How to's and tips and tricks on the new version of Boards.ie

Boards.ie has moved from it's nearly quarter century old vbulletin basis to a new platform based on Vanilla Forums. The old vbulletin was both ancient and a bit of a Frankensteins monster of bolted on bits and pieces it had accumulated to meet it's needs. But it's dated nature means it couldn't keep up with the needs of a modern internet and the growth that's occurred. At this moment Vanilla also lacks a lot of the comforts/features of the old platform. These are being added as we go, so right now the comination of missing things and changes to others means people are going to be a bit lost.

I'm going to start building some knowledge on using the new version of the site here, collating it in this post to serve as a quick reference. As the site is very subject to change, so will this.

Disclaimer

The site is a work in progress, and so is this collection of info. Additonally, the desktop and mobile versions may not match in their functionality.

New Features

Notification on being quoted.

This was a commonly requested option, which Vanilla supports. Simply quoting a post with the quote button will trigger a notification to the use being quoted.

Points system

There's a points system showing a score for your account. I've no idea what use it has or how it works, other than it seems to be closely linked to likes count.

Account Level System

There's an account level system, and like the points, I've no idea what it means or how it works, except that it generates a mail alert when you increase in levels.

Badges system

There's a system of reward badges for various achievements. It's the usual stuff, age of account, number of posts and likes etc. Right now it's currently not enabled, but you may have seen some of it during the testing phase.

Questions system

Rather than start a pure discussion thread, a thread can now be started a question type. This allows for the thread starter to mark a response as being the answer to their issues.

How do I?

Notifying or calling a users attention to something.

You can use @ followed by a username to trigger a notification to someone, much like other platforms like Twitter or Slack.

Bookmark threads?

There's a bookmark icon immediately to the right of the thread title, just click that once so it turns blue. Same again to unbookmark it.

Edit a post?

There's an edit button, consist of three full stops just right of the bookmark button. This allows you to edit your post for 24 hours.

How do I report a problematic post?

There's now a flag button, which has three options, spam, abuse and the more general report option.

How do I use spoiler tags now?

If you use the paragraph icon to the left of the text you're adding, it'll open up extra options. One of these is the special formats option, which allows for text to be marked as spoilers.

What's broken, missing, not yet added?

Usernames

Vanilla is not as friendly to non-standard username, or names with spaces in them. It normally allows letters, numbers and underscores. This is causing issues with various functions currently.

Where are Helpdesk/Dispute Resolution etc?

Not all forums are moved across yet. There's no ETA yet.

Bookmark forums?

That's not completely implemented yet. It's present on the mobile/responsive version, but not on desktop, and the mobiles choices don't carry over to desktop.