vBulletin Features and Stuff
 

This version of vBulletin is one little step ahead of what I'm used to on other boards. The differences might be features added with version 3.6.5 or they might be just differences in configuration between this board and places like Insimenator.net.

Here's what I've noticed so far:

1. WYSIWYG Message Editor: The message editing window defaults to WYSIWYG mode. That means the formatting shows instead of the formatting codes. I think this is a user-configurable option and you can change it in your user control panel.
   
   
2. Threaded Messages: I turned this off for the whole board, I think. I don't see much point in threaded messages and they take up a lot of extra system resources, so I'll leave that turned off unless someone comes up with compelling argument to the contrary.
   
   
3. Spam Control: This is a difference between vBulletin and phpBB (which the Hullabaloo uses). On phpBB I can ban whole email domains and IP addresses to stop spammers from even getting to the board's front page. I can't figure out how to do that in vBulletin.
   
   
4. Font Size: vBulletin's vbcode is a little bit different from phpBB's bbcode. vBulletin uses HTML font sizes, where 2 is normal, 1 is small, and so on. phpBB uses font sizes measured in pixels, as they would be in a style sheet.
   
   
5. Marking Forums Read: vBulletin doesn't seem to recognize when you've read all the new stuff in a given area unless you use the navigation links at the top of the page to back out of the forum, one step at a time up the tree. This is different from Insim but I don't know how to fix it.
   
   
6. Message Preview When You Go Advanced: Over at Insim, if I start composing a message in the Quicky Reply field and then use Go Advanced, I automatically get a mesage preview. With this version I have to specifically click on the Preview Changes button to get a preview. I'm not sure which I like better but I don't see a way to change if I want to, so I guess I must like this one better!
   
   
7. Having to Click a Button to Quick Reply: Version 3.6.5 added having to click on a button to do a reply. That was because with threaded messages, it had to know what message you're replying to. I don't see that happening now that I've turned off message threads, so I'm hoping that you don't see it either.
   
   
8. Forum Layout: The default layout for vBulletin 3.6.5 was to put the user information above each message instead of to the left side of it. I like what they are begrudgingly called the "old legacy" two-column layout, so I changed that.

Now I'm thinking the message icons could use some tuneup. What you see today is just the standard ones that come with vBulletin.

The problem I see is that in the top-level view, and orange color indicates forums with new messages, but in the view where you see the list of messages, an orange color indicates that it's a hot topic.