[Sim]

I decided to launch the ZooBeat forums using vBulletin v3 beta release 7. It is still in testing and not 100% stable yet, but I think it should be good enough for us to start on.

They are expecting to have the full release of v3 before Christmas, and rather than launching on v2.3.2 and then needing to upgrade to v3 later (more difficult than upgrading from a beta release), I decided that we'd risk the beta software.

Let me know if you have any problems.

I'll be keeping a Frequently Asked Questions (FAQs) list to help people with the software and our site.

[Sim]

vBulletin v3 is now in "gamma" testing - meaning they've got the new templates for the look and feel which they are testing now to make sure it works with all the different types of web browsers. They have said they hope to have a final release by Christmas time or soon after.

Once it is at least "gold" version, I intend up upgrade this forum to use the final release, which will also mean a radical change in user interface - but this will be a good thing - the new UI is really nice.

You can check out how the default forum looks on the vBulletin Forums for yourself - have a look around, it's pretty impressive.

[Sim]

I've just upgraded the forum to vBulletin v3.0 Gamma release - there are quite a few new features in the user interface.

Let me know if you have any problems or are not sure how to do something.

Any feedback would be appreciated.

[Sim]

By the way, the photo gallery is currently offline - I need to upgrade the gallery software to v4.6 to support the new version of vBulletin - I'll get to that as soon as I can.

[Sim]

I've upgraded the forum software to vBulletin v3 Release Candidate 2, and the Photo Gallery to PhotoPost PHP Pro v4.6

The integration between the two products isn't quite working as expected yet - logging in to the forum doesn't automatically log you in to the gallery as well like it should. If you want to upload photos to the gallery in the short term, use the login link for the gallery to log in and you should be right (use the same username and password that you use for the forum).