New Site
So what's this all about? Back in 2005 I decided the site needed a lick of paint and also wanted to start introducing some new features. I had two options, either keeping waiting for phpBB3 (which seemed decades away at the time...) and continue to 'hack' changes to phpBB2 or start writing forum software from scratch. I went for the latter and in my spare-spare time have been coding a brand new forum. Apologies for the ridiculously long time it has taken, I didn't quite realise what an undertaking it was. This change isn't about reinventing the wheel (after all there's only so much you can do with a forum!) but more about throwing in a few new features and trying out some design ideas.
The beta became available for a small group to test in February and thanks to their help various tweaks were made to get it to the state it's in today. There's still odd areas that need to be polished, this will happen in the coming weeks but please post on the site any issues or comments you have.
Main new features:
- Multiview - original members will remember the era where news discussion was in the main forum. With Multiview you can specify two or more forums and view all the topics from those forums on the one page. This can be edited in your Profile.
- The Gallery - Mock Designs is no more! There's a new name to promote better quality designs with a new thumbnail view for an at-a-glance look at the latest topics. The voting stars have been moved from the posting page to the topic page too.
Recent designs have been brought over from the main site and all former mocks are available via an archive page - Highlights Calendar - The homepage now features a calendar where users can highlight programmes/events of interest, such as channel rebrands or new idents
- Pres News - a ticker now appears in the main forum highlighting the latest television news, courtesy of the writers at The TV Room Plus
- And there's another ticker in the Media Websites forum showing when our favourite websites were last updated
- Audio/Video Downloads - there's now a separate page for an at-a-glance look at all downloads, embedded videos and YouTube videos which appear in a topic
- Feeds - each forum now has an RSS feed showing the latest updated topics.
What's returning?
- ITV/BBC regions - it gradually broke on the old site but has returned so if you can pick them again, they will get saved! Also the Memberlist page now has a UK map so you can find out who's in your region.
- Profile Xtra - allowing you to give a bit more detail about yourself and what systems you have.
