First and foremost, welcome to the new SoccerPulse forums!

Rolling everything up into this large upgrade has been quite a bit of work and took a lot of planning, but I hope you will agree with me when I say it was worth it. The good news is that aside from the loss of our SP Blue skin variant, nothing else was lost in this upgrade. That’s always good news right? I apologize for the length of this announcement, but I had to use lots of space to describe all of the changes. Everyone, and I do mean everyone, should read this topic. Members, mods, gmods, even Macca and Der Kaiser. Every last person will find something interesting that they didn’t know was coming. That is because some of this stuff was kept secret from everyone.

This is the fun part, listing the new features:

Arcade – Might as well list this first, since half of you probably went and checked out the games before you even read this post. For those of you who didn’t, yes, we now feature an arcade. There are several games available already, and more will be added every so often. We will be able to run tournaments within the arcade as well, but nothing is planned right now.

WYSIWYG Posting – Sweet! Posting with lots of letters that don’t mean anything! Actually, for those of you who don’t know what that stands for, try this: What You See Is What You Get. In other words, if you are typing and click the BBCode for Bold, the text you type after clicking the button will display in bold as you type it. No more code tags surrounding your text. You can see how it looks before you post it.

Spell Checking – A feature that has returned from the grave. We did have spell checking on SoccerPulse quite some time ago. It is a feature I have long missed, so with this upgrade I decided to bring it back. I’m sure I’m not the only person who will appreciate it. (Spell checking is only available in English)

Quick Editing of Posts – Just submitted a post only to realize you made a mistake a moment later? These things happen all the time. Now when you click edit, you have the option of using “Quick Edit” to save time fixing it. When you choose “Quick Edit” your post will become editable without changing pages. You can make your correction and submit it without ever leaving the topic view page.

Default Formatting – From within your personal control panel, you are now able to set defaults for font, color, and size. Now someone who wants to make all of their posts appear with a blue font need only to set blue as their default color choice and all posts will automatically default to this. **Please be aware that we are providing this feature for members benefit. Abuse of the system by setting large font sizes or making otherwise unreadable posts will result in warnings from the moderator staff.**

Name Changes – Members can now change their own names. The system works a bit differently than before however. Those of you who use MSN Messenger will be instantly familiar with how this system works. Login names are permanent, but from within your control panel you can change how your name appears on the forum. Thus while you will continue to log in using the same username, whatever display name you choose will be shown in your posts, in search results, and on the active user list. By default each members display name matches their login name. You do not have to change this and are free to ignore this feature entirely if it does not interest you. Display name changes are permitted once every 90 days, similar to our old policy when we would manually adjust member names.

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There are also some changes in regards to forum sections.

The Tactics & Styles subforum in the Players & Coaching forum has been removed. All posts that existed in this forum have been moved to the P&C forum and all future topics on this subject should be made in the same forum.

The SoccerPulse Marketplace forum has been renamed more simply to Marketplace and has become a subforum of the Kitbag forum.

In the General Discussion category, a new forum for Women’s Football has been added. Rabbidogg will be moderating this forum, so if you have interest in the world of women’s football, head on over there to check it out.

In the Lounge, a new Homework Help forum has been created. All threads regarding school coursework should be made in this forum only. Current school related threads from the Lounge have been moved to this forum.

In the Computers & Graphics forum, a new Computer Help subforum is now available to those with computer trouble. This forum has been created to assist in combating help request topics in the main Computers & Graphics forum being quickly lost among the onslaught of new graphics topics.

Under the Development category, a new main forum has been created entitled Account Support. Suggestions/Complaints has been renamed Site Suggestions & Complaints and is now a subforum of Account Support. As most of the topics created in the former Suggestions/Complaints forum were usually neither of those things and rather general account questions or requests, this change seems to make the most sense.

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The other stuff:

New and updated smilies! Some that weren’t being used have been removed. There are a few new ones as well.

Post counts have made a return. Post count celebrations are prohibited and moderators will delete such threads.

The soccer balls under your name are gone. I didn’t feel both the balls and actual post counts were necessary, and since so many people still bother trying to figure out what their posts counts are, the decision was rather easy.

