Big Upgrade Slated for Summer 2012!!!

[DarkRider]

Total Site Software Upgrade

Coming Summer 2012

Hail Allies, VIPs, Ambassadors, and Patrons,

You should all be familiar with our routine upgrades, as most of you know IPS, whose software powers our community here, is a very forward thinking community development company and as they continue to push the bar higher, we continue to upgrade our software to stay at the cutting edge as long as doing so doesn't change the overall function and purpose of TESA. With that said, there's another upgrade in our relatively near future and unlike the last few which have been updates within a series (ie 3.1.0, 3.1.1, 3.1.2, etc) this one will be a series upgrade which usually means a BIG change and this time is no exception.

I think I just heard 3 or 4 of you faint

We do understand that there are features and functions on TESA that our users absolutely must have, and we will do everything we can to ensure the same functionality and full compliment features you have come to enjoy here.

The 3.2 IP Board software comes with a host of new features and almost everything has been changed or touched in some way. The developers' objective this go around was to make things really integrated and as simple as possible. This is an excerpt from their public space about some of the most relevant features changing this time around:

Calendar Improvements

• RSVP: http://community.invisionpower.com/blog/1174/entry-5826-ipboard-320-dev-update-calendar-improvements-part-iii-rsvp/'>http://community.invisionpower.com/blog/1174/entry-5826-ipboard-320-dev-update-calendar-improvements-part-iii-rsvp/
  
• Simplification and interface changes: http://community.invisionpower.com/blog/1174/entry-5827-ipboard-320-dev-update-calendar-improvements-part-iv-simplification-and-interface-changes/'>http://community.invisionpower.com/blog/1174/entry-5827-ipboard-320-dev-update-calendar-improvements-part-iv-simplification-and-interface-changes/
  
• iCalendar support: http://community.invisionpower.com/blog/1174/entry-5828-ipboard-320-dev-update-calendar-improvements-part-v-icalendar-support/'>http://community.invisionpower.com/blog/1174/entry-5828-ipboard-320-dev-update-calendar-improvements-part-v-icalendar-support/
  

New Text Editor

• New editor and auto-save: http://community.invisionpower.com/blog/1174/entry-5822-ipboard-320-new-text-editor/'>http://community.invisionpower.com/blog/1174/entry-5822-ipboard-320-new-text-editor/
  
• Cleaner interface, quick reply, quick quoting: http://community.invisionpower.com/blog/1174/entry-5825-ipboard-320-new-text-editor-part-ii/'>http://community.invisionpower.com/blog/1174/entry-5825-ipboard-320-new-text-editor-part-ii/
  
• New post alert while typing reply: http://community.invisionpower.com/blog/1174/entry-5831-ipboard-320-text-editor-part-iii-live-topic-replies/'>http://community.invisionpower.com/blog/1174/entry-5831-ipboard-320-text-editor-part-iii-live-topic-replies/
  
  Core Functionality
  
  • View new content and topic marking improvements: http://community.invisionpower.com/blog/1174/entry-5858-ipboard-320-view-new-content-and-topic-marking/'>http://community.invisionpower.com/blog/1174/entry-5858-ipboard-320-view-new-content-and-topic-marking/ and part 2: http://community.invisionpower.com/blog/1174/entry-6004-ipboard-320-dev-update-some-vnc-and-user-content-improvements/'>http://community.invisionpower.com/blog/1174/entry-6004-ipboard-320-dev-update-some-vnc-and-user-content-improvements/
    
  • New Photo Editor: http://community.invisionpower.com/blog/1174/entry-5823-ipboard-320-new-photo-editor/'>http://community.invisionpower.com/blog/1174/entry-5823-ipboard-320-new-photo-editor/
    
  • Shared media: http://community.invisionpower.com/blog/1174/entry-5919-ipboard-320-dev-update-shared-media/'>http://community.invisionpower.com/blog/1174/entry-5919-ipboard-320-dev-update-shared-media/
    
