We are having Ubuntu Forums Council meeting today (Monday, April 20th at 20:00 UTC) and welcome people to stop by and join in the discussion.

We have created a new user rank for Kubuntu Members (https://edge.launchpad.net/~kubuntu-members) who use the Ubuntu Forums. Any Kubuntu Member who would like this new rank on the forums, please contact me (PM: Technoviking on the fourms or email: mike.basingerATubuntu.com) and I will add it ASAP.

The forum area, OMG PuRpLe pOnIeS, will be closing on October 1st, 2008 due to the large amount of resources required to manage this non-Ubuntu Linux area.

We will will continue to allow non Ubuntu related discussion to continue in the Community Cafe, even religious and political discussion as long as it is related to open source and Linux issues.

Feel free to comment here on this decision: http://ubuntuforums.org/showthread.php?t=926276
Forum Council Meeting Log: http://www.mikesplanet.net/wp-content/uploads/2008/09/fc_2008-9-21.txt

The Ubuntu Forums has passed another milestone, 600,000 register users. Thanks to the Ubuntu forums staff and the rest of the Ubuntu community for making the forums kick ass.

The Ubuntu Forums Council will meeting on 31 May 2008 @ 12:30 UTC in #ubuntu-meeting on Freenode. We have a fairly large agenda this month, including a discussion of social group functions in the forums. Please stop by the meeting and join in the discussion.

The Intrepid Ibex Development forum has been open on the Ubuntu Forums for discussion of the development of Ubuntu 8.10. Enjoy and let me know if you have any suggestions for thr forums.

The Ubuntu Forums has upgraded the forums software to vBB 3.7. This will add many new features, including tagging and social groups. Please check it out and let us know what you think.

Forums Upgrade FAQ:

Q. What happened to all the old posts?
A. We have put all the posts from the “Main support category” to an archive area, which only allows members to reply to existing threads. It is not possible to create new threads in this area. All new threads need to be made in the newly created areas and tagged with prefixes/tags.

Q. Why did you archive all the old posts?
A. We wanted to give our forum a bit of a fresh start to take advantage of the new prefix/tagging system that vBulletin 3.7 offers. All old threads and posts are still available to read, may be replied to, and will continue to show up in the search index.

Q. Whoa! I hate the forum theme…
A. Yes, its a change. We will continue to make a few adjustments over the next several days.

Q. Will the old theme be available?
A. No, there are no plans to make that theme available due to the template upgrades with vBulletin 3.7. We have ported or are porting the most important aspects of the former theme to the new template system, and we believe everything else will require a little bit of time to all of us to adjust.

Q. Why can’t I give thanks or see my thanked posts?
A. We’ll be migrating this feature later this week.

Q. What happened to the gallery?
A. Currently, the gallery is offline until we decide if we want to upgrade it. vBulletin 3.7 has a gallery built in that may prove to be more than adequate for the needs of our community. We are going to wait and see before making a final decision either way.

Q. How do I use the new gallery built into vbulletin?
A. Go to your UserCP and then select “Pictures & Albums” you will then be able to create a album.

Q. What happened to the option to choose from a top or a left view for information when looking at posts?
A. Currently, only a left view is available. We are unsure if a top view will be made.

Q. Why my beans are not hidden anymore?
A. We’ll be adding this feature again soon.

Q. Why don’t my operating system(s) that I selected show on my profile?
A. This will be fixed soon.

Q. When posting a new post I no longer see a selection of posts that might pertain to my question.
A. We are researching to see if we can migrate this feature over.

Q. I hate this upgrade, please go back to the previous version of the forum.
A. Sorry, we can’t.

Q. I am confused between “prefixes” and “tags”, how do I post?
A. A prefix is a pre-defined “keyword” that we have given certain areas of the forums. For example, you may have a problem with sound in “Ubuntu” you would select “Ubuntu” from the prefix list and then enter “sound, sound blaster audigy, gnome” as your keywords. Keywords are just a few quick words that might “tag” your post with specific phrases this will help when doing searches etc.

Q. How do I customize my user profile?
A. You can customize your user profile by going to the UserCP and then by selecting “Customize Profile” or follow this link http://ubuntuforums.org/profile.php?do=customize

Q. What are social groups?
A. Social Groups are a new feature of vbulletin 3.7 and we will be turning those on in the near future.

Q. What are the bookmark icons such as digg, delicious and others on the bottom of the post page?
A. You can now submit a specific thread to various social networking sites from within the forums.

Q. I received a notification of a “Incoming Friend Request” what is this?
A. Users can now request that people on their buddy list confirm their friendship, after which time a person’s list of confirmed friends will be viewable to other users on their profile page.

Q. What is this “Visitor message” on my profile?
A. The new forum software has a feature allowing users to communicate publicly via their profile pages with each other.

Q. Jabber no longer appears in my profile, what happened?
A. The plugin used is not compatible with the forum software upgrade. We will watch for an upgrade in the near future.

Woot!
Today the Ubuntu Forums added its 500,000 register user. It great to see the continue growth of the Ubuntu community.

At UDS this week we had a spec (https://blueprints.edge.launchpad.net/ubuntu/+spec/packaging-section-on-the-forum) to look how the MOTUs could teach and assist forum users how to properly package software for Ubuntu. This would make sure better and safer packages created by forum users, and get some people from the forums interested in the great work the MOTUs do.

The first result of this was a reorganization of all of the development and programming sections on the forums. All these sections are now located together in the sub forum Ubuntu Development & Programming.

Sections in this subforum are:

1. Packaging and Compiling Programs
2. Development CD/DVD Image Testing
3. Development (Hardy Heron)
4. Ubuntu Idea Pool
5. Ubuntu Dev Link Forum
6. Programming Talk
7. Repositories & Backports
8. Ubuntu Backports
9. Ubuntu Forum Archives
10. Old Release Development Archives (Closed, but readable)

RSS Feed: http://ubuntuforums.org/external.php?type=RSS2&forumids=310

Thanks to ubuntu-geek and dholbach for their hard work and leadership on this spec.