vBulletin 3.0 Feature List

[Thunderfall]

Jelsoft recently released a feature list for the next major version of vBulletin, vB 3.0. Check it out!

Comprehensive Features List
Scott Molinari has very kindly compiled a full features list from our completed todo list. This is by no means exhaustive, and should not be regarded as perfectly accurate: not everything was recorded in the todo and some things were changed too.

Added Features:

--to the user interface

*** General ***


Quick registration system...username, password, email and any required custom fields and timezone

Pop-up auto-refreshing buddylist with ICQ-style alerts when new buddies come online. You'll find a link in the temp buttons top right in the nav bar.

Show the title of the last posted to thread for each forum on index.php

Subscription to Threads/Forum without receiving e-mails

Favorite threads - you don't get email from these either.

User rating - Karma

User ranking

Password break-in watches -- too many failed attempts warning with a preset wait after too many failures.

Threaded view

Password protected forums

Similar threads display

Send an email "thanks for registering and welcome to .." on user registration (welcome email)

Validity check for homepages

Search engine friendly archive of open forums

Happy b'day emails

Much improved calander system (too many changes to mention)

hit counter on announcements

Digests: new posts/threads in selected forums daily/weekly/monthly

"excerpt of message:" are now in the new reply email notifications

'report post to mod' sends anonymous copy to the original poster of the message

Restyled FAQ section now looks similar to a forum

*** Posting ****

WYSIWYG Editor for major text input fields (IE 5.5+Only)

Minimum number of characters in post

Insert smilie/vB code where cursor is (IE 5+ Only)

Preview on edit

Ability to add attachment when editing a post instead of just when creating

Reason for editing

Reason for deleting(for admins and mods)


**** User CP - Profile *****

User Pictures - user can upload a personal picture. This picture is shown in the profile of the user.

Completely revamped PM system (currently in work)

Longer signature field with optional limit

**** Search *****

Get daily for just one category

Search only in subscribed forums

A list of ignored words or words used in a search are added to the results page

Option to find only started by 'username'

Display matching forums in results

Support for searching custom profile fields

Search for exact username (e.g. turn off wildcards)

**** Polls ****

Option for users to see who voted for which option (public vote)

When you vote your name is highlighted when viewing results

Poll results ordered by most to less voted

Ability to post a poll AFTER a thread had started


--to the admin interfacep

**** General ****

New admin cp front end

Language Manager and vB Language packs (in work)

Context sensitive help

Improved attachment system. Statistics, Attachment types editing. Ability to delete old attachments. Ability to limit users to X number of bytes in total attachments. Option to "expire" attachments in CP.

New FAQ System

User ranking and karma admin

New settings manager

Help topics manager for the context sensitive help

vBCode descriptions in the "What are vBCodes" link are now the actual descriptions in the database. No more editing the template.

Add options to pick which groups appear on the memberlist, birthdays, etc

Categories for Avatars and Smilies

Ability to restrict "view new" to certain forums and groups of forums.

Admins are exempt from the custom avatar post limit

A "forum" can be just a link to something or somewhere else

New merge/split/delete posts system

A more complete set of subscription options for daily/weekly/on new posts updates, for forum, thread and board.

**** Utilities ****

Admin can run REPAIR and OPTIMIZE on tables as a group or singularly (using mysql 3.23+)

An SQL box in the admin section for executing general queries

vBcron system

Diagnostic tests for testing system compatibility and settings

**** User administration ****

Admin editing of User's Avatar is more user friendly.

Additional user profile fields - you can now add profile fields which can have either a single line text box, multi line text box, single selection radio buttons, single selection menu, multiple selection menu, or multiple selection checkboxs.

Add user option in the admin CP to change the user's referrer

Allow users to change usergroups automatically based on postcount

Option to merge user accounts

Search members based on custom profile field

Email members based on custom profile field

User notes -- A field for the admin to keep notes on the user

Admin can designate moderators who can themselves set forum passwords.

