Random and Latest)
Secondary Usergroup (Random and Latest)
Specific Date Range (Random)

In addition to these limits, you may also choose to only pull entries from

Past 24 hours
Past Week
Past Month
Past Year
The Beginning

You can also choose to enable bbcode parsing per featured entry. The random and latest featured entries are cached and you may define the cache period independently. You can check for the latest blog entry every 1 minute and choose a random entry every hour.

Your new front page could look like:

Check back soon for more information on the forthcoming blog update.

Project Tools 2.0.0 Alpha Installed on vB.com!

Mike Sullivan — Wed, 25 Jun 2008 16:09:29 GMT

The new version of the Project Tools has been installed here on vB.com. Check it out!

The last couple blog posts covered some of the new features, but I hope you'll stumble upon a few others. That said, there's a lot behind the scenes that you won't see.

If you find anything you think is a bug, please take a look at the bug list. From there, you can report a new bug. Make sure to select 2.0.0 Alpha from the version list! :)

Enjoy!

PT Feature Spotlight: New Post Indicators, Milestones

Mike Sullivan — Tue, 24 Jun 2008 16:44:52 GMT

The new version of the Project Tools is pretty close to making it's appearance here on vB.com. There are some loose ends to tie up and some other things I want to do, but they can be done once it's on vB.com.

Today, I want to point out one feature that will be really obvious as soon as you use the new version and another that you'll have to play with on your own installation. The latter wasn't mentioned in the initial announcement, so hopefully that'll be a nice surprise. :)

New Post Indicators
As I mentioned in the initial announcement, this covers the standard things handled by the forums. It uses the existing read marking option to do persistent read marking (or simple cookie read marking). Read marking happens at 2 levels: the individual issue and each issue type in a project. This allows some pretty interesting interactions. Let's look at a project entry on the projects overview page:

This is the icon that shows you at a glance whether the project has unread posts.
A bold display indicates that this issue type has new content. If only one of the types is bold, you can simply click on the name to go straight to that type's issue list (like in PT 1.0).
There are 2 numbers here now. They represent " / ". Frankly, saying there are 10,000 bugs isn't particularly useful. You probably want to know how many of them are still outstanding. The active/complete state is a setting that you can set for each issue status. It's also used by the milestones.
This column represents last post now, showing your standard information. If the last post was private and you can view all private content, you'll see that reflected here too.

Of course, there are the other features that you'd expect:

Bold issue titles when there are unread posts. The "go to new post" image is also included.
Project-level and type-level read marking is available.
Subscribed issues in the user CP are shown until you read them.
"Find New Issues" links are available from the search dropdowns within the PT. Everyone wants them integrated in the "new posts" link in the navbar, but this is really not feasible at this time. Some sort of integration might be done to make it easier to get from new forum posts to new PT posts. Tweaks are still being made. :)

Milestones
Milestone management is probably the biggest improvement to the project management tools provided in the new version of the PT. Milestones are defined per project with a few settings:

Milestone title
Description
Target date (read: deadline)
Completed date

Once you create a milestone, you start adding issues to that milestone. This allows you to very quickly track progress towards a particular goal. With the new active/completed distinction for issues, you can see at a glance how close you are to your goal.

Some people may have been using the 2 version fields each issue has to track this, but that's really not ideal. Bugs have a version that they apply to and a version they were fixed in. The applicable version isn't the version that you want the fix to be made in. For example, some of our larger bugs may have been reported against 3.6 but are really only targetted for 4.0. Milestones centralize this target handling and make it easier to use.

Milestones can be used in several ways. One of the common uses is to make a milestone for every release and then assign issues as necessary. The release notes can then come from that milestone. Another alternative (actually, you can use both if you want) is to specify several milestones as you work towards a goal. For example, there might be a list of issues that need to be completed for a meeting. After that meeting, you move on to more issues. It's really just a method to group your issues together into one goal, jumping across issue types.

Before I move on to screenshots, there are 2 new permissions to control milestones. There's one to control who can set milestones, but there's also one to control who can view milestones. If you don't have milestone viewing permissions, you won't be able to see anything about milestones... ok, except one limitation. The issue change tracking will tell you that the issue's milestone has been changed, but you won't be able to see any other details.

Right, screenshots! :)

This is your milestone overview page for a particular project. It will show you all active milestones by default, with a separate click to view the completed milestones. That leads me into another comment: you have to manually complete a milestone in the admin CP. It won't automatically complete itself when it gets to 100%. We did think about doing this, but it opened up a big can of worms: should we automatically reopen a milestone if necessary? What if one issue is added and it gets completed before all the issues are added? Manual completion gets around all that, at the price of a little more work.

