Forum Upgrade Log (2015)

I'm aiming to perform a forum upgrade between 10pm and 12 midnight. The upgrade will address numerous bugs and issues that will increase the overall stability of the site.

Some portions of the site will be unusable during the process.

I'll post an update once the process is complete.

 

Upgrade successful.

 

I'm aiming to perform a forum upgrade between 10pm and 12 midnight MST. The upgrade will address numerous bugs and issues that will increase the overall stability of the site.

Some portions of the site will be unusable during the process.

I'll post an update once the process is complete.

 

Update complete. Thanks for your patience.

 

Tonight I'll be performing a forum upgrade between 10pm and 12 midnight MDT. The upgrade will address numerous bugs and issues that will increase the overall stability of the site.

Some portions of the site will be unusable during the process.

I'll post an update upon completion.

 

Upgrade complete. Thanks for your patience.

 

Heads up! I'll be performing a forum upgrade between 10pm and 12 midnight MDT. The upgrade will address numerous bugs and issues that will increase the overall stability of the site.

Some portions of the site will be unusable during the process.

I'll post an update upon completion.

 

Upgrade complete.

 

I'll be performing a forum upgrade between 10pm and 12 midnight MDT. The upgrade will address numerous bugs and issues that will increase the overall stability of the site.

Support for an additional account verification method will also be installed during this time.

Some portions of the site will be unusable during the process.

I'll post an update upon completion.

 

Upgrade complete. Thanks for your patience.

 

I'll be performing a forum upgrade between 10pm and 12 midnight MDT. Nothing major, however, numerous bugs and issues that will increase the overall stability of the site will be applied.

Some portions of the site will be unusable during the process.

As always, I'll post an update upon completion.

 

Upgrade complete.

 

I'll be performing a quick forum upgrade tonight to address some recently discovered security issues with the forum. It'll begin at 10pm MDT, and I don't predict it taking more than an hour. During the process login, inbox, alerts, and the forum will be inaccessible.

Updates to follow ...

 

And we're back ...

 

This morning we successfully performed a major forum update that applied: numerous big fixes, increased stability, new admin and user features. Here's a quick overview:

Thread Tagging *
Create, add, and search tags (or keywords) for threads. Currently disabled until we discuss how we want to apply it, but we're looking forward to rolling this one out.

Two-Step Account Verification *
Added account security for those who want it. You can add this under your account options. Eventually certain accounts will be required to enable this; mods, site editors, users with a lot of content, etc.

Profile Post Improvements *
This update adds more interaction and functionality to profile posts and comments.

• Like comments
• Comment directly from certain feeds
• Search comments
• Enhanced moderation; by self and mods

Welcome Message for New Users
Doesn't directly apply to existing users, but as of tomorrow new users will receive a welcome conversation with helpful links. In time, we hope this will cut down on some repetitive posts and questions.

Mass Messaging and Alerts *
There's a lot going on here at BA, and that makes it easy to miss updates if you're not looking for them or watching certain forums.

We now have the ability to send targeted messages (private conversations to your Inbox) and Alerts to users when we important updates or feel the need to bring your attention to something that may be of interest to you. Example: Today I sent an Alert re: Update: Top Beer Lists (m = 10) to all users who've been active within the last week. And I'll be sending one out to highlight this update too.

Automatic Convert URLs to Page Titles *
You'll now notice that if you drop a raw URL into a post it'll be replaced by the title of the post; as set by the site's HTML. You can override this by creating a manual link; highlighting text, selecting the Link too, and adding the URL.

Examples:
Raw: BeerAdvocate magazine (Print Subscription)
Manual: Subscribe to BeerAdvocate magazine here.

Improved Floating Notices *
Those pop-up notices have received an upgrade for better performance.

Newest Posts (Sidebar) *
Self-explanatory. When viewing the main Forum page, you'll see a list of new posts in the righthand sidebar.

* = Desktop only. Not currently supported by the BA app.

That sums up the big changes for users during this update. Please see the Help forum to report issues and for more general information.

 

Update: I disabled the automatic conversion of URLs to page titles feature as I'm noticing that far too many sites aren't using proper titles and this results in linked text that's a bit confusing. And it doesn't support conversion for local links that require logging in.

 

This morning we performed unscheduled maintenance to fix numerous bugs and issues that have been discovered since the last upgrade to increase the stability of the site.

Thanks for your patience during the momentary downtime.

 

I just applied a quick forum upgrade to address a potential security issue, plus fixes for numerous bugs and other issues that have been discovered since the last upgrade to increase the stability of the site.

Thanks for your patience during the brief downtime.

 

I just completed an quick unscheduled forum upgrade that fixes numerous bugs since the last update and increases the stability of the site.

All operations are back to normal. Thanks for your patience.