ProBoards Blog

Version 5 Demo Video

2008-07-18T20:22:00.000-07:00

We've released a new Verision 5 Demo Video for your viewing pleasure. While we won't be moving towards a beta this month, we felt it would be good to make a video showing some of the great new features you can expect to see in the future.

If you'd like to join in the discussion regarding this video, head on over to this thread on ProBoards Support.

Server Upgrades

2008-07-11T19:11:00.000-07:00

Some of our servers are running on older hardware, and today we're going to start moving data from some of these older dual-core machines over to brand new quad-core servers.

This upgrade should be seamless from a user's perspective. Any large forums may take up to a few minutes to transfer, and during that time we will be displaying our standard "Backup in Progress" message.

The following servers will have their hardware upgraded with this move:

25, 30, 31, 32, 34, 35, 36, 37, 38, 39, 40, 41, 42, 43, 44, 49, 50, 51, 77

This process may take up to a few days to complete for us to get through all of these machines.

Win a ProBoards Mousepad!

2008-07-07T15:12:00.000-07:00

I've decided to start the first ever "Make Patrick Hold Stuff" contest over at ProBoards Support. If you'd like to have a little bit of fun and have a chance win a limited edition free mousepad then go check it out the contest!

Just in case you don't know who Patrick is...

He's the founder and owner of ProBoards. That about sums it up. Oh, and he doesn't really have mutant fingers in case you were wondering.

3rd Backup Server

2008-07-07T01:09:00.000-07:00

Our 3rd backup server is now online and appears to be functioning properly. We will be monitoring it throughout the week to ensure that it has no problems.

As an update to our last entry, we hope to have the "backup status" display available to all forums within the next 2 weeks. We do have a (working) demo of it here on our support forum.

Backup Server Updates

2008-07-02T17:17:00.001-07:00

We've determined that even with 2.6 terabytes of space that we're going to need more. To that end we've ordered a 3rd server with an additional 1.3 terabytes of hard drive space. This server should come online within the next 48 hours. With our new backup solution we have all forums backing up on a weekly basis.

Also, I wanted to touch on a planned feature related to our backups. In the future we will be offering an option from your admin panel to view when the latest backup of your forum was made. This way you can be assured that a backup of your forum is available in the event of data loss.

Further to this, we are planning offer a paid backup restore feature which will allow you to revert your forum back to the state it was in when our last backup was made. Details on pricing and availability will come in the future.

Please note that this feature is not currently available, but it is in the works for a future update. I do not have a planned release date at this time.

YouTube Video Support Added

2008-06-30T23:03:00.001-07:00

As part of our never-ending effort to bring ProBoards members the latest and greatest options and features for their boards, we've implemented support for YouTube videos across all forums!

In order to take advantage of this new feature, simply type:

[youtube]YouTube Video URL Here[/youtube]

You can also use [yt]URL[/yt] as a "shortcut" to the longer [youtube] tag.

Enjoy!

New, Larger Backup Servers

2008-06-24T01:16:00.000-07:00

We just got our 2 new backup servers online from The Planet giving us 2.6 terabytes of space for backups.

Our staff is working on migrating our backup systems to these 2 machines which will then allow us to make more frequent backups and alleviate some previous hard drive space problems.

These two machines are located in a data center completely separate from our other machines. If an event should occur in the future similar in scale to the explosion at The Planet's H1 data center, we should be able to restore even more quickly than last time.

Thank you all for supporting ProBoards!

Recent Events: Data Center Explosion and Recovery

2008-06-04T00:13:00.000-07:00

On May 31st, 3:45pm Pacific Time a transformer exploded outside of The Planet's H1 data center in Texas destroying an electrical room and causing a power outage throughout the entire data center. We had a total of 25 servers located in this data center.

Upon any servers going offline we receive instant notification via a toolbar we have on our computers as well as phone notification:

Immediately after determining that there was some sort of network issue we called up our contacts at The Planet (our server host) for information on what was going on. Details were very sketchy at first with no clear information getting out. After a while we learned that there was some kind of fire that knocked out the electrical room.

