103 replies to this topic

[LinktheMaster]

After nearly 7 years, PureZC has finally been updated! And boy is it a big update.

We’ve updated the forum software up to a much newer version of Invision Board which includes a lot of new things such as a new private message conversation system, notifications, a "Like" feature, an advanced text editor, and more! It’s a great update over the previous old version of Invision Board that we were previously using.

Along with this, the home site has gotten a massive overhaul to match the new version of the forums. The design is a lot more modern and clean, and we paid a lot of attention to making things as fluid as possible.

But, there are a lot of new features that are on the new site as well!

• Quests now have genre labels to help describe their gameplay style.
• People can post comments on quests as well as ask questions on how to beat it.
• Reviews effectively have no limit on length and can be updated.
• You can reply to reviews/comments.
• You can receive notifications of people responding to any of your content.
• Quests can have YouTube videos attached to them.
• PureZC database entries use a new rating scheme.
• People can feature quests to be displayed on the home site.

Here's an example of notifications you might receive.

There’s also a gigantic new feature: quest projects.

What are quest projects? Simply put, they’re an enhanced version of the hosted quest project forums that have a lot of extra features. Not only can you post updates to your quest project, you can also upload screenshots and demos, invite other people to be staff members on the project, and discuss the quest privately with those staff members.

People who are interested in a quest project can then follow that quest project. When they’re following the quest, they can see any new updates to that quest project in their quest project feed. You can also receive notifications regarding quests you’re following if you so desire.
Basically, you can think of these quest projects as a combination of the hosted quest project forums, a file host, and Facebook. It’s a great resource for anyone wanting a place for their quest.

Here's what a quest project page looks like.

For people who already have a topic or hosted quest project forum for their quests, we can migrate your topics to the quest project. One thing to note is that if you open a quest project for your quest, you will no longer be allowed to use the hosted quest project forum for that quest. Also, hosted quest project forums are slightly broken (which will be explained in more detail later), so I highly recommend people switch to the quest projects.

If you all have any questions, about the site, you might want to check out the site help and quest project help pages. While you can ask questions here, they may get lost, so you can also ask questions in the Assistance and Propositions forum. If you find bugs, please post them in this thread if they're minor or in the Staff Dropbox if they're major. Tagging these topics would be really helpful, too. Finally, if you want to test out features of IPB3, you can use the test forum.

Finally, I would like to give special thanks to people who really helped out through all this.

• Nick for helping organize a lot of the staff action, testing the site while I was developing everything, and for putting up with my constant pestering of asking how things looked.
• Rambly for testing out the site before its release (and allowing me to user her account for testing).
• Bagel for creating the new logo and graphics for the site.
• The rest of the PureZC staff, the retired staff, and Saffith for their help in testing the site.
• The five beta testers: Magi, Jared, Sepulcher, Anthus, and Linkus. All of them were very helpful in finding bugs and giving advice.
• Everyone in the PureZC community. Thanks everyone for bearing with us while getting this new site made and uploaded.

Thanks everyone, and enjoy the new site!

[Kite]

This is some random forum stuff that I figured I'd note for everyone. There are a lot of new features to explore since we've skipped several IPB versions, so I can't cover all of them in this quick post. Just be sure to use some common sense while poking around and everything should be fine.

Where can I change my avatar and what happened to personal photos?

Avatars can be changed by going to My Settings->Profile Settings->Change My Photo. It's worth noting that the dialog is a liar when it recommends 200 pixel images as a minimum since our maximum avatar sizes are still 150x150 with 50 KB.

Personal Photos unfortunately no longer exist in IPB. If you want to put up a personal photo, you should probably host it somewhere and link it to your About Me section.

Image Dimension Limits

As of now, all non-signature forum related image dimension limits no longer apply. Please keep things reasonable and the images within all other PureZC rules, but image dimensions no longer matter since our themes automatically resize them.

The Like System

This has nothing to do with Facebook, but it's now possible to "like" posts. It's mostly a system that we have turned on to experiment with since there are often times where people are looking for feedback, but members are too worried that just saying "yes" without any additional content will be frowned on.

Signature Limits

Signatures now have a software enforced limit of 10 images, 400x400 pixel images at most, and 10 lines. This was done mostly because there is a new profile section called About Me available where you can type whatever you want with BBCode (so long as it follows the site rules). There is no point to overly crowd your signature when you can simply direct people to look at your profile. You can access the About Me editor from My Settings->Profile Settings->Edit About Me Page.

