Gearing up for the New Year, I have upgraded the site with a lot of new functionality.

New navigation

I have tweaked the navigation to make it more intuitive and useful. All profile related options can now be found under the My Profile menu while functionality and area options can now be found under the navigation menu.

Social Networking

Anyone familiar with FaceBook or MySpace will be familiar with the concept of social networking tools. These tools encourage greater interaction and community building. The new social networking functions include a new profile page with the following key areas of functionality:

• Quickly view relevant information about the member
• View the last entries and comments of their blog
• View their personal gallery (slightly different than the gallery section of the site)
• Leave messages on profiles
• View groups that the user has joined
• View the users friend list
• Customise the look of your profile
• Ignore other users customisations

Friends and Contacts lists

You can now add other members to your friends list. When you click 'add to friends' on a users profile, they become a contact. If that user also joins you to their contacts, you become friends.

Learn more about friends here

Member Groups

You can now create and join social networking groups. These are user made groups that allow members to... er... 'group' together. For instance, from My Profile you can see I am part of the CND Lovers group. Primarily use this as a tool to connect to other like-minded geeks.

Tags

Tagging is a popular way of attaching keywords to your threads. It helps users be able to find information faster and easier than using the search engine by itself.

To attach tags to your threads, simply start entering keywords (followed by a comma) in the appropriate box (above the new thread icons when you create a new thread). If the tag exists, a pop-up will appear to let you select an existing tag. Otherwise, a new tag will be created when you create your thread.

Tag Cloud

A tag cloud is a list of the most popular tags. The more popular the tag, the larger the word will appear in the cloud. Clicking the tag gives you a list of all threads that contain the tag. You can view the thread cloud here.

Learn more about tags here

Thread prefixes

Some forums now have thread prefixes. A thread prefix will appear in a drop down box in front of the new threads title if one is available. Selecting a prefix will show that prefix in front of the thread title when viewing the forum. This is useful to indicate the type of thread you are posting.

There is much, much more - however I feel like I need to get the site back open so I am going to leave this announcement at that apart from a final little message:

Some areas of the site are not 100% updated yet. Primarily they are the areas like the tutorials and articles and links section. The new areas are also still being tweaked so expect some minor changes over the upcoming weeks that will make the new funcationality even sweeter.

In the meantime... please post in the Site Assistance forum if you come across any problems. Otherwise...

nJoy

Oh - now I see that this is what I actually had an insight into earlier on today Sam. Was I a lucky one! x x x

Aargh its like when my mum used to tidy my room and I couldn't find stuff!!
Looking good though Sam...once I get the hang of it all

I know it doesn't take much....but I am totally confused now!!
Thankfully and on the bright side I have only been logged on for a few minutes and I am no longer Izzi no mates.....phew!!!!

Now where is the Home Page and the Shoutbox??????

Click the logo at the top of the page or select home from the navigation menu

Cheers GMG......Home is not on my navigation drop down menu...and I never in a million years would have thought to click on the main logo!!! :
But I did...and there it was......just like that!

How many years have I been on this site Doh!!

It is mate its just moved to the top..I know because I kept cicking on the wrong thing

its looking good Sam

i like the new groups section and the new photo albums seem cool .... altho i havent got all the images i used to have in my gallery due to my old laptop dying... shame i guess ill just have to take some more

Jess
xox

Cheers mate...I can't even delete my stoopidity now though!!! :
I will just give myself a

Confusing but looking good,
well done Sam, wish i was that clever on a PC but i can geek and that's keeping me happy lol

Loving it Sam, when I eventually get the hang of it, but I am blonde

Didn't last long, Ive got a whinge for you Sam,
the time and date appears to have gone from posts ???
is this just until every thing is sorted out ??