You can see that we're using the new active/completed option to give you a nice completion percentage. :)

Diving into a milestone and you get a pretty similar display. The main thing here is that you see the latest changes in that milestone.

It was available on the overview page as well, but the counts above the completion percentage take you to an issue list page, filtered to just that issue state (active/completed/all):

There are also options to search within a particular milestone. You can get to a milestone-centric advanced search, but only from these pages. The PT advanced search is incredibly complex as is, so we didn't want to add another control that varied with the project you selected. When you do a milestone search, you will automatically be filtered down to that milestone.

Adding the milestone chooser to each issue necessitated a large change to the issue display:

This display allows for a much more flexible display of issue metadata. While the grid method in 1.0 served it's purpose well, it became very hard to add or remove things to it. This method doesn't have any particular limits on what data must be displayed.

We're keen to get your feedback on the new issue metadata display. Let us know what you think! :)

Once the PT appears on vB.com, I'm sure you'll find some other features that haven't been mentioned yet. Though there will probably still be a few that you won't see. I should probably cover those next time... :D

PT Feature Spotlight: Project Subscriptions, Assignment Notification

Mike Sullivan — Tue, 17 Jun 2008 17:03:03 GMT

The recent Project Tools Update announcement has been received well. Today, I'm just going to expand on some of the features listed in the announcement, to give you an idea of what exactly is covered and what it looks like. If you don't like it, let us know. :)

Project Subscriptions
This was the first or second most requested feature. The implementation is mostly like forum subscriptions, as you'd probably expect. Despite the name, users actually subscribe to a specific issue type (or multiple issue types) within a project. You might be interested in getting a daily update about the bugs, but not about any features.

The form to subscribe is simple enough:

This doesn't directly let you set different subscription levels to different issue types, though you can do that by visiting the page multiple times.

Project subscriptions are managed on the same page as issue subscriptions (in the User CP):

A simple enough display. You can see that it shows last post info for that each specific issue type, rather than folding it together for the entire project. (Yes, full last post information.)

Something else you might notice: management is done with check boxes and a drop-down at the bottom. In PT 1.0, we experimented with having a drop-down for each issue subscription. This didn't work particularly well, so both project and issue subscriptions use this method now.

As I mentioned at the beginning, this implementation is very much like forum subscriptions. This means that the options are a daily or weekly digest format:

Quote:

Subject: "Bugs" Update in "Project Name" Project

Dear User Name,

You are subscribed to "Bugs" posted in "Project Name". There have been 0 new issues(s) and 1 updated issue(s) since the last digest.

http:///project.php?do=issuelist&projectid=1&issuetypeid=b ug

The following issues are new:

The following issues have been updated with new posts:
************
Issue Title
http:///project.php?issueid=17
Started by: test user
Last post: Jun 17th 2008 03:54pm

All the best,
Forum

~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~
To manage your issue and project subscriptions, click here:
http:///projectpost.php?do=managesubscriptions

Notification of Issue Assignment
If project subscriptions weren't the most requested feature, this was. It notifies a user via email when they are assigned to an issue by someone else. There have been some requests to send a private message instead of an email for this, but for now it will stand at email--if you'd prefer sending by PMs, please let us know and we can re-evaluate.

Quote:

Subject: Assigned to Issue "Issue Title"

Dear User Name,

You have been assigned to the issue "Issue Title" by Other User.

http:///project.php?issueid=16

Project: Project Name
Issue Type: Bug

All the best,
Forum

As you'd expect, if you assign yourself to an issue you won't be emailed. However, you will in all other cases, regardless of the state of the issue.

Users will not be able to control whether or not they receive an email on assignment. It is an admin-specified option per project. This method was chosen to keep the power of notification within the hands of the management team; the manager would want to make sure that you know you were assigned to an issue. :)

That's it for this time. Next time we'll expand on some of the other features mentioned in the announcement... or maybe even cover some new ones!

MySQLi

Floris — Thu, 15 May 2008 18:10:37 GMT

With MySQL v3 out of the way, and MySQL 4 and 5 being used everywhere now (and if you have not upgraded to the latest stable .. shame on you) I think it is time to point out that you can use MySQLi for your code, software and sites. This blog is to inform you about MySQLi and give you information so you can decide to upgrade and if you have already to perhaps use it on your vBulletin installation.

