Welcome to vBulletin 3.7 4/13/08 So hopefully everyone found their way back after the downtime, and didn't like, you know, go out and get a life or something. And hopefully, after another rickroll, you have not left the LPA in anger There are some new features here that I want to tell you about: 1. Thread tags. This will make threads easier to find when looking for threads. You can add descriptive, useful tags to threads (even ones you don't create). Then, you can search that tag and find other threads with the same tag. Some obvious things to keep in mind, every thread on this forum shouldn't be tagged with "Linkin Park." This is a Linkin Park forum, of course there will be some LP threads. But if a thread is about One Step Closer, then it would make sense to tag it with "One Step Closer". 2. Updated profile page. Just go to your profile, or someone else's profile and take a look. It's new and updated and stuff. 3. Friends. This is just like Facebook or Myspace friends. I realize this may be somewhat pointless on a smaller community like this, but what the hell, we'll enable it. 4. Visitor Messages. This is the same as your wall on Facebook or whatever MySpace calls it. 5. Photo Albums. I shouldn't have to explain this one too much 6. Customizable Profile Styles. This lets you edit colors and stuff on your page. But for the love of god, if any profiles end up like some of the crap I see on MySpace, I'm going to go postal. Hot pink text on a seizure-inducing background is not cool 7. For reasons I'm not going to explain, the default style for everyone was reset to LPA3. You can change it to something else with the dropdown in the bottom left corner. Probably some other stuff that I'm either forgetting or don't know about. But if you've never seen it before, it's probably new. There's also a feature called Social Groups which is like groups on Facebook. Right now, it's not enabled, we're still discussing whether or not to enable it We probably will, and if we do, we'll let you know. And if something's broken, please post in this thread so I can fix it. Posted by Todd Comments: 28 Forums offline later tonight 4/13/08 The forums will be offline later this evening (not sure what time, perhaps 8 PM-ish central time. Mainly depends on if tonight's Family Guy is a rerun or not) while I upgrade it to the vBulletin 3.7 release candidate. Since this will be a major update and require a bit more behind the scenes work, the forums may be offline for an hour or so, instead of the usual 30 seconds for most upgrades. Forums will be offline for even longer if something goes terribly wrong and I have to restore from a backup vB 3.7 has some cool new features which'll make the downtime worth it (these features probably won't be enabled right away though as we still need to test them out) Posted by Todd Comments: 5 Thank You For One Incredible Year. 2/7/08 I just posted this in the staff forums and felt it was too great a news to keep just for the staff: Quote: So checking in the webalizer stats today I noticed something extraordinary about our web traffic; that needs to be mentioned to all of you guys who have worked so hard to make LPA a great place over the past 5 years. 2007 was our biggest year yet. Due to numerous web outages and downtimes, we never got a chance to save our traffic from before march when we made a switch to a dedicated server. We have no clue what the first 2 months of 2007 held, or what the grand total for 2007 would have been with that included, however I have this information for you all: From Mid March, to December 2007 we generated an incredible 98,053,163 hits. Yes 98 Million Hits. Estimating low (evidenced by traffic trends after the MTM surge had died down) a safe, but low estimate for those missing 2 months would be about 8 million hits for each month, which means we can estimate that we recieved at least: An estimated 114 Million Hits for 2007. This blows any of our previous years out of the water and you guys are amazing for helping this site get to that level. We got to this by being a team, and not through one person running the entire show and for that I must say thank you. This tremendous number has made my day. You guys rock. Posted by Derek Comments: 28 New Signature Image File Size Restrictions 2/1/08 Due to complaints from some people that huge images are slowing down the site loading or their computer, we are setting a limit of the file size of images. The total size of all images in your signature is to not exceed 300 kilobytes. This is more than adequate for non-animated images, and most animated GIFs as well. If your image exceeds this size, you will need to somehow reduce it's size or not use it. Please also review the rest of the signature policy here. Posted by Todd Comments: 6 ATTENTION LPA