PSO-World Site Upgrades

[Ryna]

Welcome back everyone! Virtually every portion of PSO-World has received an upgrade as part of the site's 15th anniversary. Here are some of the highlights:

Updated Forum Software
The forum software has been upgraded to the latest version of vBulletin 4. The upgraded forum software offers several bug fixes, security improvements, updates to existing features, new features, and better compatibility with the latest generation of web browsers.

Social Groups Overhaul
Social Groups (AKA Groups) has received several updates. To access the groups area, click on the "Groups" link on the secondary navigation bar of the forum index. That will present you with a GUI interface to your groups, the most recently updated groups, and newly created groups. As for individual groups, instead of having what is essentially one long thread, Social Groups will behave more like individual forums. Members will be able to create new group threads and post pictures. Group leaders will have the ability to moderate these threads.

New Search Features
This might seem like a mundane detail, but PSO-World has a new search interface that provides faster and better search results. You will now finally have the ability to search your private messages!

Activity Stream
You can access the "Activity Stream" by clicking on "What's New" on the navigation bar. The Activity Stream offers a new way to keep track of the latest forum content including group discussion, news articles, forum posts, and several other content types. The Activity Stream offers several secondary navigation bar links if you want to browse a specific type of content.

Updated Photo Gallery
The PSO-World Photo Gallery has always been an easy to miss site section. Featuring game art, screenshots, and fan art, the Gallery has always represented a visual history of PSO-World. With the upgrade, the Gallery link has been moved to a more prominent position and several forum integration components have been installed. The Gallery itself has received several new features. Users now also have the ability to create albums under the Gallery system and upload pictures to those albums.

New Themes
As part of the site upgrade, PSO-World is receiving a new default theme called "Cosmic." This scifi theme was inspired by the early-years of Phantasy Star Online 2 and is optimized for a wide-range of displays. If you don't like it, you can choose from a selection of other themes by using the theme picker at the bottom of the page. You can set a permanent default choice by editing the Details area of your Profile.

Here is a brief overview of the other available themes:

• Blue-Steel - This was the default theme for the site for the last 8 years. Pick this style if you want to stick with a familiar look.
• Darkness - A modern all-black theme.
• Midnight Blue - A variant of Darkness with blue highlights. This is a good choice if you previously used the Classic Blue-Black style.
• Vanilla - A light-colored theme that was designed for readability.
• Classic Mira-Bluegray - This is primarily dark gray and blue theme. It is based on PSO-World's original default theme.
• Classic Blue-Steel - This style emphasizes a variety of blues and is based on one of PSO-World's early default themes.
• Mobile - This theme only works with the site's news/forum sections and is optimized for ease-of-use on mobile systems.

Don't see your favorite old theme? There is a good reason for that. The forum upgrade process rendered the old themes incompatible with the current version of the site. Any returning old theme has to be rebuilt from scratch and that is very time-intensive. We're still taking a look at the old themes and seeing what is possible to rebuild.

Simplified Site Navigation
The clunky left-column link boxes have been replaced with a simplified top bar navigation scheme. There are four main tabs on the navigation bar corresponding to News, Forum, Guides/Databases, and the Gallery. Each section has several helpful links that appear below the main navigation bar when you browse to that section. The Guides/Databases choice will take you to a helpful link page that will allow you to access PSO-World's resources for that specific game.

New Front Page
As part of the upgrade project, PSO-World has a new front page article system. This new system integrates more seamlessly with the forum software. You can search the news section using the forum search feature. When a person replies to a news article, a new thread is automatically started in the News and Comments forum.

Video Tag
Use the updated [video] tab to embed Youtube videos in post. This works more reliably than the old video management system.

Mobile Features
PSO-World offers an easy-to-use mobile theme for the site's forum and news section. You can select it by picking "Mobile" from the quick style picker at the bottom of the page.

Older Content
The older content sections like the PSO Item Database and Guides system received several aesthetic and usability upgrades.

The Future
We view this as a starting point for further enhancing PSO-World and have several exciting features in the pipeline. We are very interested on hearing your feedback on the site upgrades and what else you would like to see.

Bugs
If you see anything broken or something that just looks weird, let us know by posting in the bug report thread.