We’ve got some of our early adopter customers doing some testing on Beta 2.  We should get the last of the bugs squashed and then get it out the door in the next week or so.

When version 3.1.6 is completed, we will deploy it to the Ideal Science web site so that you can see and use the new features.  We’ve already done a few .NET 1.1 to 2.0 upgrades and it is fairly easy.  We’ll have complete documentation on the process to make your upgrades go smoothly.

3.1.6 beta 2 is under way with a big bug fix to the pagers which mysteriously stopped working after doing the .NET 2.0 upgrade.  I didn’t notice that they stopped appearing on the pages until I started working on beta 2.  The bug is related to a change in event processing from the 1.1 to 2.0 platforms.   I fixed the bug and they are working again, but I can’t release the fix until I release beta 2.

I added a new feature that lists active topics based on the number of replies (similar to the feature in Ideal BB the ASP product.)  It caches 100 of the most active posts per board and lets you browse through them to see which content is most popular based on replies.  There is an “Active Posts” link right next to the “New Posts” link.

I’m done hashing out the features for a rating system but I haven’t begun to implement it yet.  I think I’m going to release 3.1.6 beta 2 first so that users can get a stable .NET 2.0 build of our product and then start to tackle the rating system for beta 3.   I want to use the new Microsoft AJAX libraries that ship with .NET 2.0 so I’m going to need to take some time out to learn how to use them before adding this feature.  (How can you have ratings without using AJAX?)

Ideal Science is pleased to announce Ideal BB.Net Version 3.1.6 Beta 1 is now available to download at the online store today, December 1, 2006! At Ideal Science, we pride ourselves in providing our customers with the highest performance forum software available on the market while continuing to meet customer needs. In constantly improving Ideal BB.NET, I feel these new features and fixes will contribute to the success of your business.

New Features:

• Upgraded to .Net 2.0 Framework. Incremented the major version number to 3.x.x.x. series and since we were on 2.1.5.0 before the upgrade we are now on 3.1.6.0 for the next version.
• Added the ability to upload your own avatars via the edit profile page. Custom avatars are store for each user so that users do not see other user’s avatars. You can pick custom avatars already uploaded via the avatar selector. Only images with .jpg, .jpeg, or .gif are supported.
• Added a sample project for grabbing the last 5 most recent posts by consuming the RSS feed on the new posts page.
• Added list uploaded avatars view to the admin section so that admin’s and moderators can easily remove uploaded avatars that don’t meet the board’s terms of service. Resetting an avatar replaces and deletes the uploaded avatars with the default avatar. (Which can be set in the admin section.)
• Registration link is now hidden on login page when using active directory.

Bug Fixes:

• Fixed a bug in topic_getTopicsPaged that caused a syntax error when paging topics.
• Fixed a bug that caused AD to not work correctly for new users when anonymous access was disabled.
• Fixed bug with RTE (Rich Text Editor) where firefox browsers would lose formatting after clicking submit.
• Fixed small CSS issue with login box error messages in firefox.
• Fixed bug that caused links to get messed up after editing a post with a link in it.
• Fixed bug that would cause the quick reply to create multiple posts.

I hope you find these upgrades valuable as we have eagerly anticipated this launch to better serve a company’s individual needs.  Upgrades are a feature of the yearly maintenance package which also allows for continued technical support.  When a company purchases Ideal BB.Net forum software, a year of support and maintenance is included.  Each subsequent year, maintenance will be 20% of the original license fee.  These maintenance renewals can be made over the phone at 512-401-9811×200.  We look forward to continuing all efforts to make your business better.

I hope you had a nice Thanksgiving.  I certainly did.  Now that the holidays are over (at least until Christmas) its time to get back down to business.

The next version of Ideal BB.NET is coming along nicely.   I’ve got almost all of the kinks from the .NET 1.1 to 2.0 upgrade out.  I’ve also managed to squash a lot of bugs since the last release.  Developing in Visual Studio 2005 is proving to be more efficient than the older version of VS.

I’m hoping to put together a beta version next week which I’ll release to the public and then a final shortly there after.  If you want to participate in the beta, please email me (you can get my contact info from the about page.)

Update:
I justed finished the last bug fix before the first beta.  We are going to do some internal testing to make sure that we didn’t break anything else and then we’ll release it next week as a beta.  This new version is labeled 3.1.6.xxx with xxx being the build number.  We are now syncing up the build numbers with the actual release numbers.  (The last released build was 2.1.5.xxx so being that we moved to .NET 2.0 we incremented to 3.)

One of the more important features that I’m working on for a future version of Ideal BB.NET is digg like ratings.  If you haven’t seen the digg web site (www.digg.com) you should check it out. 

There would be several phases to this feature.  The first phase would let you “digg” a post if you like it by pressing a button next to the post.  We would store the number of diggs that a post gets as well as the quality of the person that supplies the digg.  The client code would use AJAX so that users can digg multiple posts on a page without having to refresh the entire page.   Users would be able to view the number of diggs a post received next to the post itself.

Phase two would then provide different windows into the posts based on the information pulled from diggs.  For example, one view could show a listing of posts based on which posts are digged the most.  This would allow users to view content that is more popular rather based on users who actually read it and dug it.   Another view could show posts based on ones that have no diggs so that administrators could remove those posts keeping content very relevant and popular.

Phase three would then bring the digg ratings into the search results.  You would be able to search based on diggs as well as filter the search results based on diggs. 

I suspect that this feature will be very popular and extremely useful.  The key to keeping a good forum is making sure content stays on point and digg ratings would allow posts to be rated by users which would allow the better content to filter to the top.  I’ve already started writing the specs on this feature but I don’t have a time frame on when it would be done.  I need to get to some bug fixes first.   Hopefully by January we can have this feature in a shipping version of our product.