I am considering some things and want everyone's opinions.

1. Should I disable the redirecting boxes? (such as when you edit and you get a box that says thank you for editing, you are being redirected). It just slows things down. the only reason i can see for someone wanting it to stay is where they can know for sure they really edited or did the other options which those redirect boxes state.

2. And most imnportantly: SHOULD I GO AHEAD and risk upgrading the forum to version 2.1? I have been testing it out and so far no error has happened. I honestly dont see how it could hurt as much as they say. They suggest not doing it. but I have backed up my database on my server. So I just dont see why I couldnt restore my database if this upgrade were to do anything major such as delete all our posts.

Here are some of the new things in 2.1 which i wish I could go ahead and incorporate into the forum:

blogs: drag and drop. all the boxes that are in your blog you can simply click on and drag them to other parts of the screen to rearrange how your blog looks rather than having to go through a lot more to achieve it. Also you can show active users in blogs. And you can even SYNDICATE your blog via RSS. (I will explain this later in the post).

gallery: probably later today or very soon a beta of the next gallery will be out. A lot different, such as active users shown, a new layout, and several things I dont remember offhand since I havent got tot ry it since the beta isnt out yet.

regular forum: I can set topics to open or close at certain times, you can create polls in your topics even after you posted them. youc an make more than 1 poll question in the same one and many choices. There are many other little changes as stated in other topics here.

RSS

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OK this one I did not even pay attention to until now. This is a pretty cool idea. ok many popular sitews now (including cnn.com) are "syndicating" headlines. What does this mean? you can download a free RSS Reader from online. Then these websites which provide RSS send out headlines to your desktop. So you dont have to go to your favorite sites over and over seeing what is new. You get headlines from them on your desktop. Then you get a short description. If you are interested, you then click a link in the reader and it takes you to the FULL story.

OK, how does this relate to the new version of the forum? I just tsted it on the test forum I made. I used the CNN feed. IPB 2.1 is set up to receive RSS feeds. I set up the CNN one and what it does is it looks for new headlines in the category I set up (entertainment, world news, etc). In a forum area I set aside for these headlines, headlines come in at the rate I want. Say 10 per hour, 10 every 5 hours, etc etc.

So you could go this forum area and get all this up-to-date news, sports, etc... from the sites we find which offer RSS.

Another cool RSS thing is APPARENTLY if I understand this correctly, you can syndicate your BLOGS to RSS. This means if someone cares a lot about your blogs for some reason, they can paste the RSS link in their "reader" and your blogs can be showing up on people's desktops. lol This could be pretty cool in a way, if this is indeed how it works, as I believe is the case.

Anyway everyone can give opinions on these 2 situations. I am tempted to upgrade now and just hope there are no errors. They will keep having upgrades over and over until it is officially released. So if there ARE errors, it wouldnt take long to get them fixed. So far there doesnt seem to be any though as far as when I tested it.

I just hate waiting around when there doesnt seem to be much risk in upgrading now. But i dont want to ruin anything of course.

ALthough the fact that half the people here are mad at me now, i shouldnt even worry about that. lol

Well let me know. Maybe the RSS isnt as cool as I think, but seems pretty intetresting and i would be one of the first live forums to use it.

Just noticed it has it for topics too. All you have to do is either use firefox or download a free reader from download.com and then when i set it up if you want, you can set up my stream and then you will get some of the new posts and topics right to your desktop/browser. Then busy people can know when to come to the forum i guess.

I dont know that it would be a huge thing to me, but i think it is very cool, nonetheless. And not only trhis export, but the imports from CNN and other sites. Mighty cool.

This tempts me even more to risk the upgrade. lol If someone at IPB tells me backing up my database is enough to where if an error happens I can go back to it witha restore, then i will upgrade later todAay. If it seems too risky, I guess I will have to wait weeks possibly.

edit: ok someone said indeed my backup of the database should be fine and I wouldjust restore if anything messed upwith the upgrade. So i am probably upgrading later today. I am going to bed so late, I probably wont be back on till 3 or 4 my time. lol

hmmm i say try upgrading it...

well everyone else took too long so the vote is 2-0 to upgrade. yayz. lol

So I guess we may run into some errors for a few weeks. Possibly anyways. But then i would just fix them. So....