I think most of it works flawlessly but as with all things code-like there is the potential for some unexpected 'features' to crop up. If you find any please post them for me or PM me so I can get right to fixing them.
The biggest new feature is the ability to set up aliases. This is a totally custom mod that I made myself based on a mod I'd seen on another type of forum that I thought worked pretty nicely.
Here's what you need to do to configure it. There's a section in the UCP called 'Alias Management' though I saw the lang file wasn't loading right earlier and it wasn't showing as that (and I'm not sure why because it's working ok right now in IE in another window) but it's the last option under 'profile' in the user control panel.
This page might be a little daunting since there's nothing there, but you can do several things with it. If you enter one of your existing account names into the top blank and its associated password in the 2nd blank it'll associate that account with your current one and show up in a list. The account you're in currently will then be made the 'parent' account so if you have a user account with your player handle it's best to use that as your parent, but it doesn't really matter. You can make any of your accounts the parent.
Anyway I hope I haven't been too confusing. The OTHER thing you can do with that page is you can remove anything you've added to the list and you can actually create new accounts from there. Just type in a name into the username blank and it'll create a new account (with the same pwd as your parent account) and link it to the same parent account. It's a shortcut to make new accounts for members.)
Don't worry about screwing anything up here. The aliases table is totally separate from the user table so it shouldn't mess anything up there and the worst thing that could happen is you'll end up creating a bunch of typo'ed users that I'll probably catch later and delete.
If you're still not sure you want to do it, let me know and I can link your characters for you by typing entries into the alias table.
What does this do for you?
Well, after you've linked those accounts to one parent account you can log into any one of your accounts and have a drop down box like this at the top of the page:
Selecting a different name on the drop down will automatically log you into that account and reload the forum index. Quick as wink it's an account switcher.
The other nice nice thing is a 2nd drop down box I added to the posting page.
Above the subject line there's another drop down box that lets you choose which character you are posting for. Changing this entry will let you choose who you're posting for without necessarily being in that account. So if you're posting for Rufus and are currently logged into Galon you can designate that the post is for Rufus, not Galon.
It goes beyond that. I altered the logic behind edit permissions so that if you have a linked account, you can still edit posts from that account without having moderation privileges. Basically they're your posts, you ought to be able to edit them. In addition, you can edit them yourself and change the account it is posted for so if you accidently posted for rufus under Galon's account you can edit that post and change it to Rufus.
Other changes include the portal which is more something to please me than anyone else since it moves some of the data in the sidebars into a more centralized place. I hacked the portal a lot but, for example, the ad list that scrolls now has all its entries stored in the database and they're easily editable from an interface in the administrator control panel.
There's other stuff I can do with the portal too that I will probably be adding later or on a 'when I get around to it' basis.
The new skin is really very heavily thanks to Saren and Dael. Dael made the gorgeous banner up top and Saren did the teal background and the transparent sparklies. I took the design Saren was building on subsilver and applied it to prosilver (because I like defining my element positions in CSS instead of tables) and I did do some modifications to the banner to expand it across the top more and the mermaid clipart was my doing as well as a few asorted other touches (ok yeah I did the blue/yellow gradiants and the icons). But I like to think it was a group effort. I just hope Saren and Dael pop in again sometime to see it.
I will be making more skins (I know I promise that all the time) but I've had way too much fun hacking the forum code lately and while that might cause problems with later updates I think that my test forum will make it easier for me to handle that without having anything blow up catastrophically
Have fun, enjoy the new colors and please please please let me know if you come across any bugs. Also, if you are planning to get rid of any of your accounts, please do not link them. The account delete code doesn't currently know my alias table exists so I have to pluck those entries out manually (otherwise they'll still show up in your dropdowns).
Problems, bugs, nitpicks can be posted to the Feedback Forum
Next on the agenda is probably a table pruning. Now that I've got things looking sort of fancy it's time to dig in and clean up the content. I've already picked over the ads in our box (and could probably do a little more of that since some of those sites don't still have our link up!!!
)There is still an ongoing discussion on the 'Shifting Focus' thread. I ask that all try to find a chance to take a peek at that. Now's the time to ask for stuff since I haven't gotten to rewriting the forum's materials yet. I'll probably be moving some more things around.
Also, don't forget the Activity Check!
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