New Features: Visitor Messages, User Albums and Profile Customization

Three new features have been activated today! They were included with vBulletin 3.7, which we started using a good while back, but we wanted to wait and see before we turned these on (read: we totally forgot about them). Visitor Messaging, User Profile Customization and User Albums are the three newly active features. Confused? Read on! I will detail each feature in a separate reply to enhance readability, eh? Click whichever of the following you want to learn more about or just scroll down through:

Visitor Messaging
User Albums
User Profile Customization
Turning Off New Features

Visitor Messaging

Take a look at someone's profile; anyone will do. Let's try HDS first. What is this nonsense about "Visitor Messages"? There's a brand-new tab before "About Me" now.


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You can now leave messages on someone's profile! They are a cross between PMs and regular forum postings. Anyone can see them but they only appear on a specific persons profile. Those of you familiar with social networking sites such as Myspace, Bebo or Facebook will find these similar to comments left on user profiles at those sites. Because these are public you should not put any personal information in them, obviously.

How can you leave one of these? I imagine that's the next question. If you examine the above screencap again, you'll see a box that looks like a post reply box near the bottom of the page.


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Enter your message in it like you would a normal message. If you click the "Go Advanced" button underneath it you'll be taken to a regular post input screen. Almost all regular vB code (like font and color code) works here. Take a look at the below screenshot; you'll see that regular formatting can be used and that images can be posted in visitor messages. Note that attachments are NOT permitted.


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Just like any other kind of post, if you see a visitor message that violates the TMF Rules please report it using the convenient link in each message:


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If you don't want visitor messages just head to the Edit Options page in your User CP and look down to the "Messaging & Notification". You can turn them off entirely or limit them to Contacts (Buddy List) and Staff.


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What happens if you get a visitor message? How do you know? Just like a private message you will get a little notice up by your username in the upper left.


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If you click on it you'll see a new option is there:


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While I am already there, clicking the link that says I have a visitor message will take you to your User CP where you'll see the list of new visitor messages.


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If you click the visitor message alert here you'll see it in your profile:


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How did I get all those funky colors, you ask? Read on to the Profile Customization section two posts down!

User Albums

The second of the three new things are User Albums. With these you can create little photo albums to that are linked in your profile! Let's go back to my profile to see where they are located:


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See the box at the right? There's one album there right now; let's click it!


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Look at that! Those of you who were at the TickleTheater five billion years ago will recognize one of these as my avatar. If you select the "Edit Album" link in the upper right you'll be able to edit the album details after creation:


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Let's go back to the album and click on the leftmost image to see what viewing an image looks like:


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A-mazing. But if we scroll down ...


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We can comment on images! And, just like visitor messages, these are public. Note both the comment and image report links. Use them wisely.

Now, how do you manage your album? Let's head to your User CP and check it out ...


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See the "Pictures and Albums" link noted? Click it! For me we see one existing album:


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From here let us select the "Add Album" option:


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We are now taken to this page. Note how I set this album to be a "Profile" type; this is important later (see next post).


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Once we click "Save Changes" we're brought here:


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Click one of the two links I highlighted (the middle one disappears once pictures are there) to upload your first image!


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Use the browse boxes just like normal upload boxes for posts. Note that there are special limits as to pictures per album and the size of pictures. There is also a max overall limit to album pictures. Now, say we uploaded and image ...


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We have to give our image information, eh? Do that, click "Save Changes", and voila!


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Now that you know about Albums, let's go to the final element, Profile Customization ...

Profile Customization

A scary thought, this: you can now change the style of your profile! There are, of course, limitations: you can change colors, fonts and background images but you CANNOT add any HTML code. So you can't have everything but what does exist is quite powerful.

How do we access this? Well, back to the good 'ole User CP:


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Clicking that link takes us to this page:


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Whoa! That's a lot of options! I won't begin to explain them all; play around and see what changes when you alter something! If you aren't sure ask about a specific one, eh? Let's try changing the Text Color in the "Main" area. If we click on the little box with dashes to the left of the input area we get a color chooser! If you are familiar with hexadecimal colors go ahead and enter a hex value in the input area.


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Clicking a color here will choose it for you!


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Now, let's choose a background image. Background images can ONLY come from User Albums set to be of type "Profile" (Remember that from earlier?). Click the little image icon next to the input area to be given a choice of images in your Profile Albums. I see that I have one image:


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Click it to select it:


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I next went through and randomly changed everything.


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If we now click the "Preview" button below any one section we can preview those changes. Click "Save" below any one section to save that section.


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If we scroll to the bottom there is an overall preview and an option to save all, reset all, and clear all.


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Now ... what does my profile look like?


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Egads! Look at what I have done! Not too bad for random choices. 😀 Play around with it; see what you can come up with!

Turning Off Features
Bothered by one of these new things? You can turn them off! User Albums you can't turn off but, of course, you can choose not to use them.

Turning off Visitor Messages
To turn off Visitor Messages head to the Edit Options page in your User CP and look down to the "Messaging & Notification" area. You can turn them off entirely or limit them to Contacts (Buddy List) and Staff.


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This will not turn them off on others' profiles; it will turn them off on your own.

Disabling Profile Customization
If you want to turn off the profile customization on someone's profile you can do this. It must be done on a profile-by-profile basis, however; you cannot turn it off for everyone at once. Let us take BrightEyes1082 as an example. Notice the link the arrow is pointing two in this picture:


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See the link? "Hide User Customizations"? Click it.


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Voila! Customizations gone. What if you want to go back? Just click the new link there, "Show User Customizations".


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These links only appear if the person has actually modified their profile.


Play around with the new features; let us know what you think of them! If you have any troubles feel free to ask in this thread; you can also start a thread in Technical Support.

Bumping up (since I started work on this a while back).

So...how exactly do I just LOOK at someone else's profile now?

Thanks for bumping this up, HDS. I missed it the first time. 😀

euphoricstrokes said:

So...how exactly do I just LOOK at someone else's profile now?

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I suggest you send HDS a PM or post in tech support so we can diagnose your particular issue (a bothersome one).

When accessing a profile, I do not have any tabs to view the "about me", statistics, or contact info. I am using the beta version of Internet Explorer 8.

besttickler27 said:

When accessing a profile, I do not have any tabs to view the "about me", statistics, or contact info. I am using the beta version of Internet Explorer 8.

Click to expand...

Hmm ... it looks like IE has problems with the new profile pages. We will look into this problem.

The problem with profiles should be corrected. Please alert myself if it is not working for you.

Anyone who wishes to view someones profile the "normal way can go to the profile in question and click "hide user modifications" and any changes they have made will not be seen by you if you prefer to view things the old way...

Thanks for the info on how to shut the custom user profiles off.

If I could ask that it be included in the instructions on how to use, also add to them how to shut off, just like in the visitor messaging how it explains to shut off that option.

Thanks!!

Rob

awesome!! great idea for the albums!
i have already set up 3 and now my own pictures are in a very easily found place!!
thanks!!😀!!

Robace252 said:

Thanks for the info on how to shut the custom user profiles off.

If I could ask that it be included in the instructions on how to use, also add to them how to shut off, just like in the visitor messaging how it explains to shut off that option.

Thanks!!

Rob

Click to expand...

Done. Added to the last info post and linked from the first.