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Well, that’s it. Phew! Quite a bit has changed, and I hope these changes meet everyone’s approval. We at SoccerPulse aim to meet and exceed everyone’s expectations in the quality of the service we provide. Many of these changes are based on members suggestions. Please enjoy the changes and I look forward to any comments you may have about these new changes.

kid a says:
sorry to edit you bill, but the Chat is up and running.

It was worth it great work

Awesome work mate i really like the new posting system. And with that quick edit thats good, and spelling check as i always spell bad on computers

Really well done guys!!!! very different than the old layout, but i can get used to it

Cool. Off to check it out.

By the way, are we going to have a new updated skin available soon?

No time frame available for a skin yet. When Der Kaiser gets the layout for SP v3 prepared we will be basing a skin off of that.

Phew! Looks amazing Bill.

You get some sleep now amigo.

<--Sorry just checking them out.

Yeah, this will be hard, adjusting to this existing skin. Kind hard to follow the topics, new topics, at first with the icons. But I'll get used to it.

Thanks a lot Bill, awesome updates. Arcade rules. Thanks a lot.

Loving the new smilies.

it just looks so cool! i will go and check everything out right now!

Haha, these smileys are killer! Great job with the updates, I used this skin before anyway, so it's all cool.

maybe a football game in the arcade?

BTW, since the SP awards forum has been removed now, when will the results be posted? Sorry if offtopic.

All looks great guys, thanks for your hard work

The results for the SP Awards should be posted in the next couple of days.

One issue I have noticed so far is that "Quick Edit" may not currently be working properly. Although it was working fine on my test board, there appears to be a glitch preventing the new function from working properly. It may also be my browser, so I'll have a look at it a bit later and hopefully get it working soon.

When i click "Quick Edit" I am re-directed to the top of this page

this looks really cool!
thanks for those great work

These new changes are cool.

Good stuff, the new skin looks rad aswell. This is now a heavy forum.

Excellent stuff. That was the longest 4 hours of work ive had to do with no SP window up.

Anyway, from what you have explained Bill, the new layout seems great. Gonna have a look around in a while but first, im hungry...

Great work though.

Where are the games though

Excellent updates ... the one i like most is automatic edit for posts

IMO, the skin used before was somewhat better

http://www.soccerpulse.com/forum/index.php?act=Arcade

Thanks footyfanatic

Great work lads. The site looks amazing.

Cheers.

Games are the best - Cheers for everything again

Probably because this skin is the default invision skin and thus won't be amazing, the proper skin for the forums will come with the v3 project.

Do the games have to be played in internet explorer for your high score to be saved? My scores wont send

Also, how do i change my name, i cant seem to find the option in control panel

Anyone????

wow, great work you admins. there is no doubt now SP is the best football forum ever.

Gonna take some getting used too this skin but good work. Nice new Smileys too.



Sorry had to try them out.

looks good,good work lads.

Wow, good work admins.

Looks great.

I didn't even know it was happening.

Nice little return present for me lol.

well done guys, it looks great, but are the footballs uder peoples names comming back?

read the post Its either Post count or Footballs, dont really care but some people obviously do.

Absolutely fantastic updates guys well done

I'm loving this new interface, Chris and Bill you guys are ->

Looks great. It's not possible for us to have both soccer balls and post count. Oh well, still love the new features.

Fantastic work guys, we are not worthy.

Nice job guys.

wow, sp is brilliant, cant wait to really have a proper look around.
love it, love it, love it!

its a little to white so it is other than that its sweet

Great job with SoccerPulse. Better than ever. Well done frstplce, you have and done an EXCELLENT job

wooo, looks ace

Im glad the balls are gone as people were obsessive over them

Yeah too many stupid posts just to get balls, this new look is ace, I'm loving it!

oo I LOVE the new SP thank you so much for taking the time to plan everything and making it happen for us

Yeah thanks for putting in the hard work. It looks great.

I'm a person that doesn't really like change in general, but the new stuff looks really good. It's just gonna take a little bit of getting used to.

Dude I feel your pain, I was so bored I even read sport.es (a pro-barcelona excuse of a website) and amused myself.

All and all it was worth the wait.