Forum Upgrade

[SoupDragon]

I have upgraded the forum. The following is new to this version:

Enable/Disable Registration
Your forums can now truly be members-only by disabling registration of new members.

Restricted/Open Registration
When the Restrict Registration feature is turned on, the Administrator of the forums can approve or deny registration of new members.

Email Validation
With the Email Validation feature turned on, new members have to click on a URL sent to them in an email to prove that their email address is valid. Administrators can see the Pending Members in the Admin Section of the forums and approve or delete Pending Members manually if necessary. A new validation email is sent out each time a member changes his/her email address in their profiles.

Password Encryption
All passwords are now stored in the database and cookies after they have been encrypted.

Quick Reply
When the Quick Reply feature is turned on, a text field will appear at the bottom of the topic page, allowing members to quickly post a reply without having to go to the posting page first.

Improved Posting Page
The posting page has several new features, such as:
1) Smilies are displayed on the page instead of in a pop-up window
2) New formatting options
3) Auto-insertion of the Forum Code around the selected text (Internet Explorer only)
4) JavaScript Form validation (no more loss of your post when you forget to enter the subject)

Flood Control
To prevent flooding of the forums or double posts, the Administrator can turn on Flood Control. The Flood Control Time the admin specifies is the time a member has to wait in-between posts. If (s)he posts before the Flood Control Time has elapsed, a message will be displayed to notify the member of this.
This feature does not affect Moderators and Administrators.

Sticky Topics
Administrators and Moderators can now choose to make a topic sticky. With this done, the topic will stay on the top of the topic list no matter how old it is.

Topic Sorting
Each user can now sort the topics on the forum page by a couple criteria:
1) Last Post Time
2) Topic Title
3) Topic Author
4) Number of Replies
5) Number of Views
These can be sorted in ascending or descending order, and for a specified timespan

Category Grouping
Group Categories enables you to “group” Categories together into “Groups” to better organize how Categories are displayed on your forum.

Dynamic Signatures
With this feature turned on, signatures will be stored in the database separate from the posts instead of as part of the post.
This allows members to change their signature in all posts they’ve made by simply editing their profiles.

Bad Word Filter
The Bad Word Filter has been rewritten, now allowing you to enter both the word to be filtered, and the text that will be used to replace the filtered word.

Jump To Last Post
On the forums’ homepage and forum pages you can now find an extra icon to quickly jump to the last post made in a forum or topic.

Fixed a lot of bugs
Smaller bugs and bigger bugs.
Added explicit recordsetclosing.
Since Snitz Forums becomes more popular, hackers enjoy finding exploits in the code. We had to fix several security related bugs.
Those two are enough reason to upgrade !

Improved Moderator Assigning
Administrators can now assign moderators to forums directly from the forums’ homepage or the forum page.This happens in a similar way as when using Private Forums with the Allowed Members List option.

Improved Coding
All files have been rewritten to remove unnecessary coding, convert every possible line to Response.Write syntax, add the new features and improve performance.

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