FORUM MEMBERS 12/3/07 For immediate release from SURU: Quote: Mr. Hahn Ningyo offered at $60.00 for LPA Members only! ***(Retail $120.00) Mr.Hahn Ningyo Designed by Joe Hahn "Mr.Hahn"of Linkin Park for Ningyo Project. Limited Edition of 500 pcs. Each one is signed by Joe Hahn. Available now for the first time at a discount for LPA Members only! MR. Hahn features: GID Eyes Gradient printing Nunchucks with metal chain Custom Box Elaborate chest detail 3 points of articulation 10" with hat Due to extreme popularity of the Mr.Hahn Ningyo and the continued support of The Linkin Park Association, we have arranged to bring to you, LPA Members this special promotional offer. We have set aside a limited number of Ningyo's for this event and at this very special price. To make a purchase, please visit us at www.SURU-LA.COM, and look for the LP logo labeled LPASSOCIATION PROMO. This is closed to LPA Members only, and therefore only LPA members will know what the LPA promo product represents. THANKS TO OUR FRIENDS AT "THE LINKIN PARK ASSOCIATION" FOR MAKING THIS POSSIBLE!!! Merry Christmas!!! SURU Get yours today as supplies are LIMITED. In order for us to fully track this promotion, please post here if you have ordered your own from the website using the special link. Thank you. **ATTENTION** If you are experiencing higher than usual shipping charges for overseas orders, please send me a PM and I will provide you with a direct email to contact in order to get this resolved. Per SURU, overseas shipping should not cost anymore than 45-50.00 max. If you see anything higher then that, there is a problem and thus you should contact me for the direct email. Posted by Derek Comments: 45 Concerning The Grey Daze Remaster Tracks 11/15/07 I have just received word from Sean Dowdell that he has been 'stopped' from providing us the remaining 3 tracks for free and thus cannot send us the album in its entirety. We are still legally allowed to host the tracks we already had up, but as for the rest of them...they will be available when the re-master gets released (hopefully) early next year. Thank you for your patience. Posted by Derek Comments: 11 Regarding promotions to new usergroups.... 10/11/07 This is just a reminder to everyone that when you're supposed to be promoted to a new usergroup, whether it's 50 posts to not have your posts moderated, 500 to access the arcade, 1,000 to change your user title, or 3,000 to become a super member, this promotion will not happen immediately. vBulletin runs a script to do user promotions once an hour. 25 minutes after the hour to be exact (although this may change in the future). So if you make your 3,000th post at 2:26 PM, you will have to wait 59 minutes until the script is run to become a super member. So please, next time you reach one of those milestones and do not see an immediate change, do not PM us unless you have waited at least an hour. Thank you. And BTW, this is not targeted towards one particular member who made their 3,000th post a few minutes ago and freaked out when they didn't turn blue, it's just a general FYI Posted by Todd Comments: 9 I R STAFF. PH34R MY HAX. 9/30/07 So, Derek and everyone else on the LPA staff have decided that I'm worthy of a staff position here. I kind of can't think of a whole lot to say about that! For people that don't know me (all 3 of you), I'm Anthony, formerly known as tasta. I'll be moderating the forums, posting news, helping with site content, and taking out a bunch of pent-up frustration by banning some of you at random. Thanks to Derek, Andrea, Mark, etc., for giving me this opportunity. Posted by Dr. Octagonapus Comments: 25 Downtime later tonight 8/3/07 Just an FYI...the LPA may be offline for up to an hour starting in a few hours (around 1:20 AM central time). The forum and web server need some software updates installed. Posted by Todd Comments: 0 New Signature Policy 7/7/07 We've recently fielded some complaints about the large size of signatures on these forums. Some signatures are getting out-of-control big and wide. For those of us with laptops or slower internet connections, it has become an inconvenience to scroll through and load some pages. Revised restrictions: The largest a signature should be is this size. Signatures should be no bigger than 500 pixels in width and 375 pixels in height (image and lines of text included). There's a small bit of leeway, but please don't take ample advantage of our leniency. Please note that the 525 pixels rule is no longer in effect. It is now 500 so that the information pane isn't indented. We find that when your signature is dwarfing the size of your post, it does tend to look ridiculous. This policy will go into effect immediately. Please alter your signatures accordingly. Thank you! Posted by Mark Comments: 43