Message Boards Have Moved!

To get to the new boards click here
http://www.ubpn.org/messageboard/

UBPN General
New Message Boards Soon!
UBPN Technology Committe
on 11/02 at 09:50 AM

Dear Message Board Users,
About nine months ago the Technology Committee of the
UBPN set out on a journey to upgrade the message boards.

After much evaluation, including some suggestions from
our users, we made a decision to move forward with the
new software. Last month we put on our hard hats and
hunkered down at our keyboards to make the custom
modifications you asked for.

Version 1.0 is done and ready for your use. There
are some important things to remember as we move
to the new boards.

When?
We will be making the transition within the next
day or two.

What features are there?
- You can create a user account and login.
- Some text formatting is supported like bold, italics,
and underline.
- We now automatically remove words that are unsuitable
for a family board within the general forums.
- You can search!
- You can setup "Watches" which allow you to get an
e-mail when new posts are made.
- There is a new Suggestions Forum which can be used
to make suggestions directly to the UBPN.
- All registered users can set their local timezone
so message times will be local.

What is going away?
- The look of the boards will change dramatically
and you just have to see it!
- IP addresses, we feel we can better control content
with the new software and don't see a need to continue
displaying the addresses.

Where are the old posts?
There was a decision made within the UBPN to move
to the new message boards without importing all of
the previous posts. We realize this will cause some
confusion but in time the posts will fill up again.

All of the old posts will be archived into a special
section of the webserver over the next month.

Can I post anonymously?
Yes! The way anonymous posting works has changed a great
deal however.

We felt the anonymous, so called O posts, were a valuable
resource for people who wanted to know about BPI but
were unsure if they were in the right place.

From now on all anonymous posts will be reviewed and
will need to be approved before they are posted to the
boards. When you make a post without registering, the
post will not show-up until the post has been reviewed
and approved. For this reason we urge you to register
as soon as possible.

All posts will be reviewed based on the current usage
policy and when a post needs review of a larger group
it will be taken to the UBPN Board of Directors for review.
This is a human process and therefore will delay the posts
by a day or more, please register as soon as you can to
keep our workload light and keep the posts showing up
in a timely manner.

Will the usage policy change?
We are working on a much more detailed usage policy that
addresses some of the concerns raised recently. This is
a project we are working with our legal counsel on and
will take more time to complete. Your use of the boards
constitutes your agreement to follow the current usage
policy and we reserve the right to change it at any time.
We will make an announcement on the boards whenever it
does change.

What's Next?
We are working hard to continue development of the
boards and look forward to your suggestions. Some
of the ideas we are working on are:

- User selectable skins: would let you customize how
the boards look to you.
- A mailing list gateway: would allow you to receive
posts and respond to them from e-mail.
- More! We just are not ready to reveal all we have
brewing.

These newer features will take some time and our
developers need a break and time to fix bugs that
might arrive. We don't currently have a date
for when any of these things might be working.

Trouble?
If you have any issues with the board please mail:
ryan@ubpn.org
Or post in the Suggestion forum.
I will look at it and address it as soon as possible.

The entire UBPN Board and Technology Committee thanks you
for your support and look forward to seeing you on our new
message boards.

If you'd like to get started early the URL is:
http://www.ubpn.org/messageboard/
See you there!