First item, I'd like to explain the Event Archive subforum. Each regional Event forum now has an Event Archive subforum. When an event is passed, or if it is cancelled, a moderator or admin will move it to the Event Archive subforum.

There is no technical restriction keeping you from posting to the thread after it is moved to the event archive, so if you want to write about your experience at the event or thank the host there is nothing stopping you. If I've made a mistake and moved anything to the event archive that shouldn't be, just let me know and I'll move it where it should go.

Second, here is the consolidated todo/plans. Some of it has been suggested by members, some is things I'd like to do. Please, any objections, let me know. Any comments and additional items are welcome.

1. Combine "Forum Updates" and "Forum News"

2. Split out most prevalent thread topic(s) from "General Board", and make a new board for that topic(s)

3. Some sort of "[OLD]" marker or Archive for Buy/Sell/Trade. You can help right now; if your post is no longer an active proposition, please add a followup to your thread so it can be closed.

4. Absorb "Game Nights" into "Lower Mainland Events". With the current low number of active threads, seems unnecessary to have a subboard just for that.

5. Split "Rest of BC" into more regional subboards. Although there isn't a lot of activity in "Rest of BC". Or is this a chicken and egg problem?

6. "Forum Games" -- Some people have requested that it not show up in Recent Posts. I don't see an easy way to do it. The apparent way would be to create a membergroup that cannot see the "Forum Games" forum, then I switch people in and out of that group by request.

There should be a way to simply create an open usergroup, where people can join and leave as they please anyhow.  Just so long as people are aware it is there, I suppose.

Also, Forum Games probably should have been left where it was origonally, rather than being made a sub-board of general toppings.  Wow, pun accident...

Well, I don't see a way to do user-managed groups.

As for Forum Games, that is easily adjusted when I reorganize.

1. Done

2. Open to comments. The most prevalent kind of thread that could be a sub-board is "Blogging about my life" type posts and "Personals (from friend to hang out with to long-term relationship)".

3. Still an item to do. Any threads you wish to post an update on to indicate that it is no longer an active proposition is welcome.

4. Done.

5. Still looking for discussion. One idea I had is to just absorb Fraser Valley events into Lower Mainland events. then we'd just need one or two additional boards.

6. Not hidden from Recent Posts, but did follow the suggestion to not have it as a sub-board of general board.

Personals sounds like a good idea.

Fraser Valley/Lower Mainland consolidation sounds good as well.

Another thought would be to update the news banner to point out the necessity to look in these topics for updates, because most people don't.

Additional idea: Change "Movies" board and "Music" board to top-level forums, not child forums. Thoughts?

Yeah, definately a good idea.  As it is, the Movies Music and Reviews forum is absolutely empty... so it kinda puts more distance to the content from the front page.

May as well rename Hobby Gaming to Hobbies, so that it can cover a wider spectrum.  There are plenty of hobbies out there that have nothing to do with games or gaming.

Merge Movies and Music into one forum. "Media" Less activity means we don't need two separate forums for them.

I split out "Movies" and "Music" to top-level boards; they're no longer child boards. It's reversible if people decide they don't like it. Combining them into one board would be a bit harder to reverse if necessary, so I'll wait for more feedback about that.

I've changed the default time zone for the forum. If you're in BC, it'll show the correct time by default. If you've changed your option, change it back to zero. (Profile/Look and Layout Preferences/Time Offset, enter "0")

There are several ways to improve the boards, and being careful not to step on peoples toes i would like to stick my neck out to provide some suggestions to what i think could be beneficial for the forums as far as usability goes, it might just be me, but in my opinion SMF isnt exactly user friendly, though that might change with version 2.0 whenever they decide to let that go into final, havent tested it yet, i might be biased however as far as forum softwares goes, i have had experience in administrating furry forums since 08, but i've had a few forums before that for various cases and events.

As far as the forums go, i would suggest looking into lisencing for vBulletin, this is kinda hard to decide on as legally this costs money to do, and its newest version (vB4.0) is out of my exerpience field, while i may admit, i might be a bit more of a power user in the field and I aim to create as good a system as possible, not really that great with the user base sometimes. (example)

Other than that, styles, modifications, making sure modifications are updated (or menus atleast *points to chat shortcut* on the menu bar on the top) this makes for a bit more usable system without any major admin interaction, though if the worry about vbulletin would be the work needed to get the conversion progress finished and all of that jazz, dont hesitate to ask me, that goes for anything in this matter though, i wouldnt mind giving a helping hand to my fellow furs in on the to the west, who knows, maybe we'll be able to meet up at a furmeet in Canada at some point!

~Calmcacil
The Very Insomniated feline
(07:30) Military time

I have a test forum up and running with RC 3.0 up and running on it...seems fine so far.  I'll give it a few more rounds of testing, do a little bug research, and if everything checks out I'll release it on live.

Quote from: Unition on April 06, 2010, 01:27:40 PM
I have a test forum up and running with RC 3.0 up and running on it...seems fine so far.  I'll give it a few more rounds of testing, do a little bug research, and if everything checks out I'll release it on live.

Would it be wise to upgrade to a RC on a live forum?

No, which is why I had a test forum made with duplicate data (including posts), and ran the upgrade there first.

It's been up for a week or so without any problems, I'm not looking at pushing it to live even anytime this week until I'm satisfied with testing.

Even then there will be a backup of posts on both our side and on the server, and I can reinstall from nothing in about an hour.

And then the test server itself is a viable backup.

Quote from: Unition on April 06, 2010, 01:48:28 PM
No, which is why I had a test forum made with duplicate data (including posts), and ran the upgrade there first.

It's been up for a week or so without any problems, I'm not looking at pushing it to live even anytime this week until I'm satisfied with testing.

Even then there will be a backup of posts on both our side and on the server, and I can reinstall from nothing in about an hour.

And then the test server itself is a viable backup.

I dont relaly know the usability of SMF version 2 yet, i know they arent suggesting towards upgrading a live forum at this time but if you think its safe to upgrade ill take your word for it, never really used SMF myself. Any words on when the final version is expected to be finished? I might just consider writing some "mods" to it myself.