vBulletin 2.0

[OneChance]

Any plans for installing vBulletin 2.0 when it's released? I think the support for avatars and co-branding would add a new dimension to the SDMB.

[TubaDiva]

There are no plans at the present time to move to vB 2.0.

In the first place, it's newly released software and doubtless quite buggy. If our experiences with vB give any indication it will be quite some time before all the bugs are discovered and all the problems ironed out. The techs are of the "if it ain't broke, don't fix it" school of thought and feel that someone else not us needs to make all these discoveries and handle the resultant catastrophes.

It's also a financial consideration, the commitment of time, manpower, resources to this project would far outweigh any advantages that might be gained in the upgrade.

Please remember that this is not a money-making entity for the Chicago Reader and so we're not exactly the first thing on their list when it comes to spending money. We are incredibly fortunate that they give us house room at all.

your humble TubaDiva
Administrator

[Chronos]

By the way, what, in the context of a message board, are "avatars" and "co-branding"?

So far as I know, an avatar is an earthly representative of a deity, and co-branding would seem to be what you would do when two ranches have joint ownership of a steer.

[Crusoe]

As far as I'm aware, an avatar is a customisable graphical representation of a registered user (see this site (http://whatis.techtarget.com/WhatIs_Search_Results_Exact/1,282033,,00.html?query=avatar) for a more detailed definition). I cannot see any point in dragging down bandwidth with that kind of thing.

No idea about "co-branding", I'm afraid.

[Crusoe]

Sorry. A little more digging reveals co-branding as allowing different forums to use different style templates, more or less. It might be handy for some sites, but I don't see much use for it here (sorry OneChance).

You can have completely different everything with the co branding system.

Think of it as two different vB 1.1.x's running off the same databases, just with completely separate template and replacement tables.

This includes ALL images, templates, fonts, replacements, headers, footers, and anthing else that you can think of!

Cobranding essentially means that you can have differently 'branded' forums within one vB board...

The obvious example would be that you have two forums, one for discussions of Windows and one for discussion of Macintosh... with cobranding you could apply different styles to the two forums so that they reflect the GUI styling of the system they are discussing.

(quotes from vBulletin's own site discussion forums)

[little me]

Avitars and co-branding are used by CoolBoard message boards.

The Avitars are game "figureines" icons.

Co-branding means a shared board.

Look here for an example:
http://www.coolboard.com/boardshow.cfm/mb=89054556259548
Click on reply to see the avitars.

[Lynn Bodoni]

I REALLY don't think that we want avatars on this message board. Our server is strained to the limit as it is. I use an avatar myself on a Final Fantasy message board, but that board is mostly for kids.

I don't see any advantage in having co-branding on this message board, either, unless someone ELSE is gonna make a larger server available for the SDMB. Even then, I don't think I'd like it. As it is now, control of this message board lies completely with the Chicago Reader, and I don't think that the Reader would like to give up any control.

[lazy1@boltonlandingny.net]

What "strain" on the server? The avitars are the same as any other smilie.

A typical avitar is 600 bytes. Your happy orthodox jewish man is over 1000 bytes.

You like them sometimes.

[Ice Wolf]

lazy1, why waste server space? It's already running slow at times, it's finite, and Eutychus55 is sorting out the cull of old defunct posts.

There are a lot of users here who have defined a personality without more pretty little pictures than there are. Including you.

[lazy1@boltonlandingny.net]

Originally posted by Ice Wolf
lazy1, why waste server space?

Let's review.
I say avitars are less burden than the current smilies.

You conclude that I want to add burden?

How can a place with a motto of fighting ignorance have so many people bad in math?

And as to people liking pretty little pictures, I believe Lynn was just saying she used them. I do not. So direct that complaint to her, not me.

[Crusoe]

Avatars are more or less customisable, right? And in the boards that use them that I've seen, they're compulsory (you can't go without one). Replacing an optional "smiley face" that many posters do not use with one of a presumably large range of icons in every post is going to increase the load on the servers, unless those icons are somehow far smaller sized than the current smiley faces.

Besides, what exactly do they add? I'm not sure how a little face can sum up a poster's entire personality.

[Ice Wolf]

How can a place with a motto of fighting ignorance have so many people bad in math?

As I implied in my earlier post, lazy1, you need no more to define your personality. The quote above proves that.

So many more "avatars", compared with the small range of "smilies" we have now ... who can't do math, Lazy1?

[Coldfire]

Originally posted by lazy1@boltonlandingny.net
How can a place with a motto of fighting ignorance have so many people bad in math?lazy1, take it down a notch, at least in this forum or anything else outside of the Pit. Got that?

[Chronos]

Hmm... Might I say that this co-branding thing might be a good idea, provided it doesn't eat up extra server resources? That sounds like it would let us remind folks of the individualized forum rules whenever they post, things like the link for a Comments thread. Perhaps we could even have a field just for the link, and have an automatic reminder shown to an OP who omits it?

[TubaDiva]

We're not going to upgrade anytime soon, so any discussion of available options are moot. What you see is pretty much what you get at least for right now, according to Jerry the Tech God.

your humble TubaDiva
Administrator

[OneChance]

Well, are there any plans to upgrade to version 1.1.5? I understand it addresses a few security holes and other bugs.