We spent a lot of time with our account manager on the phone over the next few hours. We attempted to get our servers physically moved to another data center, but this idea got shot down.

Faced with a continued outage with no information on when power would be restored, we decided our best course of action would be to setup 24 new machines in one of The Planet's data centers. We were told that all of our old servers had 100% of their data in tact, but we would need to wait for power to come back online before we could access that data. Our backup server was not located in the H1 data center, and as such we decided to begin to restore as much data as possible from it to our new servers.

At 1:10am Pacific Time our first brand new server came online. We worked feverishly to setup this server and others as they came online throughout the night. We began to restore as many forums as we could from the backups that we had available. By 4:00am we had a few servers back online, albeit in a restored state from April while we awaited full data recovery.

Continuing throughout the night we restored as much data as was possible until we had each server back online to a usable state. A little bit over 24 hours after this event started, Martyn and I got some much needed sleep.

Starting at approximately 4:30am on June 2nd we began to see some servers come back online from the H1 data center. Martyn began the process of data recovery from these servers at this time. By 8:43am we already had our first server fully restored to the point it was at from before the original explosion at the data center.

We worked throughout the day and night from June 2nd to 3rd getting all servers back online with as much data recovered as possible. I am happy to report that 100% of all data was fully restored.

In an effort to ensure faster recovery of data in the future, we are purchasing 2 brand new backup servers which will be placed in separate data centers at The Planet. These should be online within a couple of days.

I would like to thank you for your patience and understanding, your overwhelming words of support and encouragement have been very appreciated by our staff.

Patrick Clinger
Founder, ProBoards.com

P.S.
We've decided to name this event the:
First Incredible Rapid Explosion of Servers - 2008.

UBBC code to use this image:
[url=http://blog.proboards.com/2008/06/recent-events-data-center-explosion-and.html] [img]http://blog.proboards.com/survivor.jpg[/img] [/url]
HTML code to use this image:
<a href="http://blog.proboards.com/2008/06/recent-events-data-center-explosion-and.html"><img src="http://blog.proboards.com/survivor.jpg" alt="I Survived." /></a>

Inside Version 5: Avatars

2008-05-19T17:55:00.000-07:00

We wanted to show you a taste of what is in development for v5. In the next release of the ProBoards® message board software we have a whole new avatar system. This system will let you design your own custom avatar -- face, eyes, hair, etc, and automatically add it to your profile. There are literally hundreds of thousands of possible combinations. What exactly are we talking about?

Well, see it for yourself in our online demo! This demo shows a few of the options which will be available when version 5 is released.

Check it out and play with it, enjoy!

Version 4.5 Fully Released

2008-04-22T06:51:00.000-07:00

We have completed our roll-out of version 4.5 to all forums. If you are experiencing any problems with your forum please visit our support forum where our staff will be happy to assist you with any issues you may have.

Special thanks to Martyn Dale for all his hard work on this release, and to everyone who helped test it out!

Future upgrade discussion

2008-04-19T22:48:00.000-07:00

There has been a bit of talk on the blog lately from some who would rather have the option to upgrade or not to version 5 when it becomes available due to some concerns they have. I would like to address those concerns.

Planned v5 Upgrade Process

First, I'd like to talk about the v5 upgrade process and what our plans are at this time.

Before v5 is released we will re-open our BetaZone which allows you to make a copy of your forum to test with before your real forum goes live with v5. This will allow you to play with all the new settings, update your layout, etc. Essentially you will have a "test" forum that you can play with.

One of the great (until now, unannounced) features of version 5 is the ability to export many of the settings on your forum to import them on another forum. This means you can set everything up on your test forum, export your settings (for things such as your skins, headers and footers, etc), and then save them into your forum once you upgrade to v5.

When version 5 is ready to be released, we are going to give all board owners a period of 2-3 months with an option to upgrade to v5. This way you can take all the time you need to make get your changes ready for the upgrade. After this period of time we will then force-upgrade the rest of the forums that have not opted to upgrade ahead of time.

We feel this is the best approach to give all forum admins the time they need to make sure their forum upgrade goes smoothly.

Templates in v5

As was documented earlier, version 5 is implementing a new templating system. This gives you full control over the HTML of your forum. This also allows you to change or even remove some things that you don't want them.

