(updated 20th May & 16th June 2010)

Changes are being made to the BDC Forum and this is to tell you something about what is being done. Click on the link above to go to the Forum.

New Club software is now being used, at no expense to the Club, which enables us to do some things differently. The main points are as follows:-

1. A listing of currently registered members with active accounts is now available by clicking on the memberlist button in the page header. Newly registered members are shown in this list only after their account has been activated by an administrator. The memberlist is not visble unless you are logged in.

2. The picture posting software is different in some respects. Notes on how to use these routines exist in Bentleyforum and will be included here as soon as I can manage it - this could not be done until the new software is running, as it now is. You can include your pictures anywhere you like in your posts instead of having to show them only after the end of your text. Pictures are automatically resized to suit the topic layout but there is no facility for clicking on them to show a larger image. There is no limit to the number of pictures which can be included in a post and no limit to the number of pictures a given member can upload.

3. There is a news page (this one) with a link at the top which will take you to the forum. If you are a registered member you can log in and see and post to the forums in the members only area as well as those which non members can see. Non members can post via non-member-postings as before.

4. In the past some pictures hosted on the BDC server have not been shown to people who have not logged in. With the present software this limitation does not apply.

5. A number of posts which have become outdated for various reasons will be moved to Trash bins and may be deleted altogther in due course. These Trash bins are accessible to adminstrators and moderators only. While a post is in the trash bin it can be restored to it's original position or moved elsewhere.

6. The private messaging system is enabled. You can put pictures into a private message. The messages and pictures will stay on the database until you delete them but the pictures will be deleted automatically, anyway, after 90 days.

7. The main index page works in a slightly different way. Click on any "section" and it will expand to show the forums in that group.

8. If you click on the logo at the left hand side of the forum header pages you will come back to this page.

9. There are some forums for use by for people with responsibilities connected with running the forum. These forums are not accessible except by the people concerned.

10. The style (appearance) of the forum is the plain vanilla phpBB2 style like we has earlier on. It has been reinstated as part of the software cleanup. The "Greened theme" may well come a bit later with a user option to view as original or greened.

11. The contents of the archive forums which we had earlier have mostly been moved back to the relevant current forums. Only a few have been relegated to trash. These current forums now contain many more topics than before and the number of topics shown on each page has been correspondingly increased.

12. The arrangements for registering new BDC members is unchanged so for as they are concerned. There are some slight changes in the "back office" procedures.

13. So far as I am concerned the biggest change is that I am now "Forum Manager". I have taken this on, temporarily, so as to unload some work from David Medcalf which leaves him, as Web Editor, with more time to look after further develpment of the Website.

.Laurie Fox  (lauriefox7a@aol.com) or (forum.manager@bdcl.org)