Here is what I have been working on for Ubuntu Forum recently. At a session at UDS this week, we discuss the forums and how to bring it up to date with the new Ubuntu branding. There will be some big changes upcoming in the forums.

1. The forums software will be upgraded to vBulletin 4.0x.
2. Designing a new forums theme following the new Ubuntu branding guidelines.
3. Looking to streamline the forums, making it a better user experience.

Hopefully this work will be finished during the current Ubuntu release cycle.

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

If you have any free time to help out with the on rush of new users, please feel free to stop by the forums and help.

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.