HowTo: New Features in vBulletin 3.8

[His Divine Shadow]

The TMF now runs vBulletin version 3.8, the latest major iteration of the forum software. With it come a few interesting changes, none nearly so dramatic as the addition of visitor messaging and profile modification that 3.7 brought. A few of the most important will be explained in this thread. As with past guides, simply click an image to bring up a full-size version.

I. Profile Privacy

II. Notices

III. PM Enhancements

IV. Odds and Ends

 

[His Divine Shadow]

Profile Privacy

Everyone remembers visitor messages, albums, and friends, right? Well, you can now control who can see these features and more. Head to your user CP and you'll see a new option underneath "Customize Profile".



"Profile Privacy" is the one we want. Click it and behold a brand new options page.



You can now deny portions of your profile to certain groups of members. For example, you can deny visitor messaging and contact information to unregistered members if you like by setting those to the appropriate level. You can restrict the Albums page to only your friends in a similar manner. Try it out if you would like to keep parts of your profile private to any degree.

 

[His Divine Shadow]

Notices

The administrators now have the ability to create notices that will display when certain conditions are met. For instance, they could create a message that displayed to all registered users or a message that displayed upon entry into a particular subforum. Many notices can be dismissed by clicking the red "X" in the right hand corner of their box but the admin can specify undismissable messages, so beware. Below is an example of a notice directed at a few ladies who could use a bit of notice.

 

[His Divine Shadow]

Private Message Enhancements

At long last, Private Messages receive some attention from the developers. Everyone can now filter and sort PMs by a number of criteria. Examine the below screen shot of the new PM inbox:



Notice the "Title / Sender" and "Date" links above the bar with "Today" and below the bar with "Private Messages in Folder: Inbox"? Those allow you to sort your PMs by those options. PMs can now be sorted by date, title or sender in ascending or descending order. Just click one of the links to sort. Notice too below the single PM there is a box labeled "Display Options". Using these options, you can now filter your PMs. Say you wanted to find a PM. You knew it had "Cookie" as part of the title. If you put "Cookie" in the "Title" box and set the date range to when you believe you received the PM you'd get a list of all PMs with "Cookie" in the title after pressing "Filter". You can search by sender, title, read/unread status, a date range or any combination thereof. It isn't quite a full-featured search tool but it is a much-needed improvement.

We also gain one other nifty feature with this update. PMs now have a quick reply box! You can now easily reply to a PM without ever having to travel to a new screen to compose your message, as seen in the below screenshot. The quick reply box appears below the PM itself.

 

[His Divine Shadow]

Odds and Ends

Take a look at the new menu bar. Notice any differences?



Where'd the Member's List go? It now is encapsulated within a new drop-down menu, "Community." Click once on community to see the link to the Members List and a few other community pages related to you.