  • Tagging and prefixes: http://community.invisionpower.com/blog/1174/entry-5918-ipboard-320-tagging-and-prefixes/'>http://community.invisionpower.com/blog/1174/entry-5918-ipboard-320-tagging-and-prefixes/
    
  • Notification enhancements: http://community.invisionpower.com/blog/1174/entry-5933-ipboard-320-notification-enhancements/'>http://community.invisionpower.com/blog/1174/entry-5933-ipboard-320-notification-enhancements/ and part 2 http://community.invisionpower.com/blog/1174/entry-5967-ipboard-320-notifications-part-2/'>http://community.invisionpower.com/blog/1174/entry-5967-ipboard-320-notifications-part-2/
    
  • New mobile skin: http://community.invisionpower.com/blog/1174/entry-6125-ipboard-32-update-mobile-skin/'>http://community.invisionpower.com/blog/1174/entry-6125-ipboard-32-update-mobile-skin/
    

  Miscellaneous Changes

  • Member photos and member avatars are being merged into one function: member photo. There was too much overlap between the two features.
    
  • “Show X Last visitors in profile” now shows always the last 5 visitors if the setting is enabled rather than having a 3, 5, 10 dropdown choice.
    
  • The note box in your My Settings (UserCP) area has been removed. It is a hold-over from years past and doesn't seem to make sense in community software. If you are one of the very few people who use this: make a copy of your notes before upgrade.
    
  • The unread topic marking system will now remember what page of a topic you left off reading rather than assume you read the entire topic on the first click.
    

In addition there will be some significant layout changes, several redundant features are going away which make it easy to manage your own content and find content others have made, more social networking tools. One of the things I'm most excited about is they've removed most if not all of those annoying load redirect pages! Much of the IPS forum is open to the public, without registration, so feel free to quietly poke around at the new features they are running on their board now: http://community.invisionpower.com/

Do note that our board will still be using Skinbox themes, that's a whole other upgrade ordeal (read below for more on that )

This is not an event that is going to take place tomorrow, we're going to let this version stabilize a bit, and Wind and I have a mod to finish before we can take on the upgrade demand, so look for this in the Fall probably around September. The site may have to go offline for a day or two, but we will have a better idea further down the line and will keep you informed.

On Skins and Modules

When we update the board our skins and modules will also be upgraded. I understand the last upgrade of IP Downloads which houses our mods is already streamed for 3.2. Gallery is not, we will have to upgrade the Gallery here and there is a chance, albeit slim, that your images will be lost in the upgrade, so please start backing up your images now or prepare to back them up so you don't lose anything!!!! You will be able to bulk upload your images to the new system if that happens. I did some Beta testing for the new gallery it's a really nice system, but very different than the current system, for the better so lots of great features coming. The shoutbox, tutorials, blogs, and subscriptions will also be updated, but the changes there are less drastic.

The skins will be one of the bigger changes, our skin author Skinbox is having to redesign the skins from the ground up. We will adjust the final product to be as similar to what we have currently as possible, but the last update of TESA Advanced is quite different. One of the biggest changes I expect is that the TESA Advanced theme will have a view switcher, the grid view (which is what we have now) and an optional list view which is just like a regular forum. In all likelihood this feature will nullify the need for TESA Basic which was designed to restore the easier navigating and fps performance of a list view forum. It will just be a button you can toggle from grid view to list view and back at will. I can't give anymore details because version 3.2 of the IPS software just released today and our skin authors are just getting started, I will give more info on this in coming weeks,

Lots of changes ahead, but means bigger and better things for TESA as usual. If you have questions, comments or concerns feel free to post.

[grond]

RSVP eh? Planning live workshops, Commander? How awesome would that be!

[DarkRider]

That's highly possible.

[Mannimagnus]

All sounds good to me, I'm happy with it. Can only get excited that TESA will get better and better. Having to back up all my images will be a pain, but oh well.

Looking forward to the upgrade!