Forum software upgrades

Hi everyone, I'm happy to announce that I've just completed some software upgrades. A majority of the new features are "behind the scenes" and will only affect administrators and mods. However, there are a couple new features that I thought you might want to know about.

First is the new Bookmarks feature. You know how sometimes you read an amazing post that you know you might want to come back to? The bookmark feature will help you easily come back to it in the future. You can find all of your bookmarks by clicking on your username in the upper right hand corner and clicking on "Your Bookmarks." I call this the "Username Menu." Of course, you have to be logged on to use it.

Several of the features are designed to make the site more social and help people to get to know each other better. For example, on the forum home page (which lists all of the subforums), on the right near the bottom is a listing of recent status updates. There is also a page of status updates on the "All Recent Threads" page.

Status updates bring elements of Facebook status updates to our site. They are a great way to get and give support when you just want to share a bit of information or don't want to make a full Support Forum post. They are limited to 140 characters like a text message on your phone, which keeps them quick and light.

You may have also noticed the little green "Online now" status indicators on people's avatars:

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They're a great way to see who is around on the site at any given time.

If I can make one request of people, it's that if you find a post that you think is truly excellent, please use the bookmark link right below it and make the bookmark public. Then, if someone is reading a post by you and really likes it, they can click on your username and when they view your profile page, a tab will appear to show the posts that you've bookmarked and made public. If they've liked the posts you've written, then chances are they'll like the posts you've bookmarked as well.

Here's how to use the username menu. If you're logged in, your username menu will be in the upper right hand corner of every forum page. Check it out!

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