For example, some have expressed a desire to not have the "last 24 hours users" box. In version 5 you can simply remove the HTML code for this from the Info Center template. Further to this, in v5 there will be a simple option in the settings area to remove this box as well. This is just an example of how you can customize the HTML code in your v5 forum.

Headers/Footers Codes in v5

Some have said that they are worried that the future v5 upgrade (because of the size of the upgrade) will mess with their layouts.

We are overhauling all the HTML for version 5. Many of our coders have requested that we add new features to the code such as using id="[name]" on any elements that would be useful for coders to access. Other changes include naming of all forms. As a result of the major HTML changes, the majority of JavaScript codes that are in use today will not work in version 5.

Further to that, the new codes that will be developed to be compatible with v5 will be much easier for our coders to create.

Another important thing to note is that many, many of the codes in use today are designed to manipulate the HTML of the layout. These codes will not even be needed any more in v5 because we let you edit the HTML code yourself!

So, what is going to happen?

First off, our code database will be upgraded to have all new codes that will work with version 5. Again, we are giving 2-3 month grace period before the upgrade so that you can prepare your forum upgrade. If you have header/footer codes that you need to be updated we will make sure those new codes are provided in our code database.

Now, instead of simply upgrading your forums and keeping all the header/footer codes in which will not work, we will provide a copy of your headers/footers in your admin area and you will need to add in the new JavaScript codes which work with v5. Again, the majority of codes from v4 / v4.5 will not even be needed since you have direct access to the HTML.

We understand that for some forums which have extensive headers and footers this may be a fair amount of work, but the end benefit will be tremendous because of the amount of control that we are putting into your hands.

Last Thoughts

We will take your suggestions to heart in regards to this upgrade. I appreciate your constructive criticism and hope that this discussion will help alleviate some concerns you may have about this future upgrade.

It is important to note that if our members feel that they need more time to prepare their forums, we will give you that time. We would like nothing more than for this to be a smooth upgrade for all of our members and will provide you the support and assistance you require in this process.

New V5 Feature and Beta Info

2008-04-04T15:05:00.000-07:00

Another great new feature in the upcoming ProBoards Version 5 is our new auto-save feature. As you type your message it is periodically saved on our server. In the event that your browser crashes or other problems occur, when you come back to the post page your message will be automatically restored for you to continue working on.

Now, plenty of people have been waiting to hear when we think Version 5 will come out. While we're not set on a date for that, we do have an estimate for when our beta period will begin.

I will say that the absolute earliest I could expect a V5 open beta would be July, but please, don't come down on me if it's not here by then or even soon after. V5 will not be released before it is complete to my standards. If it takes extra months of work, that's what it takes.

Version 4.5 Upgrades

2008-04-03T19:15:00.000-07:00

We have begun the process of mass converting servers to version 4.5. Today we started on servers 70-89 and hope to push forward with more servers in the coming days. I understand many of you have been waiting for this update for a while now and I am happy to announce it is on it's way to you.

Anyone on servers 70-89 can simply login to their admin panel and click the upgrade link at the top to convert their forum. Anyone who does not opt to convert now will be converted within a few days automatically.

Welcome Adam!

2008-03-19T16:44:00.001-07:00

We have recently added a new staff member, Adam Petersen, to further assist and speed the development of Version 5. Adam will mostly be working behind the scenes, but I'm sure he'd love to get a welcome message from people :)

Welcome aboard Adam!

New Version 5 Features

2008-03-15T15:12:00.000-07:00

Today I'm going to introduce some more new features that you can look forward to in Version 5.

With the introduction of Version 4.5, all forums can already expect an update letting them restrict categories based on a member's post count rank. We've taken this a step further in V5.

In addition to having this capability for every category, every board will also have the option to be restricted to certain member groups and post count ranks.

This means that you won't have to create a new category specific for each member group (or post count) that you want to make boards for. Just go straight to making a board, throw it in whatever category you want, and only those with the correct permissions will be able to see and access it.

