To proceed on-schedule with ZU's revamp, we have upgraded the forums to vBulletin 3.7, the latest version of vBulletin. It has an incredible about of new features that are invaluable to the revamped ZU.

However, as we expected, many our current forum plugins stopped working after the upgrade. They are currently being updated and fixed. The affected plugins so far are:

- Friend Code Hack
- Awards
- Google Talk
- Split Useronline (now disabled, mods have been color coded in the meantime)

The first three do not show up anymore on the profile page.

Nevertheless, vBulletin 3.7 has a ton of new features. An abundance of changes were made to the user interface. To give an overview of some of the new features...

- New profile pages. They've been redesigned from the ground-up. Now with more AJAX, more social networking features. Totally, totally redesigned. They look nothing like the current profile pages.
- Reciprocal friend requests. People on your buddy list have the option to add you as their buddy.
- Thread tags and tag search. You will be able to add tags to a thread that will be searchable. Tags are like keywords that help people find information that they want to read about.
- Thread prefixes. Instead of starting a thread title like "[Question] HOW DO I DRANK SAND?", you will now be able to select from a list of thread prefixes that will automatically add [Question] to the beginning of your thread. This will be particularly useful in the fiction and artwork boards, as well as the battle arena, as there can be specific thread prefixes for each individual board. This will also help us use vBulletin as our comment system manager for the new main site, so that we can prefix news threads with the approriate category.
- Public messaging. If you use Facebook, you're familiar with the "wall". vBulleting 3.7 adds a "wall" to your profile page, and calls it public messaging.
- User image galleries. Right now, we use Photoplog to run ZU's gallery. We will be removing the Fan Art and Scrapbook sections of the gallery after the upgrade to 3.7, because they will become useless. You will be able to upload and maintain your own image gallery right on your user page.
- Social network groups. We're opening up the creation of publically available groups. So, your fan clubs will have a new life - in the form of social groups on ZU. Leaders of certain groups can define who they wish to invite, or make it public. Each group has its own profile page, image gallery, and public messaging system.
- AJAXified editing of your profile. Makes editing your profile quick and easy.
- Edit history. A-la Wikipedia, the new version of vBulletin now saves copies of all previous edits of a post. If you miss an old version of a post, you will be free to revert back to it. Everything is kept in a history.
- For mods... moderating will get easier. MUCH easier. So spammers, watch out!

For a full description + screenshots of the new features, look here: vBulletin 3.7 First Look! - vBulletin Community Forum

We are currently editing ZU's current skins to be compatible with all of these features, so sit tight. Over the next few hours, things will begin to work and look pretty again.

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