New Features on the PriusChat Forums

[Danny]

The software update I performed earlier this week has enabled many new features on the PriusChat forums. Below I'll run through some of the new features.

Thread Tagging

A new way to facilitate searching and grouping of threads, it is now possible for users to add tags to threads they post or read.



Tags can be added when creating a new thread, or to an existing thread by any user (with appropriate permissions).



Any users who then click on these tags will not only find all thread that have the same tag as the one clicked, but will also contribute to the building of a search tag cloud, which gives users a quick guide as to what has been searched for recently and most frequently.



Thread Prefixes

Threads can now have administrator-defined prefixes to their titles. I have already implemented this in the Private Sales forum added "For Sale" "For Trade" and "WTB" as a selection of prefixes. This will be a great feature to integrate into other parts of the site in the future, as well.



Social Networking

This seems to be all the rage lately, and now we can use social networking features to expand on the community aspect of PriusChat.

Reciprocal Friendships Between Users

As part of our new social networking system, users can now request that people on their buddy list confirm their friendship, after which time a person's list of confirmed friends will be viewable to other users.



Public Messaging

You've always been able to send Private Messages on PriusChat. Well, now you can publicly message another user by posting a message on their profile page. Think of it like writing on someone's Wall in Facebook



New Member Profile Page

In order to accommodate all the new features in vBulletin 3.7, the member profile page has been completely redesigned from the ground up.

The new page presents information in a far cleaner and more logical manner, while dividing up information into manageable chunks using a tabbed interface.



Inline Editing of Profile Field Values

The 'About Me' tab of each member's profile page has edit controls, allowing them to quickly change values without leaving their profile page.



Attachment Viewing Lightbox

Clicking on an attached image will now open a lightbox rather than open a new window, with the image scaled to fit the browser viewport. A click on the image in the lightbox will open it in a new window as before.



Social Bookmarking of Threads

I can now define a list of your favorite social bookmarking sites and have them available for use on the showthread page for bookmarking threads. If you have any sites that you would like for me to add, please let me know!



Also, all AJAX features use the Yahoo User Interface Library and are hosted by Yahoo in an effort to speed up PriusChat.

More feature announcements coming!

[Danny]

Private Message Quick Reply

I know how much I personally love the Quick Reply in the forums, so I went ahead and added the feature to the Private Messaging system as well.

Private Message Preview

You'll now notice that you will see a small portion of the Private Message you have received before you ever even click on it. This will help you stay sane if you get a lot of PMs like me by identifying messages without having to click through 5 of them to find the right one.

[hobbit]

Wow, yeah, when I saw the "quick reply" thing sitting there I
thought "waitasec, am I reading cleanmpg or priuschat?!" ...
the two are becoming more and more similar in their operation
all the time. That's not a bad thing, just an amusing
observation. Go Danny.
.
I'm still kinda wondering just how big a forum site *can* get
before it starts exceeding limits of practicality. Maybe never
as long as there's sufficient computes and storage to throw
at it? Are there any vBulletin-based sites that are *more*
active than PC to get a few numbers from?
.
_H*

[dogfriend]

Originally Posted by hobbit

.
I'm still kinda wondering just how big a forum site *can* get
before it starts exceeding limits of practicality. Maybe never
as long as there's sufficient computes and storage to throw
at it? Are there any vBulletin-based sites that are *more*
active than PC to get a few numbers from?
.
_H*

I also post a lot on Serious Explorations, which is a forum for Ford Explorers. It is also vBulletin based. I don't know about the frequency of posts, but there are over 81,000 members and over 179,000 threads.

Ford Explorer Ranger Enthusiasts Serious Explorations

[Tideland Prius]

Thanks Danny!

any idea what the "heating, ice, speeding" icon means? There were 3 icons here for this thread. That was one of it. The other two where the paperclip (attachments) and the thumbtack (sticky)

Edit: N/m. That's a "tag" image and will list the tagged words.

[mrblaise]

The site is definitely improved!!! Thanks for all of your hard work!!!

[hobbit]

Thanks for the perspective, which is kinda sobering simply in
that there are lot more of them [explorer aficionados] than
there are of us. Oh wait, we already knew that from a simple
glance in the rearview...
.
_H*

[dogfriend]

Originally Posted by hobbit

Thanks for the perspective, which is kinda sobering simply in
that there are lot more of them [explorer aficionados] than
there are of us. Oh wait, we already knew that from a simple
glance in the rearview...
.
_H*

There are a lot more, but they will be dying off eventually. Ford has essentially canceled the Explorer model; if they still build one in the future, it will be a car based crossover rather than the truck based SUV of the past.

Also, the Explorers achilles heel is the Auto Trans which eventually will cost more to repair than the resale value of the truck. So the older ones die off regularly because the owners are unwilling to rebuild the transmission a second time.

Mine will probably last forever because I no longer drive it - less than a thousand miles while I managed to clock almost 19k on the Prius in the same time period.

[dogfriend]

A post to warm Hobbit's heart:

92 explorer for sale $1000 (pics) - Ford Explorer Ranger Enthusiasts Serious Explorations

[Bill Merchant]

When I go to a member's profile page, where are the pictures? Where's the member's avatar? I used to have a regular picture of me on my profile, not just the HSD Head one. If you don't want to clutter up the layout by adding a Pictures tab, how about a link to the member's album on the About Me tab?