Another new feature we plan to add is a "name history" in each member's profile. Sometimes people get confused who a member is because they changed their display name. Now you will be able to see a list of names that any user has been known as in the last 30 days just by viewing their profile.

More updates soon!

Answering some questions..

2008-03-12T10:32:00.000-07:00

I have had a few questions come out recently regarding the new icons (in the blog post below), so this entry is to address those questions along with one other frequently asked question.

Is this the actual size of the buttons?
Yes, this is the real size. All icons in v5 will be slightly larger than before and much more readable.

Am I stuck with the blue color?
No, you aren't. We will have many colors of icons to choose from available for every board so that you can pick what matches best. We'll also have one neutral gray set available that can work with any color board.

What if I want to resize the images down?
That is your option. The ability to change any image you want via the admin area will still be there waiting for you :)

Besides these questions about the menu buttons, we have one question that is consistently coming up:

When will v5 be released?
This is a tricky question. I know many of you are waiting on your server to receive version 4.5 still. We are working on that roll-out, but wanted to make sure we had every bug smashed first.

In terms of a planned roll-out for version 5, no date is set in stone. It is hard with such a large release to put a date out there. Knowing our members, if I set a date people will be hounding me to release on that exact date regardless of any bugs that may still exist in the system.

The fact is this is a major project, we are actively developing it and working hard to get it done. It is a ways off, and we are updating you about our progress on this blog to keep you informed. When an estimate does get announced, it will be simply a date that is the earliest possible release date. It will not be a planned release date. Please take it as just that - an estimate, not a solid release date. Everything from new features to unforseen events can all delay a release.

That being said, our very-rough-earliest-possible-estimated-release-date will be announced in the next issue of the ProVision: Vision Press due for around April 1st.

As we move down the road, the best I can do for you is to keep this blog updated with as much information as I can publicly reveal. We will keep you informed as to when things are in the final stages and at that time we will announce a better estimated release date.

A taste of things to come

2008-03-11T22:11:00.000-07:00

I thought I'd share with you a few of the new graphics that will become the standard for Version 5. These will be the default menu buttons (other colors will be available besides blue).

Enjoy:

New Favicon / Logo

2008-03-05T23:35:00.000-08:00

We have come up with a new logo for ProBoards, and along with it a smaller version will show up in your browser when viewing a ProBoards message board. You should already be able to see it if you are using a modern browser (right next to the address bar).

Here is a large picture of what our logo looks like:

In case you can't see it in your browser, here is the small "favicon.ico":

It may be a while before this logo shows up on our main web site, as we work on a new design to come with the future release of Version 5.

Quick note about our blog

2008-03-05T11:27:00.000-08:00

If you have any issues or problems related to your forum, please use our support forum to post. We can not properly assist you if you post any issues you have using the comment system of this blog.

Any support related issues that come up in the comments area will be removed to keep this blog on-topic.

Thanks,

Patrick

Inside V5: More New Features!

2008-03-03T08:38:00.001-08:00

With development of Version 5 in full swing here, we have many new and exciting features that are being added. Here are just a few of the literally hundreds of new features that we are adding:

Split Threads

Ever had a time when a topic's discussion went from on-topic to off? With the Split Thread feature, you can take posts out of an existing thread and create a new thread from those posts.
Merge Threads

Sometimes there are multiple threads discussing the same topic on a forum. You will have the ability to merge these topics into one single thread with this handy feature.
Personal Messages: Conversations

Currently when you exchange messages with another member of your forum via our Personal Message system, each message shows up as it's own item in your Inbox and Outbox. In Version 5, each conversation you have will group together and function more like a thread does. This will allow you to read your entire conversation from one single page instead of needing to go back and look for previous messages.
Threads: "Look Inside" Option

In Version 5, you will have the ability to "see" into a thread without actually clicking on it. After hovering your mouse over the subject of a thread for 1 second a small box will appear with a preview of the message that is inside the thread!
# of People Viewing Thread

In addition to the current feature which lets you see how many people are viewing a particular board, you will also have the option to display how many people are reading a particular thread.
Password Protected Boards: Remembering Passwords

