Forums Update!
You may have seen my blog post a few weeks back about releasing an upgraded beta Community Server-based forums solution to http://forums.labs.infragistics.com. Thanks to our users' willingness to help us test out the new system as well as helping us identify and weed out any issues, we're ready to go live with it. And, that's exactly what's happening starting tonight, 6 PM EST.
During the update, you'll notice a few minutes of downtime on both the current solution living at http://forums.infragistics.com (and http://news.infragistics.com) but once everything is back up, you'll be greeted by our new Community Server installation! For those of you who have used the old forums and were not involved in our beta testing, there are a few things that have changed. The most notable differences are:
- Integrated authentication (SSO) with the main website. You no longer have to log in to the forums separately - if you're logged in to the main website, you're authenticated on the forums!
- After long and careful analysis of our current newsgroup structure, we've decided to move some things around. You'll notice that we've merged some groups together to provide a cleaner, more organized structure. What's more, we've introduced the idea of groups and sub-forums to help you quickly and easily find exactly what you're looking for!
- Naturally, the above change in organization leads to the newsgroup names changing. We did everything we could to avoid this from happening, but (as usual) change doesn't come without some expense. If you're currently using NNTP to subscribe to our forums, see the Updating Your NNTP Subscriptions section below for more details on how to make the switch.
- User Points System. Want to know how you rank compared to other members of the forums? Just compare your points! Think of the possibilities this could bring in the future... :)
- Greatly improved searching (both internally and externally... e.g. Google!)
Updating Your NNTP Subscriptions
As I mentioned above, we've changed the names and paths of the current newsgroups. The good news is that this should lead to more organized groups as well as more relevant threads within those groups. The bad news is that if you are subscribed via NNTP to our current newsgroups, you'll have to drop them and re-subscribe. If this applies to you, here's what you're going to want to do:
- Completely remove your current account. Be sure to make whatever local backups you deem necessary! While the old forums will continue to live on (albeit under a different hostname: http://forums.archive.infragistics.com), your local copies will most likely be deleted when you delete their associated account in your news reader (depending on the settings in your newsreader, of course).
- Create a new account, with the following settings:
- NNTP Server: forums.infragistics.com
- Server requires authentication (or similar): true, if you'd like to post/reply; false if you're happy with anonymous viewing
- If you selected true in the step above, enter the same username and password as you use to log into the main website at http://www.infragistics.com/Login.aspx. If you do not have an account already, click on that link and click the "New Members" button to sign up!
- Refresh your list of available groups. You'll know you've got things set up properly if you get a list of groups that look like "netadvantage_for_asp.net.commands_and_editors" as opposed to "infragistics.products.netadvantage.aspnet.webhtmleditor".
- Click Subscribe (or similar) and start enjoying your new NNTP goodness!
For those of you who have been using NNTP to access our new forums while they have been in the beta phase, your accounts should continue to work without modification, however I strongly recommend you update the server name to "forums.infragistics.com" to avoid any potential funky-ness that should occur. Depending on your reader, you should be able to leave the rest of your settings alone. If this doesn't work for you, try using the steps listed above.
What About the Existing Forums?
During the release, we'll be switching the existing forums to read-only mode after which no more posts will be accepted. After the release, the new forums will take over the forums.infragistics.com hostname, however the archived, read-only forums will continue to be available at http://forums.archive.infragistics.com.