Next Version for Forum

[Bruce Nunnally]

Tech Support will be updating us to the next version of the forum software. There are a few differences and as usual there will be some things that take a bit to sort out.

Here are some of the changes:

• User / Display Names
  Usernames and display names have been merged in IPS4. As the administrator, you may select which to keep during the upgrade process. Please note that this field will be the publicly displayed field for the user.
  
• Friends / Followers
  Instead of friends, IPS4 features followers. A member now has the ability to follow another member without that being automatically reciprocal. You have the option of converting friends to followers.
  
  
• Question and Answer Forums
  Previous versions of the software allowed enabling of "Mark as Solved" on a per-forum basis. IPS4 enhances this functionality by allowing members to ask questions and rate their answers.

[Bruce Nunnally]

Not sure if the user & display name merge will cause us some issues -- I guess we will go with "display name". So if your display name is not your user name, I am guessing you will need to log in with your display name after the update.

[Bruce Nunnally]

The search functionality after the new forum update had been severly degraded.  Tech Support got it figured out and now it appears to be much more useful.  So if you had given up on the in-forum search please give it another try.  Thanks to @BodybyFisher for pointing out how bad it was