Rather then constantly reply to every post in the MBB ideas thread.......
With the release of vbulletin 3.7.0 on the horizon Team Playa/NBF has been doing research into how it may best benefit the zone.
While we absolutley think that random zb awards and "poster of the month" ideas are well and good, we wanted to take a look at the bigger picture. Where we can lead Billszone in the future. We in no way are attempting to downplay our opponents ideas, I fully agree that zonebucks are critical with skyrocketing gas prices and....oh wait.
More efficient tools for staff:
Vbulletin 3.7 utilizes an inline spam tool, which in short will allow staff members to more quickly and efficiently deal with spam as well as options on a single page for removing the spam posts and threads, banning the spammers and finding other spam they may have posted.
Better search capabilities for users:
Thread tagging allows users to tag threads with keywords for example:
MBB, devil, brainwash, kidtoucher, taliban .....etc
Any users who then clicks on these tags will not only find all threads that have the same tag as the one clicked, but will also contribute to the building of a search tag cloud, which gives users a quick guide as to what has been searched for recently and most frequently.
Friends lists and public messaging:
Especially useful for those concerned with popularity. You now can have friends lists, users can now request that people on their buddy list confirm their friendship, after which time a person's list of confirmed friends will be viewable to other users.
You may also leave public messages for users that will be displayed on your user profile!
User Picture Galleries:
While there is a system in place here at BZ this new system is fully integrated into Vbulletin and provides for a much smoother approach and use. And the best part? The ability to view these albums and pictures can be limited by the user to just board staff and people on their buddy list if they want privacy!
Social Groups:
This is pretty cool!
To further social cohesion between users and to encourage people to make friends, vBulletin now includes a facility to allow users to create their own social/interest groups.These groups are enhanced by having their own public messaging system, and the ability to add pictures to the group from user albums.
As you can see this is a perfect example of how the above could be used. Each campaign could have its own group in future years and use the messaging systems to communicate rather then hundreds of pms!
Ex: The nazi party
Members: BMN, Hitler, Hillary Clinton
And its super secret to! No one can see your super secret messages!
New Member Profile pages:
Fully customizable "myspace like" user pages. Users can completely customize them and be as creative as they want!
Navbar Notices:
Administrators can now congratulate zoners on reaching certain milestones "1,000 posts"....etc. And its completley customizable so you can set it to almost anything!
There is even the ability to assign awards to the above. Imagine that!
There are NUMEROUS other additions and updates as well as enhanced security features. As you can see zoners will have the ability to do so much more and really be able to customize thier presence here at BZ. Staff members will be able to far better clean up when needed.
The point is we are looking ahead folks, all ideas are welcome of course, but we are focusing on the bigger picture and where we may move with the new software.
Apart from offering zoners unprecedented creativity and flexibility in thier zone experiences we also feel we as a staff can build on this and furthur implement site strategies that will benefit us as a whole in gaining both new members/site traffic as well as making the site more financially stable.
Originally Posted by MBBedard
Plus, you have to add in all the time posters have. I have very little time on the computer anymore. 