More information about MySQLi can be found here: http://www.php.net/mysqli and http://dev.mysql.com/doc/refman/5.0/...ql-mysqli.html
Using MySQLi with vBulletin might not give you huge benefits, but I have it turned on for my setups.
Some of the benefits of using MySQLi (improved) are:

support for transactions for the storage engine InnoDB (autocommit, commit and rollback)
prepared statements
secure mysql connections
multi query
object oriented interface

More details about these benefits can be found here: http://www.charlesrowe.com/2007/06/1...its-of-mysqli/
And to save time here�s a great article for experienced developers: http://devzone.zend.com/node/view/id/686
In regards to vBulletin, once you check phpinfo(); and see you can use MySQLi you can go to your config.php file and set $config['Database']['dbtype'] to mysqli, default is mysql.
$config['Database']['dbtype'] = �mysqli�; And if your tables and HTML charset are set to UTF-8 you can also set $config['Mysqli']['charset'] to utf8, default is uncommented. And $config['Mysqli']['ini_file'] to �, default is �.
$config['Mysqli']['charset'] = �utf8′; $config['Mysqli']['ini_file'] = �; Again, I now have my forums use MySQLi and I have no problems, but do not notice a great improvement. I am just happy to think that vBulletin can make use of it.

Installing APC on CentOS 5 Server

Floris — Thu, 24 Apr 2008 16:43:12 GMT

Bigger PHP applications, such as vBulletin can gain a lot of increased performance from running a PHP op-code cache/accelerator such as APC.

Here are some instructions on how install APC on various systems, my personal experience is with what appears the most common: 32bit CentOS 5 Server.

APC is maintained by core PHP developers, APC does not utilze a disk cache, unlike both eAccelerator and Xcache (although it is probably configurable). URL: http://pecl.php.net/package/APC

A drawback to consider is that due to known segfaults you could get an increase in error 500 or blank pages.

vBulletin 3.7 RC4 came with this in the announcement: "We recommend that vBulletin 3.7 is run on PHP 5.2.5 with APC (or a similar opcode cache) and MySQL 5.0.51 for best performance and stability."

Here are some instructions on how install APC on various systems and how to let vBulletin take use of it. My personal experience is with what appears the most common: 32bit CentOS 5 Server

Please note, due to installed control panels installation instructions might differ, this is for a dedicated box with no control panel.

Lets first install the pecl command so we can later download and install APC from the repositories.

Code:

yum install php-pear

and we will need the following package

Code:

yum install php-devel

and we probably need the apxs command

Code:

yum install httpd-devel

Now we have all the software we need, so we install apc via the pecl command:

Code:

pecl install apc

To enable apc in Apache's configuration. The following command should do this for us.

Code:

echo "extension=apc.so" > /etc/php.d/apc.ini

Then we restart Apache:

Code:

/etc/init.d/httpd start

(though: service httpd restart should work too)
You can find out if APC is now running by loading a phpinfo() page (vBulletin AdminCP > Maintenance > phpinfo) and search for APC block.

Now that it works, go into the includes/config.php file and enable the datastore class to use APC:
Find:

Code:

// $config['Datastore']['class'] = 'vB_Datastore_Filecache';

and replace it with

Code:

$config['Datastore']['class'] = 'vB_Datastore_APC';

Still in the config.php file you will now find (from 3.7.1 and up) the following option:

Code:

// $config['Datastore']['prefix'] = '';

I recommend to change this if you have multiple forums running on the same box. Since each of my forums uses a unique table prefix based on the domain name, I am using this table prefix for the datastore APC prefix too. Example; my web site vbulletin-fans.com is vbfans_ as table prefix. So I will use this for this instance:

Code:

$config['Datastore']['prefix'] = 'vbfans_';

Keep this as simple and short as possible, but unique.

To test if it works your PEAR/APC should have come with a file called apc.php. You can now copy this to your vBulletin's directory and edit the file. Set a new user/pass for authentication and load the file in your browser. When you're done you can remove the apc.php file from this public dir.

And you're done.

I hope this helps some site owners to get a bit more performance out of their vBulletin powered community and give their visitors a more snappy experience. Note that 3.7 support APC but it works just as well without it. Hopefully in the future (say version 4 and up) vBulletin will make more and better use of op-cache like APC.

Vista ICC Profiles Gamma Table Bug - Official Information at Last!

