vB features

[Flynn]

Hello,

My intention is to move from IBF 1.3 to vB. I've looked at them demo and a lot of features but wondered if someone could confirm these that I didn't get the chance to notice? Sorry if the answers should be obvious.

• Is there a facility to replace a "bad words" with suitable alternatives rather than just asterisks?
• Are outgoing emails by users logged?
• Can authorised users see and enter hidden private forums without needing to login using cookies?
• Can both sending and receiving PMs system be denied to specific groups or members?
• Are there options for new registrations? On the board I'm using manually validated registrations don't need to reply to an email so there's no way of knowing if the addy is bogus/wrong, is that the same on VB? Would prefer manual registration to send out the verifying email.
• Is there an option to transform all caps titles by users to titles case and remove excessive exclamation/question marks?
• Can there be a time limit set for edits by users?
  
  
  Thanks for your help.

PS, Our forums have 10,000 members, would you expect the converter be trouble free?

[vbcore]

Hello,

My intention is to move from IBF 1.3 to vB. I've looked at them demo and a lot of features but wondered if someone could confirm these that I didn't get the chance to notice? Sorry if the answers should be obvious.

• Is there a facility to replace a "bad words" with suitable alternatives rather than just asterisks? Yes
• Are outgoing emails by users logged? No
• Can authorised users see and enter hidden private forums without needing to login using cookies? Yes
• Can both sending and receiving PMs system be denied to specific groups or members? Yes
• Are there options for new registrations? On the board I'm using manually validated registrations don't need to reply to an email so there's no way of knowing if the addy is bogus/wrong, is that the same on VB? Would prefer manual registration to send out the verifying email. Yes
• Is there an option to transform all caps titles by users to titles case and remove excessive exclamation/question marks? Yes
  
  
  Thanks for your help.

Look at my signature!

[Flynn]

Cheers xplode. That was fast - before I got my edit finished which was can a time limit for user edits be set?

[Floris]

• Is there a facility to replace a "bad words" with suitable alternatives rather than just asterisks?
  yes
• Are outgoing emails by users logged?
  no
• Can authorised users see and enter hidden private forums without needing to login using cookies?
  cookies is required
• Can both sending and receiving PMs system be denied to specific groups or members?
  yes
• Are there options for new registrations? On the board I'm using manually validated registrations don't need to reply to an email so there's no way of knowing if the addy is bogus/wrong, is that the same on VB? Would prefer manual registration to send out the verifying email.
  yes - you can use moderation or not, email validation or not, and a combination of this.
• Is there an option to transform all caps titles by users to titles case and remove excessive exclamation/question marks?
  yes
• Can there be a time limit set for edits by users?
  yes

[Flynn]

Thanks Floris!

Are outgoing emails by users logged?
no

That might be a problem for us. It's an animal welfare site where charities home animals. In the past we've had animal dealers joining and secretly contacting dozens of users by email to sell them animals. We can pick that up now in IBF.

Does that mean there's no way of knowing how many emails a user sends out? Is there a hack or anything in the pipeline do you know?

[vbcore]

Im pretty sure you can disable showing peoples email addies in their profile, or you disable PM's and EMails for certain usergroups

[Floris]

Yes, you can set it to show either as email, or force a user to fill in a form.
But it won't log what emails are send to who by who and when. It just emails.

[Zachery]

You could setup a promotion to only let users who have been registered X ammount of days or with X ammount of posts to be able to send emails to your customers, this would greatly limit the ammount of emails sent out, esp if secure sending is enabled.

[TheComputerMutt]

"Is there a facility to replace a "bad words" with suitable alternatives rather than just asterisks?"

I've looked in the admin demo and couldn't find this. As I seem stupid, could you tell me where it's listed?

[Zachery]

It can be done per style by replacements.

[Flynn]

Bugger, that's a shame. Obviously no one product will have it all but I think that's maybe the single deal-breaker for us.

At the moment we've also the option of limiting the number of emails any user sends in a set period and that would help but being able to see a pattern is better.

Perhaps it could be considered as a future feature and would think it useful to many other applications. I'm sure that all the company boards that say offer a web-hosting pre-sales forum won't want a rival company secretly spamming all their potential customers using their own board but may have no way of knowing if that's happening with the vB board as it stands. With current worries about internet "grooming" some sort of logging would also help any board run for young people.

I'll look back optimistically for the next development of vB. Thanks again for your help.

[TheComputerMutt]

Bugger, that's a shame. Obviously no one product will have it all but I think that's maybe the single deal-breaker for us.

At the moment we've also the option of limiting the number of emails any user sends in a set period and that would help but being able to see a pattern is better.

Perhaps it could be considered as a future feature and would think it useful to many other applications. I'm sure that all the company boards that say offer a web-hosting pre-sales forum won't want a rival company secretly spamming all their potential customers using their own board but may have no way of knowing if that's happening with the vB board as it stands. With current worries about internet "grooming" some sort of logging would also help any board run for young people.

I'll look back optimistically for the next development of vB. Thanks again for your help.

There may be a hack for it. You should look here to check.

[Flynn]

Only one I could find was this one: http://www.vbulletin.org/forum/showt...=monitor+email which looks a bit clumsy against the log system of IB. I'd be snowed under if I got a seperate notification every time - hundreds go out every day.

Before we had any monitoring we had something similar to what he described happen and the first we knew was when dozens of emails that weren't delivered bounced back. Without any way of logging a company forum could be more useful to the company's competitor as a way of mining their customers than to the company running it.

[Zachery]

Well, you could totaly take this ability away from any new users not allowing them to spam you customers at all. He was refering to asking for a hack, Emails for the most part are considered privte.

[Reeve of Shinra]

Disable the option to have members send members emails and have them send pm's instead. there's a hack which would allow you to read them and (if the user wishes to) they can be notified via email of that new pm.