[Mike]

There are a lot of new features available to everyone in this latest version of Invision Power Board software. We had a company meeting to see who would be tasked with pointing them out to everyone and it seems I drew the short straw. Although I do want to mention it appeared Mairead had a bottle of glue up her sleeve.

As most of you already know, social networking continues to explode with growth. And several of these new features will allow us to associate forum functions with social networks and vice-versa, So let's see what's cooking. (Click on the attachments below, to see larger images)

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People that see a link from the forums on Facebook or Twitter can now log into the forums using those accounts. And if someone has trouble remembering log-in details for multiple Websites, we now offer the security and convenience of logging in with an OpenID account. You may not be familiar with OpenID yet, but as time passes you certainly will. You can read HERE for more information on the security offered by OpenID and how you can get your own OpenID.

Once you are logged into the forums, we can start looking at some of the new features you have available as a member of the Na fir Dileas USA forums.

Up in the right corner, you will see a small down-arrow next to your username. Click on that arrow and select My Settings.

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Here you can associate your OpenID account, if you already have one. Be sure to tick both of the Posting Settings options, so you will be able to use the Rich Text Editor for posting. And you can also configure what new information you want to view when you use the View New Content link, up next to the RSS icon.

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If you click on the Notification Options selection, you can set up your preferences on how you want to be notified when certain events take place on the forum. If you select inline notifications, you will see a module open up in the right-column of the forum home page when you have new notifications. As for myself, I prefer the 'in yer face' type of notification, so for important events, I have also opted to have a large notification box pop-up on the screen to get my attention. You can then use that pop-up to decide how you want or need to respond to the notification.

Now, click on the Profile tab of that page.

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And you can see you can now associate your forum account with your Twitter and/or Facebook accounts. Click on the links and you will see a page where you can log into these two social networks to grant your forum account access. For those that are aware of the possible impositions on your Facebook accounts by various applications, the options are explained to you on the Facebook association page. And whilst the Facebook privacy policy is now longer than the United States Constitution, ours is short and to the point. You can read our Privacy Policy HERE.

Once you grant access for your forum account to access your Facebook and/or Twitter account, you will be redirected to the forum page, where you can set up your personal preferences.

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As you can see, I share Twitter status updates with my forum account and my forum status updates with my Twitter account. Once you make your selections, click the Synchronize Now button and after it synchronizes, click the Save Changes button. You can see the page is showing my last tweet, which was actually fed to Twitter via RSS from my personal blog, located HERE.

If at any time you want to disassociate your Facebook abd/or Twitter account from your forum account, all you need do is click the Disassociate Account Now button.

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If you associate your forum account with Facebook and/or Twitter, you can enter your forum status in the Status Updates module in the right column of the forum home page and select which of the two social networks you would like to update at the same time. Now, if you have something important coming up, you are able to post the information in one place and pull it into the others without haveing to log into those sites and re-type the updates. When I am in front of a computer, I have TweetDeck open and I tweet fairly often. If you are on Twitter, you can follow the forum's account at @NaFirDileasUSA and my personal account at @Mike_Ermel.

More to come, so stay tuned.

[Mike]

OK, take a look at what a forum profile looks like in this next image -

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Na Fir Dileas members can now personalize their profiles.

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And in the vein of social networking, at the lower-left corner of each topic, you will now see links allowing you to share the topic on Twitter, Facebook, Google Buzz, Del.icio.us, Reddit and StumbleUpon. If you see a topic you want to share with your friends and followers, you can do that by merely clicking the appropriate link. You can also e-mail a topic, print a topic or save a topic to your computer.

The sharp-eyed amongst you may notice something a bit different in that image and recognize it as something they do not normally see. And this leads me to one of the most exciting developments in forum software in quite some time. See that button at the bottom of the postbit, which says Promote to Article?

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Or maybe you've noticed the Library link in the NavBar? Well, if you've noticed it, have you clicked on it yet? If you do, you will be taken to an entirely new section, where we can now start compiling articles in our very own library! Work is just getting started, but already there have been several forum topic promoted to articles in the library and we will be continuing with those promotions.

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In the upper tabs, you can see the navigation menu, which will let you browse to Articles, to Media files or back to the Forums. On the left, you can see the articles will be categorized, to make them easier to sort through. You can search for articles, comment on the articles and also rate the articles on their content. This will allow members to learn more about Scotland and also to share their own knowledge. Please understand we want informative submissions to the library. If you want to recognize 23 August as the anniversary of William Wallace's murder (or my birthday ), that is a forum post. If you want to write an informative submission describing Wallace's situation, then you can expect to see that in the library. So please, let's use this new function wisely.

As Mairead will doubtless recall, a couple years back I wrote a short series of submissions dealing with the confrontation between the Lamonts and Campbells on one of our sister sites. It was decided those posts should become library topics on that site and you can see them HERE. We will be setting up the library on this site in much the same manner. You will also be able to find multimedia submissions, such as THIS EXAMPLE appearing in the library.

If you browse the Scottish History forum, you will see nearly all of those topics have been promoted already. And there is a link to the article in place of the original first post. Comments can now be made directly to the articles themselves.

I hope everyone will see how this new function can become valuable as a repository of information about Scotland. If anyone has an article that doesn't seem to fit the present categories, we will be setting up a Miscellaneous category for you to use. And if we start seeing a lot of miscellaneous articles following a common topic, we'll light up a new category for them. The library is still very much under construction, but you can start using it now. Just remember to keep checking back, as there will always be new material added.

There is a quick run-down of some of the new features and functions you can now use. And the next time we have to draw straws, Mairead can fully expect me to have my own bottle of glue.

[Webmaster]

I'll be doing some coding in the Library, so don't panic if things look a bit strange.

Ohhhh, boy, what can I break this time?

[Webmaster]

Alright, take a look and see if that doesn't look a lot better. Now we just need to work on getting topics moved and getting some new articles written.