Existing signatures probably won't be effected by this until you try to edit them, so you can save your content and move it to the About Me page easily enough.

It's also worth noting that we still expect members to keep their signatures from exceeding 200 KB in combined image file size even though the software does not enforce this.

Why do my PMs say "Deleted" next to them?

There is an issue with conversions between old versions of IPB that causes this. If you did not save a copy of the PM when sending it, the recipient will have this message next to their copy of the PM. The message is not actually deleted, but IPB is confused since PMs are essentially group conversations that can involve multiple people and act like private threads now. There is unfortunately nothing we can do about this and it will probably be the next "why am I suddenly in outline mode?" question.

A Note to Hosted Quest Project Forum Owners

Due to IPB phasing out bizarre usage of the moderation queue (the method people have been hiding posts and threads with up until now), it is no longer possible for you to create new "invisible" threads. There is an alternative feature that is labeled as making things invisible, but it basically locks the entire thread down to where not even root admins can reply to a topic (though they can edit existing posts in an invisible thread). There is currently no way around this short of making posts in a forum that auto-queues posts (like the dropbox) and moving it. Given the new Quest Project page feature that is far superior to Hosted Quest Project forums and the ability to have group conversations via PM, we are not very motivated to try and fix this since we are gearing up to use the moderator queue for keeping track of posts that need moderation.

Sorry for any inconvenience this may cause. Existing "invisible" threads should be fine for now. We may change our stance in the near future if the queued HQPF threads get in the way of finding topics in the mod cp, though. There will be a warning before we do anything with that, though.

If you have any questions about any of this, feel free to ask.

[Mitchfork]

Watching this develop from the first beta (alpha?) iteration back in summer of 2012 has been truly astounding. We are truly blessed to have such a dedicated pair of staffers in LinktheMaster and Nick. Really, really incredible work.

[Ben]

Awesome work, especially @ LTM and Nick, for going all-out on this. The time and effort you guys spent was worth it.

[Jared]

Well, this is the new PureZC. Wow.

I repeat.... DA DA DA DAAAA!!!!!

http://www.youtube.c...h?v=69AyYUJUBTg

[Rambly]

Rambly for testing out the site before its release (and allowing me to user her account for testing).

Oh, yeah, sure, thanks for USING ME. ;___;

In all seriousness, the new site is absolutely amazing and I'm incredibly impressed with the hours upon hours of hard work that've been spent on it. And to think there's still yet more to look forward to! All of my congratulations go to everyone today, but especially LinktheMaster and Nick, and all of our amazing testers and taggers. <3

[Nathaniel]

A big round of applause for...

LTM, the main driving force behind all of this.
Nick, for his organization, leadership, and keeping everything in check.
All the rest of the staff for their contributions.
The beta testers.
The entire community for their patience and appreciation. Without you guys, we would have no reason to do any of this.
Wild Bill, for giving Nick and LTM FTP access. Without that decision, none of this would be happening.

Words will never do enough justice to express how wonderful this moment is.

[Demonlink]

Love the new interface, such a much cleaner version of PureZC! Really devs, NICE JOB!!

[SpacemanDan]

So I'd like to give a huge round of applause to all those involved with this (the taggers, testers and general assistance with this). Wounderful work all of you! And a very special round of applause to LinktheMaster and Nick for pushing forward through this. It looks wonderful! Bravo!

[Evan20000]

This must have been a helluva day for you guys. But look at what all your hard work accomplished!

[SpykStorm]

Wow. The new site really is amazing. I give thanks and applause to all the staff and everyone else who helped make this happen.

It even notifies you when other users ninja you while making a post.

[Sheik]

I would also like to give a big thank you to LTM and Nick for making this wonderful new site happen! I love it thus far.

[Fox]

The new site looks absolutely wonderful. Everyone else is doing it, but I also have to thank LinktheMaster and Nick for all the hard work they put into making this site a reality. They've both put in an absolutely incredible amount of work into this update - calling it an update doesn't do this transformation justice. I also want to thank all the staff who helped with testing, tagging, and bug-reporting. Without such dedicated people supporting PureZC, this site wouldn't be here today.

[Keaton]

This looks brilliant. You all did a brilliant job with the site!

[Tree]

Preeeeety sexy.