Dear visitors,
It is with great pleasure that we inform you that we've undergone some major changes to our network. Both on the hardware and the software level. We invite you to come and browse our site, the new features and feel free to play around and ask questions. I will do my best to answer all questions (if posted to this thread).
First of all, we are sponsored by Viper Internet (
http://www.viper.uk.net/) for our hosting and our chat network, but I had the opportunity to expand our network. We are currently hosted with ThePlanet.com on a personal dedicated solution. We are very pleased with this upgrade but I just want to stipulate that we're not parting ways with Viper Internet, they are an awesome hosting solution for vBulletin powered web sites. I want to thank Patrick for the opportunity to have vBFans grow. With the new web server running on bigger hardware and with an optimized configuration, our network should have no trouble running the vBulletin Fans Network sites lightning fast.
Our chat network remains unchanged, we have our chat servers spread over the world and there's no reason to improve on this part at this point.
Now, about the software changes, we're currently running the private beta version of vBulletin 3.7.0 (beta1) so we can help Jelsoft find bugs. As usual I've decided to run it on my live site so we can find issues real time, and quicker. This of course means I am taking a risk (but that's what backups are for). We invite everybody to come and take a look, browse around and play with all the new options. And if you happen to run into a broken image, a php warning in the header or a database error, feel free to report back in this thread and we will try to confirm it and report it to Jelsoft.
To just clear the air: I work for Jelsoft, that's how I got access to the private beta build. Please don't ask me for it, I will not share it as that's against their license agreement. Also, I have no ETA on the public release, I can't help you there either.
Ok, now that that's out of the way, let me point out that we will be running the 'default' vBulletin 3.7 style until we can upgrade to the public 'stable' release. This way we can quickly upgrade our beta and we can exclude that a reported error is due to a customized template.
So, what's new?
Check this out :
http://www.vbulletin.com/forum/showthread.php?t=249460
A FAQ can be found here :
http://www.vbulletin.com/forum/showthread.php?t=250084
Ok, that's vB 3.7. Now for our own updates.
We also want to inform you that with the new dedicated solution we're also upgrading our 'vbfans tools' from their individual directories to a single domain. To improve security, and privacy we've put it on a SSL (https) location, on it's own domain. In the month December/January we will be moving the 'wysiwyg editor explained', the 'vb file listing', and the 'vb config generator' to the domain
https://www.vBulletin-Setup.com/ At this point the vb config generator has already been moved over.
From January on our advertising contracts will end and we've decided to give back to our community with a single year of 'banner free browsing'. We're doing this every other year or so. And 2008 will be banner free. When you browse our vBFans web site you will perhaps see a box with our own site links, and our official partners, but we will not have any image or text banners in the header, sidebar or footer. This should make your browsing experience smoother and easier. And our site more appealing to you and newcomers. We wish to thank all our previous and current advertisers for their contribution on our web site. If we will take on new advertisers in 2009 is unknown at this point. We will decide on spots, and rates, Q4 '08.
We have more changes ahead of us, so stay tuned. Our plan is to optimize your vBulletin experience by offering a solid and one stop solution for vBulletin Fans. We are open to suggestions, complaints and site feedback. Please use the site feedback section to do so. Or just leave me a privmsg.
That's it for now.
Enjoy 3.7!
The vBulletin Fans Staff
