Hi all,
I am delighted to announce that Pirate-Community has been successfully updated to a brand new version!
Please find below a list of all additions, improvements and other modifications.
- Forum
- The forum software has been updated to phpBB 3.1, a major rewrite bringing its load of new features. You can read more about it here, but here is a summary of the major additions:
- Responsive theme: now fully optimized for mobile devices.
- Notifications: get notified when someone replies to one of your posts, a topic you are following, or many other events.
- Extensions system: this means that every single custom feature of the forum, from points to BBCode to gender icons to ranks to record day and spam protection, has been rewritten using state-of-the-art technologies.
- AJAX calls: some actions can be performed without having to reload the whole page.
- Large image resizing: view your images in full.
- Better timezone handling: daylight saving time adjusts automatically.
- Last message topic and author in forum list.
- Improved search.
- Points system
- Notifications when a user is given, added or deducted Tings.
- Link to the transactions page on the front page.
- BBCode
- Brand new spoiler tag: click a blurry spoiler to show its content. This technique allows the use of inline as well as block spoilers.
- Improved interface for the YouTube tag: just paste the URL and the tag will be added for you.
- Missing tags added to the posting page.
- Style
- Support for high pixel density displays (e.g. Retina): new vector icons will look smooth and smilies will stay crisp on all screens.
- Many small improvements to the forum style.
- Other
- Zoom available for resized images: click to view the original version.
- New smilies were added and some of the existing ones were enhanced.
- Wiki
- New style: RayWiki comes with a brand new style, in line with that of the forum. It looks great on high pixel density displays thanks to its use of vector images and high resolution sprites.
Single sign-on: no need to enter your credentials twice, logging in on the forum will automatically log you in on the wiki. Due to a breaking change in the latest version of MediaWiki, this feature has been postponed.- The wiki software has been updated to MediaWiki 1.27. A full list of changes is available here and here.
- CSS classes for templates: contributors need not use inline CSS anymore, just use the new style's classes.
- Portal
- Complete code rewrite: just like all of our custom features, the portal has been rebuilt from scratch. Say hello to v3.1, “Lotsa Featuri”!
- Anyone authorized by the team can now write news items.
- The automatic posting of news items on Facebook and Twitter has been reactivated.
- The complex RSS feed on the right has been replaced with a simply customizable latest posts feed: just select the forums you want to see messages from.
- The calendar has been removed.
- Localized wiki links: French users will be taken to the French wiki.
- Other
- The entire site has been switched to HTTPS for enhanced security and privacy. While HTTPS has been available on Pirate-Community for many years, the self-signed certificate caused browsers to display alarming messages, which is not the case anymore thanks to the new valid, authoritatively signed certficate.
There are also a few improvements that we were not able to roll out yet due to some of the underlying software's release schedule: another update is coming, which will bring, among others, emoji support, enhanced BBCodes and performance improvements.
Stay tuned, and we hope you'll enjoy this brand new website!
I'll update them as soon as possible.