Kier — Wed, 05 Mar 2008 22:26:04 GMT

Anyone who runs a color-calibrated workflow and has switched to Vista will be aware that there is a serious problem relating to ICC profiles having their gamma values periodically 'forgotten' by Vista.

Thus far, in order to get around this, I have been using a freeware tool called 'Display Profile' to force Vista to load up the correct profile and gamma LUT for my displays. However, as I run a triple-monitor setup, that means a lot of messing around each time Vista breaks the profiles - which happens a lot, due to the way that the Zend Studio for Eclipse has to be run with Administrative privileges, causing a UAC confirmation every time I want to run the application.

I've been keeping a regular eye on what appears to be the best Google result for information on this subject, here at NeoSmart.net, but so far it's all been bad news.

Today, I read in a comment on that blog that said that as far as the author could tell, Vista SP1 does not address the problem, so I got in touch with the Windows Experience Color Team and received a very helpful and informative response from their program manager.

To summarize, it's a known problem (and has been known for a long time) and it's caused by the fade-to-black transitions that Vista uses during login, resume, UAC check etc. The black fade is achieved by manipulating the gamma tables, but after the fade is completed the system fails to restore the correct values.

There will not be a fix in Vista SP1, but the fix has been cleared for release as a Windows Update Hotfix shortly after SP1.

Hooray!

A new year

Jerry — Tue, 05 Feb 2008 21:26:34 GMT

Well some Quad core ImpEx development action is leading to some much needed benchmarking now with the help of Zend Studio for Eclipse.

Finding the bottle necks on the bigger imports is leading to order of magnitude of speed increases.

The ImpEx2 plans to compliment vB4 go well ....

Customized my profiles and made a quick link for everybody!

Floris — Tue, 04 Dec 2007 22:27:52 GMT

So, 3.7 introduces social profiles, with albums, groups and the ability to customize the way your profile looks.

~ awesome ~

Now, I've updated mine a little bit so it's more 'mine' and easy to recognize. If anybody wants to use the gradient image: enjoy!

I've also decided to use my personal domain newvb.com as a shortcut to my profile. But, I thought it would be nice to give everybody this ability too, so here goes:

http://newvb.com/floris

That's mine, just enter your vbcom username instead of mine, like: http://newvb.com/kier or (use %20 for space in a link, but in a browser you can just type space) http://newvb.com/steve%20machol

Much easier to remember right, then the long url http://www.vbulletin.com/forum/member.php?u=11606 with a weird number :p

I can't wait for 3.7 to run on my live web sites!

Oh btw, You can post your newvb.com/name customized profiles here: http://www.vbulletin.com/forum/showthread.php?t=250674

Stuff 2 Blog

Jerry — Thu, 06 Sep 2007 18:33:47 GMT

Well ImpEx gets it's first new product to support, which puts us well over the hundred systems supported ..... no to some (on going) refactoring and evolution to stay on top of the growing system and customers requirements :)

Web Design Development - Simplicity in complexity - Part 2 of 3

Floris — Thu, 30 Aug 2007 19:20:52 GMT

Web Design Development

"Simplicity in complexity"

Over the next three days I will be writing up three blog entries for people interested in the thought process of web design development; I will provide a few fundamental tips that should give you a head start over others who usually don't keep these in mind, and then fail to perform as a freelancer or contract designer.

This is part 2 of 3 : Simplicity in complexity

A basic rule that has been discussed on the web a lot and in professional books over decades of time is the KISS principle. Keep It Simple, Stupid. I therefore rather forward you to the WikiPedia entry for the details then repeat it once more. http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/KISS_principle

What I want to talk about is not getting overwhelmed in the source code, the files, the design, and everything that is part of the site you're working on. A single web page could have all the javascript in it, all the stylesheet code in it, and all the PHP and XHTML code in it. A web site could also have many directories with functions, classes, include files, pictures, etc. Finding the right balance and thinking ahead of time while staying flexible for change is key here, and very important to master. I recommend to consider how you're going to build the pages, without forgetting that the site will grow in the future with perhaps more content, sections and traffic.

In order to achieve that design you're developing, keep it as simple as possible on the back-end of things. Name the filenames to something short and obvious, put them in their obvious directory. While you're coding don't forget to comment what you're doing so others on the team can learn and understand how you've done it. But don't overdo it. There's no need to have an includes/ directory and then prefix the filenames with inc_ so you know they're an include file. This is already obvious since they're inside the includes/ directory. I hope you get my drift.