Place user under moderation

Extended Moderator Activity Logging

Add usergroup with permissions initially set as set for another group

Improved email address ban

Signature length control

Resend for registration confirmation emails

**** Styles ****

Completely revamped Style system

You can place $post[postcount] in your postbit template to see each posts position in the thread

Conditionals in templates. Also called vB Conditionals, these are "if" "then" "else" statements built directly into the templates. This gives the admin/designer improved flexibility in creating dynamic design


--to the programming

**** Code ****

Autoselect forumid for search when clicking search button on toplinks from the forum.

Todays birthdays to not always refresh the cached template when someone submits a profile.

Improved post storage to reduce resource usage when showing threads.

Use gmdate() and NOT date()

All bbcode/smilies are stripped from posts BEFORE indexpost()

Quoted text excluded from search.

Associate searchid with userid so people can't insert searchid's and get results they're not supposed to see

Who's Online code is moved to a function so that it can be used to figure out a single user's location, to be used in the user's profile and other places if need be

Meta tags -- forum descriptions (and keywords?) are added to the Meta tags for each forum page

Infinite parenting system for templates/replacements

Attachment images (.gif,.jpg,,etc) are no longer in the database.

Search system is improved with regards to speed. Even faster now!

No more "nosessionhash" setting.

No more use cookies setting

MD5 password by javascript before it is sent to the server

A second phpinclude template to be executed at the same time as dooutput() - to allow manipulation of elements already generated by the page

An API for posting functions (newreply, newthread, newpoll, editpost)

An option to have thread views updated hourly rather than immediately

Improved bbcode parser

An option for allowing a regex option to be specified for a custom profile field

Moved banned email addresses out of the settings

Remove check for attachments from mass-prune

**** Design *****

Back to Top link at bottom of page

"Want to register?" and "Forgotten your password?" before user/pass form fields, for using tab

All user info cells are combined into one template

**** Usability *****

Hitting the back button no longer necessary when you have too many images

Option to save cookie *on this computer* when logging in

Login/logout ability in all pages, with user/pass form -- single login system

It's gonna rock!!!

 

[Sodapop]

Hmmmmmmmm sounds interesting. I see some of the features phpbb already has, but there seems to be a nice evolution on the user-side even if that doesn't sound like this is a whole new product. I would have called it vbulletin 2.4 or something, but really, it seems like they took the old code and added stuff around. Anyway, I don't want to ruin your fun TF, but I think that's going to be one more heavy thing on your db... Especially with all the new users function...

 

[Black Fluffy Lion]

I see they've still not figured out how to use a DBAL so I'll laugh at them for it. hahaha. ahem, anyway the templates will still suck compared to phpBB and to quote a phpBB dev:

You want to know what I think? I think they took a good long look at our group system, decided they liked it and implemented it within vB3 ... I think they also took a little look at what's going on with phpBB 2.2 and again thought "hhmm, that's not a bad idea, we'll do that too" ...

so basically all the good stuff is ripped from phpBB

 

[baseballtwin86]

Bah! VBull. When is one going to learn that free is always better . Better Templates, faster page loads. In fact, 2.0.2 was released yesterday . And if you want to change over, there is always a handy convertor as well .

http://www.phpbb.com/phpBB/viewtopic.php?t=7497

 

[Becka]

Pop-up auto-refreshing buddylist with ICQ-style alerts when new buddies come online. You'll find a link in the temp buttons top right in the nav bar.

Ooooooh.....

Show the title of the last posted to thread for each forum on index.php

Ahhhhhhhhh...
(Does that mean it will show the last thread that was replied to AND the user who made that reply? You can run into some very funny thread/user combos.... )


Great stuff!

 

[Padma]

Obviously some thing need not be implemented, even though thay are supported. e.g., "User rating - Karma". I've seen Karma-whoring on other sites, and it isn't always pretty. Besides, we talked about user rating/ranking in another thread a while back.

And for the phpBB supporters: give it a rest! The biggest thing phpBB has going for it is that it is free and open-source. But from my experience as a user, there's nothing else to recommend it. It is as good as other software out there, but not necessarily better. TF has already paid for VB, so unless phpBB comes up with something drastically better than VB, I don't see why he would want to change.

 

[Thunderfall]

Yeah, lots of vB users have been chanting that vB 3.0 is THE version that will leave UBB in the stone age. And they appear to be correct. vB 3.0 is a long time in the making and will be the biggest vB release in a long time.

