Hi everyone,

Today we're really excited to announce the release of version 1.5 of the forums. This is a massive release that introduces some very good features and brand new concepts, as well as refining some of what we've alreay had.

Changes touch upon Notifications, Forum search, Pinned forums, Neofriends, Mobile Mode, and status updates.

The major features in this version are:

1. Brand new Membercards system, which highlight your most recent Status Update
2. Brand new User Panel dropdown
3. Notifications Improvements
   1. Notifications Filter
   2. Receive Notifications from people Liking your comments
4. New Pinned bar in the forums
   1. Featured Forums in the Pinned bar for those people who don't have Pinned forums
   2. Your Pinned forums show up in the Pinned bar, sorted by last post date
   3. Easily Pin and Unpin forums straight from within a forum
5. Forum header improvements:
   1. New status updates integrated into the forum user dropdown
   2. Search box in forum header
      1. You can search for forums, members, and series straight from this search bar without leaving the page
6. Friends improvements:
   1. We now introduce the concept of a "follower", who is a person who has friended you whom you have not friended in return (these can be seen in the new membercards)
   2. New, "neofriends only" privacy setting when editing profile
   3. Add new friends straight from the Friends dropdown, with realtime search!
   4. Friends groups show in the header Friends list dropdown
7. Mobile Mode tweaks to improve useability
8. New Email Replies Improvements

Membercards

Membercards will show up if you are logged in and hover over an avatar, quote name, mention, or profile name in the thread view. They show the users last status update, friends count, followers count, post count, and mutual friends that you share with the person. This is a really fun feature that we're sure you will love

New User Panel dropdown, with integrated Status Update

If you click on your username in the Memberbar, you will see that we have switched to a brand new User Panel. Aside from using a cleaner layer, the new focus is on allowing you to easily change your Status from anywhere on the site, including in the forums

Pinned forums bar

This is a refresh of a little used feature in the forums. The Pinned Forums feature has been remade to improve its useability and usefulness. You can now Pin any forum and have it stay permanently in the forum header's Pinned forumb bar. This is a great way to get quick access to your most frequently access forums, and also see which ones have been updated based on their sort order.

By default, if you have no Pinned forums, this bar will show Featured forums, which moderators of forums can control. This leverages 2 existing features on the site and gives them new life.

Adding and removing Pinned forums is SUPER EASY. Click on the Edit link at the top right of the Pinned Bar and you can easily remove forums. To Pin any forum, either do it from within a forum, or else use the new header search box to find forums to Pin.


Above: Pinned bar edit mode.

Search in forum header

You can now search posts, threads, forums, series, and members straight from the forum header, and never leave your page .


Above: Easily Favourite and Pin forums from new header forum search.

Notifications: The Long Awaited Filter has arrived!!!

The new Direct and Indirect filters in the Notifications dropdown allow you to control what Notifications you see. Direct Notifications are ones that come from quotes, mentions, and replies directly to your own stuff such as comments to your fanart, replies to your comments, and likes of your gallery items. Indirect notifications are things like people who post comments to news that you've liked or commented on. This setting is sticky, so if you select Direct Notifications that's what you'll see from now on .

Friends Improvements

New Privacy Settings

The privacy system has been updated so that you can show your profile information to different types of users, from Everyone, to No One, to Friends, or Friends and Contacts.

Followers

We also introduce the concept of "Followers" now, who are users who have added you as a Friend but that you have not Friended back yet. At this time we only show Followers in your Membercard, but we will extend this to your user profile as we see how the concept fits within the site.

Add Friends Straight From Memberbar Friends Panel

Adding Friends can't be any easier now. You can now search and add friends straight from the Friends User Panel

Friend Groups in Friends Panel

If you ar eusing Friend Groups, you can now see Friend Group labels when viewing your Friends panel dropdown.

Mobile Mode Tweaks

Mobile mode in the forums has been cleaned up, with focus on improvement legibility and "touchability" of several elements, and trying to reduce clutter. While changes appear subtle I think they improve the experience nicely.

A full list of tweaks are:

my.neoforum:

1. Remove the NeoPM box, it is not useful
2. Friends list no longer has PM icon and has been reformatted to use MUCH less space
   1. Move link to view all friends and PM friends into the header
3. Quick jump links renamed to fit into 1 line if possible.
4. Remove add friend box, it is not useful in mobile mode

General:

1. Pagination is much more touch mobile friendly now, with larger clickable areas.
2. Product mini pics are no longer shown in forums in mobile mode (affects forums browse and thread view)
3. Log out link has been moved to the footer so the userbar uses only 1 line for more members on more devices.
4. Thread titles are reformatted in forum browse and recent posts to be easier to read

Thread view

1. forum rank has been removed
2. profile icon has been removed. Click on username or avatar instead.
3. Thread titles do not show reply count if it is 0
4. reply count is much less intrusive when listing threads

There will be more improvements in Mobile mode this year, though some fixes will require more heavy reworkings of the mobile site. In the meantime our focus is to make it useable across as many platforms as possible, not just touch capable ones.

New Email Replies Improvements

If you subscribe to threads and receive emails from them, you can now enjoy more beautiful and useful email Notifications. In essence, they have been styled to look more like the forum theme, and in certain email clients like Gmail, they will show up as a "thread" discussion.

Bugs and Thanks

I'd like to thank all of our beta testers for helping to test and give feedback on the 1.5 release. I'd also like to thank ar_cat and tekmosis for their work on the release. This is months of work coming to fruition, and it's only the beginning of things we will do this year .


If you find bugs, or have suggestions, please remember the Bug reports forums (here and here) as well as the RFS forum.

We know this release comes with many new features, and as with all such releases there are suggestions on what could have been done better. We will continue to refine the 1.5 series of releases, and we actually have a very aggressive list of even more things to do for this year.

In the meantime, I hope you enjoy the new Pinned bar, Membercards, Notifications filter, and all the other things we've added to this release. And remember, please continue to show your support and tell your friends, co-workers, fellow schoolmates about Neoseeker, as your continued support allows us to continue making great things for you to enjoy .

1.5.1

Minor update to add new "tag prefix" system into the forums. Moderators now have the ability to set a number of tags that will show up as a select box when you create or edit threads. This feature is already currently used in a few forums, such as:

• Yu-Gi-Oh!
• RFS
• Minecraft
• Tales of Graces F

I'm gonna have to play around with all this. Great job, Neo Team!

Holy crap, what an update. Nice job Redemption, tekmosis & ar_cat. All of you are great.

"Mobile Mode: rank is not listed when viewing threads."

NOOO!

Sweet update, love the profile and search additions. Makes random search moments way easier to get done instead of clicking around to find the right area and the profile box come into the modern age.

You've *bleep*ed up the friends list, or at least I don't know how to work it so that it shows all my friends who are online at this point in time.

quote walnuts

You've *bleep*ed up the friends list, or at least I don't know how to work it so that it shows all my friends who are online at this point in time.

Was going to say this too...

I think it's sorted by join date now? I don't really see the point of that, and I would really like to have it back to showing who's online first. :L

Here's the bug report on it though.

The updates are pretty awesome; great work Red and all the others involved. (:

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