In conjunction with Skype, I am pleased to introduce SkypeWeb integration into vBulletin.

SkypeWeb allows the online status of Skype users to be viewed on web pages, and fits very nicely with vBulletin.

SkypeWeb integration will be a standard feature of the next release of vBulletin, but should you wish to gain SkypeWeb functionality on your vBulletin 3.5.3 board right away, you need simply to download the product XML file attached to this thread and install it through the product manager in your vBulletin Admin Control Panel.

Installing the next version of vBulletin when it is released will automatically remove this update product and replace it with SkypeWeb functionality from the default code and templates, so no further action will be required on your part.

This little tip is more for larger forums or even sites that have a fairly large userbase. You may not realize it but sending out a newsletter can be damaging to your site for 2 reasons. First, you are putting immense strain on your server to send out thousands of emails at one time. Secondly, you are going to be sending those users back to your site after they read your newsletter, thus creating an immense strain on your server.

I came across this problem after talking with Bob Levinstein at CruiseCompete.com (which is a great way to get cheap cruises). They have over 30,000 users subscribing to their email newsletter so obviously they would have this problem. So they use a very genius way to keep the damage down while keeping the users coming back. In his own words:

The newsletter goes out on a rolling basis over the course of 2 weeks. It starts Monday at 2:00PM and goes until Friday morning. It then picks up and hits the second half of the membership the second week.

The rolling release does several things for us. It’s not a server load–it’s an agent time issue. No reason to get a whole bunch of request on one day–or to boost our numbers over the weekend when fewer agents are quoting. The smaller mail increments help keep us off anti-spam radar. And updating the messages based on what specials have just been posted in the last hour prevents agents from “gaming” the system–i.e., posting a bunch of specials to get their ageny’s specials out there vs. other agencies. It’s internal software we built–it’s not terribly complicated.

So this is my tip of the day. Spread your newsletter traffic over 1-2 week spans or as you see fit. Your server will thank you.

Rex @ CruiseLineForums.com

This is definitely something all community owners should keep in mind.

Internet users can take just one-twentieth of a second to decide whether they like the look of a website, researchers say.

Dr Gitte Lindgaard and colleagues from Carleton University in Ottawa flashed up websites for 50 milliseconds and asked participants to rate them for visual appeal.

When they repeated the exercise after a longer viewing period, the participants’ ratings were consistent.

“Visual appeal can be assessed within 50 milliseconds, suggesting that web designers have about 50 milliseconds to make a good impression,” the Canadians report in the journal Behaviour & Information Technology.

What I found most interesting was that when the flash appeared on the monitor of a site they had previously rated, the person rated it the same each time. There is really something to this. How does all of this happen and how can it happen so quickly? The article isn’t the scientific report, but it does share this bit of information:

“This suggests that we make very quick judgements based on some sort of emotional reaction and our more considered judgements still reflect that first impression”

Begin to consider what a surfer is seeing / feeling when they first come to your forum. Remember, you only have seconds…:)

We just completed a very successful upgrade on Zelda Universe to vBulletin’s latest version 3.5.3. We previously were using version 3.0.7. I am pleased with how seamless it went as we only had 2 or 3 major hacks to content with bringing over to the new version. This is definitely a step in the right direction for vBulletin as the “inline moderation” abilities are very useful and actually quite staff friendly. If my staffers are happy, then I am happy!

I will soon embark on moving Cruise Line Forums to the latest version of vBulletin, but this move will likely prove to be quite a bit more difficult. We have a very unique skin as well as several hacks that will make things tough. Time will tell…

A recently discovered cross-site scripting (XSS) flaw in all three branches of vBulletin has prompted us to perform a security update, releasing new versions of vBulletin 2, 3.0.x and 3.5.x simultaneously. All prior versions of vBulletin are vulnerable and we advise customers to upgrade or patch their vBulletin installations at their earliest convenience.

For the vBulletin 3.5.x branch, the problem can be resolved in one of three ways.
Full Upgrade: The best way to fix the problem is to perform a full upgrade, downloading the complete 3.5.3 package from the vBulletin Members’ Area and following the regular upgrade instructions.
Patch: A second option is to download the patch files attached to this thread and upload them to your web server, overwriting the existing files.
Plugin: The plugin built into vBulletin 3.5 allows the problem to be fixed with a simple plugin. The install file for this plugin is also attached to this thread and is the easiest way to fix the problem, as it does not require you to upload any files via FTP. The plugin will be automatically removed when you perform your next full upgrade. You can install the plugin by following the instructions here.

3.5.3 also contains a number of bug fixes. Click here for a list!