For those of you with password protected boards, it can be a pain to enter that password every time you come back. If you are logged in (not a guest), once you enter a password for a board it will remember that password for you, automatically allowing access to that board in the future. If the password for the board is changed by an administrator, you will then need to enter the new password to gain access.
Multiple Member Groups

In version 5, you will be able to join multiple member groups. This gives additional flexibility to forum administrators in managing their members -- anything from restricting access to categories/boards, doing mass PMs to different groups, etc.
Sub-sub-sub-sub-boards

There are no limits in the next version on the number of sub-boards any board can have. For those of you who have very complex forums, organizing your forums into many sections will be very useful.
New UBBC tags

We will be adding the following new tags, and more may be announced later:
- [spoiler] ... [/spoiler] - Hides part of your message unless people click on it to display it. Useful for when you want to reveal something (e.g. plot details in a movie) but don't want to spoil it for people if they don't want to see it
- [youtube] ... [/youtube] - Allows you to embed YouTube videos in your posts
In addition to the new tags, some changes to existing tags:
- [code] ... [/code] Will be wrapped in a div that will prevent it from scrolling the page to the right and too far down, and provide an easy way to copy the code to your clipboard.

We will be announcing many more features over the coming weeks!

Inside V5: Custom Profile Fields

2008-03-03T08:21:00.000-08:00

In this entry I'm going to talk about a new feature that our coders are sure to love. It is intended towards coders who have a firm understanding of JavaScript.

One issue that has come up for a lot of coders is the desire to store data on a per-user basis and be able to access it on any page. Many codes such as RPG codes, shops, and more need this functionality. This has proven difficult to implement, until now.

In version 5, every user has 10 custom profile fields that can store data. But what's better than the fact that these exist, is how you can modify them. Using AJAX we give you the power to update data in any of these 10 custom fields from any page.

We've designed a JavaScript function pb_set_custom_field that allows you to pass in parameters to update these custom fields. There are 3 parameters that need to be passed:

field # - The number of the custom field you wish to update. This value will be anything from 1 to 10.
value - The new value you wish to save, maximum 100 characters.
handler object - This is a javascript object that you create which has 3 functions: sent, success, fail. The sent function will be called when the AJAX request is sent, success will be called if the result is a success, and fail will be called if the request failed.

A request would look something like this:


<script type="text/javascript">
function sendRequest(field,value) {
 if(value.length > 100) {
  // value is too big (max 100 char)
  alert("Value is too big.");
 }
 pb_set_custom_field(field,value,new ajaxHandler());
}
function ajaxHandler() {}
ajaxHandler.prototype.sent = function() {
 alert("Sent AJAX request.");
 };
ajaxHandler.prototype.success = function(transport) {
 alert("Request successful.  Response was: "+transport.responseText);
 };
ajaxHandler.prototype.fail = function(transport) {
 alert("AJAX request failed.");
 };

sendRequest(1,'New value!');
</script>

Wondering what that transport parameter is? Read about that here.

Now, you know how to save information, but how do you access it?

On every page there is a JavaScript array called pb_user_custom. To access the data for custom field 1 you would simply use the JavaScript variable pb_user_custom[1]. Likewise, if you had stored data in the custom field 7 you would then access the JavaScript variable pb_user_custom[7].

That's all there is to it!

In addition to this functionality, we will be giving admins the power to optionally display custom profile fields in the mini profile as well as your regular profile. There will be an area where you can "name" each field (so it doesn't just show up as "Custom Field 1").

Also, you will have the option to let users change their custom profile fields themselves. If you choose to let your members edit their custom profile fields, you can specify for each field if only certain options are valid (e.g. there will be a drop down box for them to choose), or you can opt to let them type in their own value.

Inside V5: Templates

2008-03-03T08:18:00.000-08:00

Today I'm going to write about our new templating system. This system will give you full control over the HTML code for your forum. This blog entry is mostly intended for those who make codes for ProBoards forums. If you are familiar with HTML and JavaScript, you should be able to follow this post fairly well.

Currently many ProBoards coders spend a lot of time making codes that simply re-arrange where information is displayed on the page itself and re-working the HTML. Needing to use JavaScript codes to accomplish this will be a thing of the past in Version 5.