For the front-end it is even more important perhaps to apply the KISS principle. Don't end up with a design that's build out of graphics that take up over 40% of the web page, so there's only space for smallfont text as content. Because the content is the most important thing for the visitor. That's what they come for. Not the big shiny gradient around it. Play with different layouts, remove what is not important and not really needed. Keep it clean and use the real-estate of a page smart. Use bigger fonts if there's space for it, don't hide your content. A real life example is perhaps Google. Even with advertisements on their page you see at first glance what the content is you're looking for. And they're still filling the page with ads, a top menu, a logo, your account info and additional option. An appealing design doesn't start with making and finding images to fill the page with. It's the subtle way you can add finesse to your layout so the content is displayed properly.

I recommend you train yourself. Go to the top 250 web sites you know, and write down the first thing that comes to mind for what you don't like, and do like. You will soon realize as a visitor and a designer what you think works and doesn't work. And then figure out what is the magic for a good layout and design, and what you should avoid at all times.

Developing a design for a client is a tough job. It's not easy, and it shouldn't be. Mastering XHTML/CSS is almost an art; It's very complex, but don't get overwhelmed and think ahead, play with alternative design options and find the simplicity in the complexity. Then the design will be appealing, easy to use, and your client will be happy.

If you missed yesterday's part 1 of 3 you can find it here : http://www.vbulletin.com/forum/blog.php?b=1248 And check back tomorrow for part 3 of 3, I will be talking about dealing with the issues of incompatibilities between browsers.

Web Design Development - From vision to precision - Part 1 of 3

Floris — Tue, 28 Aug 2007 23:31:21 GMT

Web Design Development

"From vision to drafts"

Over the next three days I will be writing up three blog entries for people interested in the thought process of web design development; I will provide a few fundamental tips that should give you a head start over others who usually don't keep these in mind, and then fail to perform as a freelancer or contract designer.

This is part 1 of 3 : From vision to drafts

Each time you start with a project you should dedicate yourself to it by fully understanding what the client wants. Realize this is not a one time session and plan ahead to evaluate drafts and to email or phone in for additional information or for follow up questions. This is part of the research & development (R&D) process that goes before you even pick up a pencil and paper and write-, and sketch out ideas. Without understanding the vision of the client you will not even be able to complete the project for 50%, no matter how good you are.

When a cloud of ideas is presented, a vision is drawn out, and the work is cut out for you, it will be time to take notes and draw sketches on paper. Diagrams are not always that quick and simple on a computer, taking notes alone simply doesn't cut it in a project manager. Ripping up paper when an idea to paper doesn't work out is as easy as deleting a document, and your creative freedom isn't bound to the restrictions of features and options in a computer program. Of course, once it is worked out on paper, and the puzzle pieces seem to fit, you can convert it to the digital world. Using the right tools you can create quick visual drafts that you can present to the client. This will give him (or her) the opportunity to review what has been discussed, and decide whether or not to continue with the project, take a different approach, or expand it with ideas for the future. Or simply reshape a few things.

It's time to discuss with the client the fundamentals of the design throughout the site. And that's where this three part blog is really about. When you create the work for a client, shape it, move it from vision to the real world, and do a good job, you should keep a few things in mind. Ensure that you have build an opportunity for the client to earn back his investment in you. It will result in you doing a good job, and probably getting hired in the future again.

My first of three tip is probably the most important one.

Branding.

If you see a red box with curly letters you don't really read what's written on it, your brain already thinks Coca Cola. Using the logo throughout the design, including the use of colours and font face is key. The visitor of the web site should instantly recognize the brand, and automatically adapt to it. The visitor should remember it and learn to understand the brand by simply browsing the site. It is very important to find the balance between a huge header just to span a logo, and a subtle in-line image placement. An eye for design is a requirement. If you lack this talent - delegate. Get someone else on your team who does to advice, and then trust their experience and professionalism.

The branding is very important for a company, it helps them increase awareness, market share, and eventually sales. I still consider a web site to be a digital business card, so branding is as much important on-line as it is off-line. Make sure in your R&D process that you understand their branding, use it in the design. And think about the future, because we all know site changes are imminent as branding and the site (content) will grow.

Ok, this first entry is a little bit long, as I wanted to give a bit of background and a start up idea. Check back tomorrow for the second blog of this three part writing. I will then discuss how to find simplicity in complexity.

OpenDNS - Using it, loving it, recommending it.

