Forum upgrade goal reached! Work begins on Monday!

[Steve]

Hi gang!

We launched a donation incentive back in early February to help raise funds to invest in another year of software support with XenForo (our forum software provider) and also with PixelExit (the designers behind the current forum style). Combined, the two sums amounted to $75, but in a little over five weeks since launching the appear, five very awesome, very generous community members came forward and helped send us hurtling towards our target figure. Without the following five people, we would not have some cool new features to look forward to. But before we touch on the upcoming features that the upgrade will provide, I would like to say a huge thanks to the following members for their donations and support:

• @Carlos
• @Lain
• @LordOfDarkness
• @Rebel Dynasty
• @Z218

Guys - you're the best! I'm really excited to get the whole upgrade in motion on Monday morning. Speaking of which, here are some of the new features that will be available with the upgrade (in no particular order):

• You must be registered for see links
• You must be registered for see links
• You must be registered for see links
• You must be registered for see links
• You must be registered for see links
• You must be registered for see links
• You must be registered for see links
• You must be registered for see links
• You must be registered for see links
• You must be registered for see links

Some of it's pretty nerdy, some of it's great for account security purposes, some of it's just nice to have. Hopefully you'll be able to spot a few additions here and there that will help improve your experience browsing the site. Any questions, please feel free to ask! And do please send some love in the donators' directions! :thumbsup:

 

[Carlos]

Awesome! Now everyone can experience what I've been experiencing with XF2 since January 30th. Much earlier through beta testing.

 

[Steve]

And we're done! Apologies for the downtime, gang! The upgrade took about two hours longer than I was anticipating but it seems we've come out the other side with some fancy new features! Please do let us know what you think, and if any seem to be missing - it might mean that they require enabling or something.

Thanks again to all the donators and to everyone for helping us to upgrade to this new and shiny version of XenForo! Cheers!

 

[Foxtrot94]

About the video uploads part, did I understand correctly? Can we upload them into the post we're making directly from our devices? And if that's the case, does it apply to images too?

 

[Dark Drakan]

Thanks to everyone who contributed to help us hit this milestone. :thumbsup:

 

[Steve]

@Foxtrot94 Good question! This is something that I definitely need to look into, because if we allowed unlimited videos of unlimited filesize then that's definitely going to be a huge issue with space and bandwidth. I'm not even sure if it is enabled by default. I'm not actually 100% if this is how the feature works - it sounds like a feature that the majority of forums really won't be able to take advantage of and I'd be surprised if the XF team would go to the trouble of implementing such a thing. I'll need to get back to you on that.

Edit: Seems uploading straight to the site is currently how it works but the team are looking at better ways of utilising this? Hopefully via some third-party (maybe YouTube) integration or something. It really is a neat feature but not really feasible for most forums in its current incarnation, IMO.

 

[Sparda's rejected son]

Congrats to everyone who donated. You guys and girls made the forum better. Thank you.

 

[Carlos]

About the video uploads part, did I understand correctly? Can we upload them into the post we're making directly from our devices? And if that's the case, does it apply to images too?

Yeah, to both.

@Foxtrot94 Good question! This is something that I definitely need to look into, because if we allowed unlimited videos of unlimited filesize then that's definitely going to be a huge issue with space and bandwidth. I'm not even sure if it is enabled by default. I'm not actually 100% if this is how the feature works - it sounds like a feature that the majority of forums really won't be able to take advantage of and I'd be surprised if the XF team would go to the trouble of implementing such a thing. I'll need to get back to you on that.

Edit: Seems uploading straight to the site is currently how it works but the team are looking at better ways of utilising this? Hopefully via some third-party (maybe YouTube) integration or something. It really is a neat feature but not really feasible for most forums in its current incarnation, IMO.

I'm going to ignore that striked through content, because that is not what XF2.1 does out of the box. It allows you to upload videos directly from your phone/device, whatever you use. However, I do not recommend allowing people to upload videos for more reasons than just bandwidth. Legal and DMCA issues, too. If a user uploads a game trailer that is not meant to be shared, guess who's getting the DMCA takedown notice? You, @Steve. So, disable it for normal users, but enable it as a premium user benefit.

I like the feature, but I also think it'll cause issues if you allow it for everyone. I have it disabled on my forums, and I'll enable it only to me or another group.. but right now I just don't want to deal with the idea at the moment. Maybe when the site gets popular.

 

[Steve]

Good call, @Carlos. Seems that it's a feature that could certainly do with some tweaking and fine-tuning before it's fit for global use here.