Progress on the new OB has been moving at a lightning pace over the last few days. I thought it might be a good idea to tell you a little bit more about what you can expect on the new site.
First and foremost, the question I've had from a couple of people is whether or not all of your old posts have been saved - the answer is yes. We have moved all of OB's historical stuff over to the new software, so all your posts and threads are still there.
But what about new features? Here are just a few:
Display Name
On our new version, User Names are different from Display Names. Your User Name will be exactly the same as it was on the previous version.
However, you can also choose a Display Name. And this you can change up to three times each month, if you wish.
The great thing about this is that you can keep your User Name the same (so as to "reserve" it for yourself) but you can actually change your Display Name to be whatever you want (provided, of course, that nobody else is using the same Display Name).
We can also show a history of your Display Names on your Profile, to make it easier for other Members to identify you.
Notes
This is a feature we've wanted to have for a while now and finally it's here. The Notes area allows you to store snippets of posts directly on your OB account.
I think this is especially useful for OB because of our RPGs. You can create new posts using Notes and always keep them right there on OB - this is especially useful if you access OB from different locations, because it means you'll never lose a work in progress.
Messenger
The Messenger replaces our old Private Messaging system.
There are a couple of great advantages with the new Messenger. For starters, you don't need to hunt between your Inbox and Sent Items to piece together a full conversation (or have PMs full of quotes). Now, whenever someone replies to your message, it will create a conversation (which is just like a regular Thread). This will keep your Messenger tidy and easy to read.
You can also search through all messages in your Messenger, which is a nice touch.
Those are just a fraction of the new OB features. In addition to those, the site itself is much cleaner and easier to navigate now. And with no locked width, you can stretch or shrink OB as much as you like - it will adapt to your monitor resolution with no trouble.
Our team has just a few more things to iron out before we go live with the new site, but hopefully this will only take a couple of days at the very most. Watch this space!
