Northern Illinois APRS Network

[ka9vnv]

In the near future, this board will be changed over to version 3 of phpBB. There are several features that will be lost when I do this, but they have not been used, so it isn't a big problem.

Lost feature: Knowledge Base. The "KB comment" forum is now the Knowledge Base, and the only article in the KB has been moved to message in that forum.

Lost feature: Topic Calendar. This is one I really want to get back, but the phpBBv3 versions out there aren't as easy to use as the v2 one we use, so it isn't going to happen for now.

Lost feature: Photo Album. No one has used this here, and so it won't be missed. There are some options available if it ever becomes an issue, though.

Gained feature: Better "verification" images for registering. The one we're using has done a very good job of keeping spam robots from being able to register and spam the board, but it's also been hard for real people to figure out within the 3 attempts it allows.

There are dozens of other features added, most of which we won't use, but they'll be available.

There is also one thing that will break when this happens. This board currently sends the text of new messages if you subscribe to a forum or a topic. I've added that into the version 3 software, however, the "subscribe to forum" feature does NOT grab the forum subscriptions from version 2, because that wasn't an official feature of v2. If you receive this message via email, it affects you. I will see if I can convert your settings, but... it might need to be manually set the next time you come to the board.

And something I know at least a few of you will appreciate... The Google Adsense ads will move to the bottom of the screen, instead of the side bar!

More information when the conversion occurs. It will be by the end of January, but could come within the week, depending upon how much free time I have.

[ka9vnv]

The change to version 3 of phpBB has been delayed. Recently, someone came up with a program to "solve" the confirmation image that version 3 displays to new registrants, and there have been a FLOOD of spam registrations on v3 boards from Russia. The measures we have in place on this v2 board deflect them with no problem; I'm still working on ways to do that on the v3 boards I run.

Until it is resolved to my satisfaction, though, we'll stay with v2 here.