MetaForum 0.447 review

Blursoft MetaForum utilizes AJAX to generate a unique forum experience. Here are some key features of "MetaForum": New Forum Pers

License: Other/Proprietary License File size: 1149K Developer: Blursoft

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Blursoft MetaForum utilizes AJAX to generate a unique forum experience.

Here are some key features of "MetaForum":
New Forum Perspective.
Blursoft MetaForum sprang from a need that simply was not being filled by any other forum software. We concentrated on the user, not the system. We maximized the efficiency of the click-economy. You shouldn't need to go 12 pages deep to find the information you want and you should be able to see all you want at once while filtering out what you don't. We've rethought forums from the ground up and simply made them easier and better to use.

Refreshing? No, Thanks.
Constantly stabbing your F5 key to see recent activity is inane and wastes bandwidth. MetaForum changes all that, with completely live, real time auto-updating threads and thread listings. No more refreshing to see new posts or threads, they just appear in front of your eyes, as it happens.

AJAX & Web2.0 The Way It Was Meant To Be.
Blursoft MetaForum takes a lot of inspiration for it's features from AJAX and Web2.0 models, but does so correctly, the way they were designed to be used. Back buttons work. Browser Histories stay intact. Content isn't hidden behind AJAX, so Google can see it (and so can you). MetaForum employs AJAX and Web2.0 ideals to make things better, not just to do it for the sake of doing it. AJAX design finally follows function, not the other way around.

User Based Moderation
Meta has an easy to use moderation system built on the power of the normal distribution. Everyone has the power to moderate, with more active and better contributing users garnering higher ratings. Plus, nothing ever gets deleted, it just gets pushed below your viewing threshold. Want to see all the spam, trolls, and flamebaits? It's simply a flick of the mouse away to drop your threshold to zero. Want to see the top 4 posts in a thread? Flick the threshold up. Again, it's all in realtime, no refreshing needed.

Forums and Subforums, Meet Channels.
No one wants to post a thread deep in some highly-topical subforum with only 7 active viewers. Alternatively, people don't want to have to sift through 400 threads of crap just to find the topics they are interested in. Enter the Channels system. Similar to subforums in that each Channel has a specific topic, dissimilar to subforums in that you can view multiple channels at any one time, or filter out any channels you don't care about. Finally you have complete control over what you see and what you don't see.

The Most Advanced Quoting System Ever Designed.
Ever wanted to quote a small paragraph in the middle of someone's 2 page post? Kind of annoying to go in there and delete all the irrelevant text. Or, ever wanted to quote multiple people at the same time? And going a step further, ever wanted to quote small parts of multiple people's posts? With Blursoft's QuickQuote technology, its mind numbingly easy. There are no new page loads just to wrap quote tags around text, you can quote multiple people at once, and you can quote individual paragraphs at a time from posts. Plus it's all wrapped up in tidy auto-formatted quote tags for you, with spaces in between to write your response. Quoting and replying in threads has never been easier.

It's All About The Preview.
Everytime you have to make a new page load is 2 seconds of your life gone. MetaForum will add years to your lifespan by allowing you to preview tons of things without actually entering the thread. Hover over a thread title and see a huge chunk of the beginning of the post, complete with smilies, images, URLS, and formatting. Click on the StickyPreview and it will stay put so you can click on URL's without even having to enter the thread. Even better, instead of just telling you what the last post was in each thread, you can preview that as well. Combined with the live thread bumpings, its trivial to keep up with several threads at a time, as they get bumped, reading the last post in each thread without ever having to actually go into it.

Private Messages Suck. How About Private Threads?
Whoever decided that private messaging systems on forums should resemble a hacked-together 10 year old barely functional email system just didn't get it. Forums are about having conversations, why in the world wouldn't private messages work the same way the threads do? metaforum comes equipped with Private Threads instead. They work just like normal threads except only you and the recipient can view and post in them. And the best part? Multiple recipients, as many as you want. It's like 3-way for PM's.

Tons Of Other Features
Archiving backup systems. Completely customizable CSS-based templates built on top of a robust MVC framework. Encrypted user authentication. Jump backwards through subsequent quoted posts. Indicators to show you unread posts in each thread and when people replied to you. Easy smily pack support (just drag and drop). Automatically link to google results for keywords. Fast SQL back end, and more!

What's New in This Release:
This release adds the option (admin chosen) to require email verification for new account setups.
Also, the ability for admins to "ban" a user has been added, which disables the user's account from having access, and removes their posts and threads.
This release also fixes the behavior of deleting posts with respect to overall thread information (number of posts, last post info, etc.).
A bug in the installer that may have prevented the software from installing correctly has been fixed.