In each template there will be three important elements:

HTML code
Variables - These store information that can be automatically inserted into your template, anything from the title of a page to the currently logged in user's name. Each template will have it's own set of variables that you can choose to insert.
Conditional Statements - These allow your templates to display, or not display, information based on a set of conditions. Examples of conditionals:
- <guest>This code is only displayed for guests</guest>
- <member>This code is only displayed for logged in members</member>

Let's give a basic example. On many pages on the ProBoards message boards you use, there are tables which are very similar to each other. For example, the table that you see when you go to the Admin area of your forum is the same table that you see when you go to login, create a board, modify a board, update your censored words list, etc. Literally dozens of pages use the same table, except that the title of the table changes from page to page as does the content of the table.

Here is a basic table structure we could use for that table:


<table width="80%">
  <tr>
   <td>
   Title Here
   </td>
  </tr>
  <tr>
    <td>
    Main content here
    </td>
  </tr>
</table>

Your have your HTML code, which makes the table.

You have your title for the table (in this example "Title Here"), which you want to change with each table to be an appropriate title.

You have the section where you want the main content to be displayed (labelled "Main content here").

There are no conditionals in this table yet.

We're not done with this table yet. How do we make it so that the templating system changes the title depending on the page it is on? How does it know where to insert the main content into the table?

This is accomplished by the inserting of variable tags. The tags we have chosen to use will look like [pb variable] where variable is the name of what is to be displayed. Each template will have a list of variables that you will be allowed to put in. For this basic example, let's say that the title for the table is stored in a variable called title, and therefore we would insert the code [pb title] where we wanted the title for the table to be.

Now, we need a second variable to tell the template where to insert the main content of the table. We call this the action variable, or [pb action].

What if we want to display something in this table if the user is logged in, and a different message if the user is a guest?

We use conditionals. Anything placed between the <guest> and </guest> tags is only displayed to guests. Likewise, anything placed between the <member> and </member> tags is only displayed to users who are logged in.

This would be the new code that will accomplish:

Automatically updating the title for the table
Place the main content of the table in the correct position automatically
Add two conditionals, one for guests and one for members


<table width="80%">
  <tr>
   <td>
   [pb title]
   </td>
  </tr>
  <tr>
    <td>
    <guest>Welcome, guest!  Please login</guest>
    <member>Welcome back!</member>
    <br />
    [pb action]
    </td>
  </tr>
</table>

I have bolded the two parts that have changed.

Now with this new code put in, any page that uses this table will have the correct title automatically inserted, it will display a different message for guests and members, and it will insert the main content of the table automatically.

Each Skin is Version 5 will have it's own templates that you can modify. There are dozens of conditionals and hundreds of variables which will be fully documented and released before Version 5 exits beta. Each template will have a list of the specific variables that related to it as well as the conditionals that you can use.

I hope this gives you a good idea of the basics of the V5 templating system.

Introducing the ProBoards Blog!

2008-03-03T07:47:00.000-08:00

Welcome to the new ProBoards Blog, where we will post frequent updates, news, and behind-the-scenes information about ProBoards.

I'm going to start off by talking about where we are, and the direction that we are taking ProBoards.

ProBoards is the largest remotely hosted message board service with over 2,200,000 message boards created through our service. In the next couple of weeks we expect to get our 20 millionth registered member! Over 50 million conversations have been started on our forums accounting for over half a billion posts! We'd like to thank you, our loyal members, for getting us where we are today, and for your continued support!

Currently we are working on releasing Version 4.5 of our message board software to all forums. This process is ongoing, and at this time we do not have an official full-release date. This update includes many new features including increased character limit on posts, revamped polls, new sorting options for threads and members, and much more!

While the full release for V4.5 is on the horizon, we have been long at work on our newest offering, ProBoards Version 5. This is going to be the most exciting update to our forum software yet! There are going to be literally hundreds of new features included in this update. Many of these features have already been previously announced, but I will go into more detail about them in upcoming blog posts.

While we know that our most valuable offering for our users right now is our message board service, but we understand there are other complimentary offerings that our members would find useful. We plan, in the future, to offer image hosting, blogs, and much more.

Check back often for updates!