I think it will also come with a brand new look (the old look will still be available).

Whether phpBB users like it or not, we will upgrade to 3.0 the day it's available.

 

[Becka]

Originally posted by Thunderfall
Whether phpBB users like it or not, we will upgrade to 3.0 the day it's available.

How long will the forums be down? Go ahead, tell me. I can take it.

 

[Knight-Dragon]

Originally posted by Becka
How long will the forums be down? Go ahead, tell me. I can take it.

Just what I am wondering about...... Can you do it on a weekend, when I'm offline?

 

[Thunderfall]

Originally posted by Becka


How long will the forums be down? Go ahead, tell me. I can take it.

My vB license will expire next March, so I hope they release it before that.

My guess is it probably won't come out in another 2 months...

 

[Black Fluffy Lion]

Originally posted by Padma
And for the phpBB supporters: give it a rest! The biggest thing phpBB has going for it is that it is free and open-source.

and a number of other things...

But from my experience as a user, there's nothing else to recommend it. It is as good as other software out there, but not necessarily better. TF has already paid for VB, so unless phpBB comes up with something drastically better than VB

it already has! and no I don't expect this forum to turn to phpBB, I was just pointing out that vBull still haven't got a dbal...

 

[Padma]

@BFL:




( )

Seriously, I don't expect TF to change, or to pay any attention to my feelings on the matter anyway. All I was really saying was that I am tired of, everytime TF posts a thread about VB, there are immediately posts about "phpBB is better 'cause it's FREE", and "phpBB is better 'cause I use it", and so on. From my (user) experience, comparing, for instance, CFC and GC, phpBB doesn't appear any better than VB.

I will admit, I am not a web admin. There may be some things that phpBB does incredibly better than VB. I just don't know.

(BTW, what's a dbal? I assume it's a database thingy, but like I said, I'm not a net admin....)

 

[Alcibiaties of Athenae]

And thus, we reach a new level of Geekdom.

 

[Black Fluffy Lion]

Originally posted by Padma
All I was really saying was that I am tired of, everytime TF posts a thread about VB, there are immediately posts about "phpBB is better 'cause it's FREE", and "phpBB is better 'cause I use it", and so on.

pfft all I said was that phpBB's templating system is better (which anyone with any brains would agree with) than the new vB one, that vBull still only works with mySQL and that vBull's group/auth system may have been taken from phpBB.

I will admit, I am not a web admin. There may be some things that phpBB does incredibly better than VB.

there are

(BTW, what's a dbal? I assume it's a database thingy, but like I said, I'm not a net admin....) [/B]

Database abstraction layer - a system (well in this case) to make the software compatible with multiple db systems (e.g. mySQL, postgres, access, oracle etc...). vBull only works with mySQL I belive whilst phpBB can cope with practically any dbms you throw at it. many large sites which use vBull (like here) would benifit from postgres support IMHO.

 

[Becka]

Ah, you dopey lion, can't you just leave it be?

(by "dopey lion" i mean the upmost in respect. )

 

[Black Fluffy Lion]

ok ok, this is my last reply in this thread. and on a positive note (the last one was negative, I know how you all love to hear my replies ) it's good to see that the passwords will be hashed before being passed to the server

 

[gonzo_for_civ]

Extended Moderator Activity Logging

No, this sucks!!! Don't do it TF!!!!

Does this mean you will be able to see when I edit a poll, TF??

No more editing polls just because I am a mod and think my vote should count as 10

This update doesn't do much for moderators though, that kind of sucks........

Of course you could just make me an admin if you'd like, then I can see all the new features!

 

[starlifter]

by TF:

**** Polls ****

Option for users to see who voted for which option (public vote)

When you vote your name is highlighted when viewing results

Poll results ordered by most to less voted

Ability to post a poll AFTER a thread had started

People are gunna LOVE that !

*** Posting ****

WYSIWYG Editor for major text input fields (IE 5.5+Only)

Minimum number of characters in post

Insert smilie/vB code where cursor is (IE 5+ Only)

Any developer that supports MS-only "features" deserves some pain and punishment. Either stick to the industry standards, or fold up, I say. The industry is repressed enough by MS, without developers actually following that stuff MS commands us to do.