Floris — Mon, 27 Aug 2007 17:55:38 GMT

It's been a while since I had issues with my internet service provider's name servers. But ever since I got recommended to check out OpenDNS (.com) I never looked back. All my family members and my own routers are set up now to use OpenDNS instead. And so far everybody's happy. I block the phising, bad, sexual oriented, adult sites, etc. And I am not longer depending on the lame update times on the cache from my ISP.

Who else is on OpenDNS?

Edited by .. in the blog (UUUGLY!)

Floris — Fri, 10 Aug 2007 23:51:53 GMT

Sorry for my little rant, but I just noticed vBcom is running the latest version of the blog and when I now edit a post it has:

Last edited by Floris : Today at 1:49am.

eew, I don't like that. A blog entry should just be as clean as possible and not look like a forum thread. It will be one of the things I will remove from my own web sites when I ugprade. Because I just don't ike it.

Alternative usages of the Project Tools

Floris — Sat, 21 Jul 2007 10:30:00 GMT

Hm, very interesting. I have been thinking about how to use the project tools in different ways then intended. For example, on one of my sites I use it as a support area for a style I've created. Another site I use it as a 'web site suggestion box' where users can post suggestions and discuss them with the staff and other members. On vBFans I also use it internally as 'staff tools', so we can discuss features, and add to do items for staff members.

What unique ways have you come up with to use the project tools for?

If you don't know what PT is, check the announcement forum here on vBcom :) It's a management tool that Jelsoft is now selling as official product, and I really like it! It's pretty cheap, so get yourself a license if you haven't :p

What I like about the Project Tools is that it is really flexible. It has enough features and options to play with to make it just the way you'd like to have it on your site. It integrates just fine, and adapts to the vB style really well.

What I miss so far is for example an option for a proper timeline and a roadmap and a more 'clean' interface that makes it more user friendly and easier to understand/learn.

But for a first version it really is complete, and it has the functionality I have been looking for to manage projects and work with clients on features and items for web design. And it lets me handle tasks with staff members and have a place for my community to provide feedback. So I am really happy with it.

Hopefully someone reading this has a few cool suggestions :)

Moving the Blog Sidebar

Kier — Fri, 13 Jul 2007 10:36:34 GMT

You've probably noticed that the blog sidebar has now moved to the left of the main content.

The original intention had always been to have the sidebar to the right, as this would allow the main content to sit nestled up to the left margin. You can see several style changes I made to facilitate getting the content as far left as possible such as the new skinny vertical 'thead' bars on entry and comment lists.

Unfortunately, with some customers insisting that 800 pixel wide screen resolutions must still be supported, and others posting massively wide images in their blog entries, there can now be no alternative but to move the sidebar to the left so that the main content does not overflow underneath it.

Other problems with the sidebar on the right included the fact that the vBulletin text editor is a few pixels too wide for the layout at 800x600 when all of its buttons are shown and so the margin between the editor and the sidebar disappear with the sidebar located on the right.

Anyway, it's done now. I hope you still like it. I just wanted to explain some of the reasons why it was necessary to move it.

Three Ways to Define CSS Styles (Part 1)

Floris — Fri, 06 Jul 2007 14:26:42 GMT

This is a basic introduction tutorial for people who want to learn a bit more about CSS. A three part blog where I will focus on explaining the three different ways on where to define your CSS styles. I will show the difference between inline-, embedded-, and external CSS.

When you are creating your web page you should keep in mind how you are going to build it. Using XHTML you can define the layout of the page, and using CSS you can control the design. When you build you site you will get at least one page, but surely you will have several. A great rule of thumb that I stick to is creating a global or a 'master' css stylesheet that each page can use. This is my external CSS definition style. If I then have a single page with exceptions to this master style I either choose to create a subsection external stylesheet, or write it inside that particular page as an embedded CSS definition style. And finally if there's an exception to a particular tag I will probably write it inline CSS to define it for that particular tag.

Now, don't let the above text confuse and scare you off .. I will try my best to simplify it with an explanation and a small example

External CSS Stylesheet

Say you know beforehand that all the images on all your page should not have a border. You could write this in each page (embedding it), but what if you change your mind at a later point? You will have to go through all the pages. Instead, use an separate file, and in your web page you link to this file.

Now if you change the content of the stylesheet file, all pages which will load it will have this change applied. Not only does this allow better caching which speeds up the page, it also speeds up your development work. And it gives your pages a more consistent look and feel. Another example could be that you wish to have the pages to have the font 'Arial', but later wish to test it with 'Helvetica' or 'Verdana'. A single file change will allow you to update all your pages in one go.

How should my master stylesheet look like?

