CBoats UPGRADES COMPLETE

[kenneth]

You may notice that the site doesn't look or feel exactly like it did before! This is good news, it means we're modernizing so that we can LOOK relevant! Yay!

What was changed?
- The forum software was upgraded to the latest and greatest.
- The style of the site and the forum were updated to be more modern looking
- The top navigation was re-designed to be more compact - this is an attempt to eventually support a mobile version of the site (hopefully!)
- The top/header of the site now displays three ads instead of two!
- The site is now supporting a minimum width that is wider than before, keeping ultra-portable laptop users in mind with their smaller resolutions. The site is also expandable to fit the width of your browser!

What's new in this fancy new forum software?
- You can post images!!! You no longer have to link to images hosted elsewhere, simply attach them to your post. The forum will inform you if your image is too big (256kb) or too wide/tall (1024x1024) so please keep this in mind.
- You can now add people to a friends/foes list!
- You can subscribe to topics!
- The search functionality should be more intelligent!
- Knowing what you have/haven't read is no longer based on when you last visited the site, it is up to YOU to click the "Mark Topics Read" link on the forum index page OR read each topic.

Administrative Notes:
- Please PM me or reply to this topic if you experience any bugs or issues worth noting. The upgrades went through some rigorous testing on IE6, IE8, IE9, Firefox 7.x and Chrome 15 but that doesn't mean it's perfect.
- IE6 users may see a site that's generally somewhat ugly, but it should still function! IE6 has some styling limitations that I was constrained to.

What's Next?
- This phase of the upgrade is done. I will let things settle and perform minor fixes, but the site should not be offline for any other major updates any time soon.
- I'd love to clean up the Gallery and Video sections of the site!

Adam and I are thrilled to be able to expand the features CBoats offers, and provide the community with a reasonably attractive and hopefully still useful site! We know that with upgrades often comes confusion as links/functions are no longer in the regular places. I and the admins/moderators have been using the new site for a while now and I feel comfortable saying that you'll get used to it as we did. Just be patient when looking for something you know SHOULD be there.

[KNeal]

This is very nice. Thanks for taking all that time, Kenneth, to improve our site and forum.

Ummm...

...Do we really need 125 different font colors?

[Craig Smerda]

looks pretty snazzy folks... thanks for all of your hard work and to the site sponsors as well.

just a curiousity ? but how long did you run the last site style... I'd guess since around 2002. funny thing is... I still remember the original Cboats site.

[Cheeks]

Whoa, what what?

so many buttons. so many colors

[kenneth]

According to datestamps on some of the original images, it looks like 2006 was when the previous site went live. Gosh, I can't remember what the pre-2006 site looked like... but I do almost remember what the "real original" site looked like before we took it over in 1999. I'm sure I still have the files backed up, maybe I'll put together an April Fools version of CBoats using the original look and feel from 1999.

[Craig Smerda]

are the avatars coming back?

[arhdc]

Thanks for the effort. Upgrades like this are nice but can be a lot of work.

Everything looks great and the new features look awesome.

Also, it is already much more usable on my smartphone than the previous version.

Well done.

[kaz]

Very cool, especially that fancy Millbrook Boats ad spinning around up top.

Jkaz

[kenneth]

Good catch, avatars have been re-enabled.

[Mikey B]

Nice! Thanks for the all the work you guys do keeping the site running!

[iRolled]

Awesome work guys. I noticed its now mobile phone friendly. Thanks a lot.

[Bob Wiggins]

hey admin- on the forum "recent posts" spot on the home page, the headings for the "author" column and the "replies" column are switched.

[KNeal]

hey admin- on the forum "recent posts" spot on the home page, the headings for the "author" column and the "replies" column are switched.

Huh. Yes it does.

[kenneth]

They weren't switched... I was simply showing who most recently replied, and then was attempting to rank each author on a scale of 0 to 40.

I have modified the home page to be more sensible. I'm just happy people are paying attention to the home page! Even if it did take a few years to notice the column swap.

[ohioboater]

I noticed that external links now open in the same window, where before they used to spawn a new tab. If that was an intentional change, no worries. I'll just get used to right clicking the URLs. If it was not intentional, then here's your notice to check back through your config files.