Nearly two weeks have passed since the public release of vBulletin 3.6 Beta 3, and now it is time for what the Jelsoft staff hopes will be the final beta release of vBulletin 3.6. The next step should be at least one “release candidate” before 3.6 is declared a stable release.

vBulletin 3.6 Beta 4 contains a number of fixes and tweaks to the Beta 3 code and they recommend that anyone currently running Beta 3 should upgrade to Beta 4.

I am hoping that the Gold product will be avialable by then end of July, but maybe that is a bit to soon. Time will tell!

I am excited to announce the release of vBulletin 3.6 Beta 1. vBulletin 3.6 Beta 1 is available for all licensed customers to download from the Members’ Area through vbulletin.com now.

There are some very exciting updates like the use of AJAX and some long desired updates like a multi-quote feature or the PM preview through email notifications. I know many forum admin will be installing this right away. I think I will wait a bit, especially on my large forums. I can say that I am very excited to see Jelsoft working hard to improve upon an already amazing product.

I am not a tech guy and therefore don’t appreciate things as some of the tech guys I know do. The more I play around with and install these plugins through the vBulletin adminCP, I am more and more amazed at how simple vBulletin is making the lives of forum administrators. I personally don’t know of any of the other forum softwares doing anything like this, and that gives me all the more reason to give a thumbs up to the company that makes my forum software of choice!

On a new forum of mine, I needed to place ads on the archive running version 3.5.3. Within 60 seconds I found Amy Khar’s plugin on vB.org and had it downloaded to my computer. Within another 60 seconds I had it installed through my adminCP. Within a total of 5 minutes I had my ads on the forum archive and I was done.

It is becoming almost too easy, even for a non-technical guy like me.

I wanted to share an update with you that I have on SprintUsers.Com. We just recently surpassed 60,000 members, but that isn’t it. Must concentrate…:)

Yesterday I installed a bit of code that adds 2 links just after each forum link on the forumhome and forumdisplay templates in vBulletin. The reason for the install was twofold. One, it will encourage searching, which on SprintUsers.Com is a VERY good thing. Secondly, it will save those wanting to post a new thread in a given forum a step.

Here is a screenshot of the addition.

This only took a few minutes to add and you can use the code below to do this on your vBulletin forum if you choose to do so. I am not sure how to do this with other forum software, but I assume it can be done.

You will be updating 2 templates:
forumhome_forumbit_level1_post
forumhome_forumbit_level2_post

You need to add this where you want it to show. I aded mine after the forum title towards the top of those templates. Watch the “forums” or “forum” as well. On Sprintusers.Com it is /forum/.

Here is the code you need!

I hope this is something you can use. Enjoy!

I love this feature, showing how many days old a thread is. Very few forums I frequent have it as it isn’t a built in function of vBulletin forum software. A few weeks ago, while I was surfing through threads at DigitalPoint, I noticed Shawn’s had recently added this modification. I count this an excellent feature added, like much of what Shawn has done with his forum.

Here is a screenshot of what I am talking about.