First of all, you can name it whatever you want. As long as it ends with .css. I recommend to keep it short, simple, and name it something obvious. For example, you could name it global.css or master.css.

The content of the file should not start with the style tags and such, instead you can just start writing out your classes. For example, my master.css file could look like this:

How do I link to this master stylesheet from my web page?

Once you gave the external stylesheet a name you can link to it from your web pages. The link tag has to be in between the head tags. In the below example I have highlighted the link tag, you can see it is in between the head tags. The line is wrapped to two pages, but that is just to make the screenshot less wide.

And that is all there is to it to remote link to your stylesheet. Which is one of the three ways to include and define CSS into your web pages.

Tomorrow I will continue with the second way: embedded stylesheet.

Check back soon!

Got a Domain? Protect Yourself From Scams and Spam

Floris — Fri, 06 Jul 2007 14:22:12 GMT

If you are the owner of a domain name I strongly recommend to consider using the anonymous option or purchase a whois guard or protection plan with the registrar. Some offer them for free, some offer them for a small fee. Because anybody can call the public WHOIS records and contact you by mail, phone, or even at home.

Both GoDaddy.com and Namecheap.com offer WHOIS protection for a small fee. I personally use NameCheap.com (excellent service and products) and use WHOIS guard service on all my domain names. I believe NameCheap.com is free the first year and then about four dollars per year. But if you read the following, probably totally worth it.

Here's the deal. If you have registered a domain you are required by the rules of the registrar to use your real and valid contact details. This includes your (company) name, address details, phone number and email address. The downside is that users (especially spammers and scammers) can later request these details that are listed on your WHOIS records. This is free, and very easy to do. As a result you might receive spam emails, and even more worrying scam emails. They have your full details so you can receive them through email, snail mail, or per phone. Something I am sure you wish to avoid.

What and how does this happen?

Every registrar on the web offers a whois lookup service and this is what is getting abused by these scammers and spammers. They request the details of the domain name, and it lists the registrant contact, administrative contact , and technical contact details. Let's take virb.com as example. In my unix terminal I query WHOIS virb.com and after a second I get the following details:

Administrative Contact:
Media Inc., Unborn domains@unbornmediainc.com
119 Braintree St.
Suite 603
Boston, Massachusetts 02134
United States
6179872324 Fax -- 6179872327

Which tells me who to contact for administrative questions regarding the virb.com domain name. That's all fine (not that I need that, but ok) What a spammer does next is send spam email to domains@unbornmediainc.com And a popular scam these days is that a scammer sends a 'fake' bill to these contact details. For example, charging for getting the domain premium listed on a directory. Of course, the company or owner of the domain never requested this service and the fine print on this fake bill reads 'this is not actually a bill'.

But why does it work? Simply because bigger companies or people with little knowledge of how things work on the web do not read the fine print and think this is a service that comes with the domain name and should pay.

So how does WHOIS protection work?

Companies where you can register your domain are starting to offer more and more this special whois guard protection to keep your real data in the records internally, but for the public they provide fake information to keep you anonymous and your privacy details protected.

For example, my domain vbulletin-fans.com is registered with namecheap.com and I use their whoisguard protection service. When I do a whois vbulletin-fans.com from my unix prompt I get the following:

Administrative Contact:
WhoisGuard
WhoisGuard Protected (28db75a2e3144af18a87b6bac164e373.protect@whoisgua rd.com)
+1.6613102107
Fax: +1.6613102107
8939 S. Sepulveda Blvd
8939 S. Sepulveda Blvd
Westchester, CA 90045
US

As you can see, a random email address is generated, and a whois guard address, phone number and name is used. Now I do not receive the spam emails, snail mails, fake phone calls, or scam bills.

And as an alternative I have means on my own web site for people who need to contact me and have a valid reason to do so.

Even if it costs about four bucks average per year, isn't it a value worth to avoid those annoying spam message and especially to protect yourself from those unexpected fake bills? I think it is, so I thought it would be nice to inform all my friends about it!

Where can I get this?

Basically the top 25 of domain registrars offer this service. Check out their web site. Personally I recommend namecheap.com.

Extra tip?

Yep, you can always enter fake info when you register, but remember that registrars do not allow this. A better alternative is to register a PO box and use that address for contact details and get a unique gmail account.

digg this

My Suggestions for the vBulletin 4.0 User Interface.

Wayne Luke — Thu, 05 Jul 2007 18:30:02 GMT

Here is a list of my suggestions that I would like to see in the vBulletin 4.0 user interface. These aren't necessarily design issues but things I would like to see.

