May 2008

[Admin]

As previously mentioned in the April 2008 announcement, CalPolyOnline.com community forum had additional features for our registered members to better provide the use of internet technology for networking purposes. The website was originally founded to accommodate Cal Poly students to network on and off-campus.

• Thread Tagging
• Thread Prefixes
• Reciprocal Friendships Between Users
• Public Messaging
• User Picture Galleries
• User-Created Social Groups
• New Member Profile Page
• Attachment Viewing Lightbox
• Subtle Changes and Improvements

[Admin]

A new way to facilitate searching and grouping of threads, it is now possible for users to add tags to threads they post or read.

Tags can be added when creating a new thread, or to an existing thread by any user (with appropriate permissions).

Any users who then click on these tags will not only find all thread that have the same tag as the one clicked, but will also contribute to the building of a search tag cloud, which gives users a quick guide as to what has been searched for recently and most frequently.

[Admin]

Thread prefixes are identified as either "Pomona," "San Luis Obispo," or no prefix (default). Thread prefixes helps members and forum visitors identify whether the thread applies to Cal Poly Pomona or Cal Poly San Luis Obispo. Other forum categories have their own set of thread prefixes to choose from. For example the Classifieds forum has a "Sale" and "Wanted" prefixes relevant to the classified listings.

[Admin]

As part of our new social networking system, users can now request that people on their buddy list confirm their friendship, after which time a person's list of confirmed friends will be viewable to other users.

[Admin]

While private messages between users have been available, the new forum upgrade introduces the public messaging system, allowing users to communicate publicly via their profile pages.

[Admin]

CalPolyOnline.com registered users can now create albums and upload pictures to their account.


The ability to view these albums and pictures can be limited by the user to just people on their buddy list if they want privacy.

[Admin]

To further social cohesion between users and to encourage people to make friends, CalPolyOnline.com now includes a facility to allow users to create their own social/interest groups.


These groups are enhanced by having their own public messaging system, and the ability to add pictures to the group from user albums.

[Admin]

In order to accommodate all the new features, the member profile page has been completely redesigned from the ground up.

The new page presents information in a far cleaner and more logical manner, while dividing up information into manageable chunks using a tabbed interface.

Individual profile field categories can be displayed alone in blocks in the right column, in addition to appearing by default in the 'About Me' tab.

[Admin]

Clicking on an attached image will now open a lightbox rather than open a new window, with the image scaled to fit the browser viewport. A click on the image in the lightbox will open it in a new window as before.

[Admin]

There has been over a dozen subtle changes and new improvements over the course of months.

• The registration process has been improved to deter spambots and human spammers alike. The new reCAPTCHA is a pretty neat tool incorporated into our registration page.
• Countless numbers of bugs have been squashed and the website should be running flawlessly.
• The website went through a minor design change while maintaining the same looks and color scheme. CalPolyOnline.com is now best viewed using the 1024 by 768 pixel screen resolution for your monitors. In the previous design, the forum tables adjusted according to your set screen resolution but that is no longer the case as the forum table is not fixed width instead of being a liquid layout.