New Message Boards Now Open!

Actually, that probably goes for you reading them. You have to send them with a read receipt if you want to make sure they get read. They might get flagged as read by default unless you request a read receipt.

Oh, and accidentally, I've finally fixed the thread title editing properly. At some point I applied the limit of 1 month to post editing instead of title editing erroneously, but this has now been fixed. You can edit posts indefinitely, but thread titles & post icons can only be changed for one month. Mods can do it after that if it needs to be done for some reason.

Tip: you can quick-edit the title of your thread by double-clicking in the thread row (to the right of the thread title) in the thread listing.

 

Ok, what you're talking about is adding to the user's reputation via the scales icon. And the feeling you're getting is quite correct; you are affecting a user's reputation via the scales, so effectively you are "rating" a user based on their posts. As I said, there really isn't any mechanic in place to rate specific posts. The thing about reputation is that it's not meant to be used on an hourly basis, but rather for more exceptional posts only (in the negative or positive sense).

There are also a few checks in place so that things don't get turned into a click-fest:

- Daily Reputation Clicks Limit: 10 (This is the number of reputation clicks that a user may give over any 24 hour period.)
- Reputation User Spread: 20 (This setting is the number of different users that a person must give reputation to before they can hit the same person again.)

So, that 20 there is what's kept you from being able to rate someone again - you needed to give reputation to 20 others before you could give it to the same person again. This is simply a safeguard to prevent abuse of the reputation system. However, given the number of active posters here, 20 is absolutely too high for us, so I've lowered it to 5 now.

Oh and incidentally, I've just figured out that you can see your own reputation points by clicking on the scales in any of your own posts.

 

I've actually stumbled upon the setting looking for something else entirely. It's anyone's guess how much longer it'd have been "broken" if I hadn't spotted it by coincidence.

 

It's the number of registered members who have visited the boards (logged in) in the last 30 days IIRC.

 

I've updated and uploaded the BoM Rules and BoM FAQ.

While the rules remain as relevant as ever, the FAQ doesn't cover many of the new board features here, so for the time being, the best source of information about any of the new stuff is this thread that you're reading right now and the default vB FAQ, though that is also quite lacking as far as the more advanced and newer board features go. Eventually this will all be updated, of course.

 

RSS feeds are back... check the icons next to the news forum descriptions at http://www.sorcerers.net/forums/index.php

 

UBB used flat files, so there was no actual database... everything was stored in tens of thousands of separate files. There was about 600MB of it, though the actual imported content was closer to 500MB. Not that much, but you have to keep in mind that this is exclusively stored text - no images, attachments or anything but pure text.

Interestingly, now that all the data is in an actual database, it takes significantly less space... something over 300MB.

Edit: Btw, if anyone else has any abandoned accounts here that they would like to merge with their current accounts, PM me. I've already done 2 merges today.

 

I've been wanting to switch to vB for years. Back then it was simply the best message board software overall, and it was software literally designed to replace UBB. I think it still is the best today, and will continue to be in the future, but IPB has started to compete with vB pretty fiercely, whereas in the past vB hasn't had any real competition in the form of comparable platforms.

There are several decent free message boards out there, but phpBB is really the one I'd be least likely to pick. For one thing, its current and near future feature list is nowhere near vB's. Secondly, support with free boards is so-so, whereas vB's is excellent. Most importantly, vB gets patched the same day any security hole in it is found, and the holes are rarely severe enough to be easily exploitable. phpBB gets patched after a few hundred thousand phpBB installs world-wide have been defaced or more seriously exploited. I've seen it happen about a dozen times on the sites I host alone over the years - more than reason enough to stay away.

Another extremely important factor in the switch to vB has also been the relatively good import system and the support I got using it, which has been very extensive, as I've had to check, recheck and adjust dozens of things before doing the final import to make sure that our board content has ported over pretty much flawlessly.

 

Referrals are now enabled.

 

Christ, just WHAT are you writing there? Ok, 10k it is.