1) Reduction of dropdowns. I know its hard to offer controls to features in a limited space. But instead of a forum tools menu, it would be nice if we had a widget bar with control icons. Also the search box should not be hidden and should be context sensitive. What drop down menus are left should be done with CSS unordered lists for a lighter application.

2) PNG icons and buttons throughout. Even if they are matted and don't support alpha-transparency, they should be used. This will allow easier style changes and people can use alpha transparent PNG files for great effects in their layouts.

3) Lightboxes for image attachments. Hover over the thumbnail and the larger one appears. No clicking, no loading a new page.

4) URLs that open in the same browser window by default. Users should know by now to right-click or CTRL-Click links to open in a new tab or window. This would provide a better consistent flow with other existing Web 2.0 applications and pave the way for XHTML Strict.

5) Advanced CSS editor without the boxes. Just show me the entire thing if possible.

6) Include EditArea in the template and plugin editor for line numbering, search and other features.

I am sure I will come up with more as time goes on. I am not a developer and don't know if they will get implemented but better to post them.

vBulletin Blog!

Kier — Thu, 05 Jul 2007 17:33:00 GMT

vBulletin Blog Installed on vBulletin.com

Have you noticed the Blogs link up there in the navbar?

The development of the vBulletin blogging product has progressed to the point where we have installed it onto vBulletin.com's forum for the use of all licensed registered visitors, in order to receive feedback and bug reports etc.

Currently we are running only the blogging component, not the social networking part, which needs further work before being ready for deployment here.

Please feel free to blog away with the tools at your disposal, and make use of trackback and/or pingback to link your blog at vb.com to blogs elsewhere - this is one of the primary things we'd like to test on a larger scale here on vbulletin.com.

Before you start blogging, you may want to add a name and description to your blog. This can be done via your Blog Control Panel, a link to which can be found on every blog page, or in the list of links from your User Control Panel. It would probably also be useful to set your default blogging options and create some blog categories, the forms for which are also in the Blog Control Panel.

We hope you enjoy exploring vBulletin's new Blog systems and we look forward to receiving your feedback.

The opening blog

Jerry — Wed, 04 Jul 2007 18:39:18 GMT

Hello all

All is well in the world of ImpEx at the moment, new development on forum systems is on hold while the blog core is added to ImpEx and the separate systems developed, which is the current development task.

As for the core the next thing after the blog systems is the database logging and front end display of the failed data items for Tier 1. A update in the language from failed to not valid also to differentiate between the two diffrent states that can result in not importing (i.e. a ImpEx bug/miss parse opposed to a post with no valid thread).

On a personal note, Onyx had his medical and for 13 he's doing just fine, still doesn't like carrot though is enjoying the sun.

A list of vBulletin files?

Floris — Wed, 04 Jul 2007 13:58:23 GMT

Every so now and then I have support tickets or questions from friends asking if a certain file is part of vBulletin or not. They're also interested to see the changes between releases, maybe a file is new or now outdated.

To make a quick search for myself, and to quickly find which files belongs to what directory I have created a little vbls (vBulletin List) script that displays it neatly on a web page. Having it online means that you can also take a look.

I will only cover the latest stable releases per branch and list only vBulletin's official products. Note please that vbls is not an official Jelsoft page or script, nor will it be shared or supported. Regardless I hope it is a nice resource to some customers.

https://www.vbulletin-setup.com/files/

From the menu at the top you can select either one of the vBulletin latest stable releases and get their listing, or one of the official products. Optionally you can reset (default is the latest stable vBulletin forum software release version) and a link back to vBulletin.com

The legend is listed at the top, explaining what the colours mean. For example, if you see a directory it will list in a different colour. You can also click on the directory name, this will then highlight somewhere on the page the files in that directory. This way you can browse down and find out which files are inside this directory.

This is a listing, you can't use the files, download, view or edit them.

Attached Thumbnails

vBulletin Config Script Generator

Floris — Wed, 04 Jul 2007 12:32:58 GMT

I have been asked several times if there isn't an easier way for customers to create or edit the config.php.new file for first time installations. After a bit of thinking I had a great idea and realized it.

One can now go to my web site and it will create a config.php file for vBulletin 3.7.1 that's ready for use. All it takes is for the user to enter the MySQL details and click generate. Very simply. Come check it out.

Note: This is not an official Jelsoft script and it is not supported by the vBulletin staff either.

https://www.vBulletin-Setup.com/