The "Best of Joomla! team," as stated on the site, "is proud to announce the release of Fireboard Stable. It is a powerful and stylish forum component for a well deserved content management system, Joomla!. Read on to find out about the cool new features introduced."

Not all of this makes complete sense to me, but I'm not your only administrator.  So my hope is that it may make sense to one of the others, and perhaps they can explain it in better laymen's terms than I can.  However, directly from the site:

Some of the main features of Fireboard can be listed as below:

* A much more designer friendly forum system. It is close to SMF templating system having a simpler structure. With very few steps you can modify the total look of the forum. Thanks goes to the great designers in our team.
* Unlimited subcategory system with better administration backend.
* Faster system and better coding experience for 3rd parties.
* The same
* Profilebox at the top of the forum
* Support for popular PM systems, such as ClexusPM and Uddeim
* Basic plugin system (practical rather than perfect)
* Language-defined icon system.
* Sharing image system of other templates. So, choice between templates and image series is possible
* You can add Joomla modules inside the forum template itself. Wanted to have banner inside your forum?
* Favorite threads selection and management
* Forum spotlights and highlights
* Forum announcements and its panel
* Latest messages (Tabbed)
* Statistics at bottom
* Who's online, on what page?
* Category specific image system
* Enhanced pathway
* Joomlaboard import, SMF in plan to be released pretty soon
* RSS, PDF output
* Advanced search (under development)
* Community builder and Clexus PM profile options
* Avatar management : CB and Clexus PM options

This is a collaborative work of several developers and designers that have kindly participated and made this release come true. Here we thank all of them and wish that you enjoy this release!

Mike says we're currently using the beta version.  He also says, "Upgrading should be easy enough, it's just that the template changes will most likely be lost so I'd have to redo them."  From my understanding, that just means that the pretty colors that match up with our current layout will have to be redone.  "Not to mention the center feature."  So it'll be a lot of work either way.

Mike's taking the rest of the weekend off, and I don't blame him.  If I could send cookies through the Internet, I'd certainly ship him off a great big batch of chocolate chip.  That is, if he likes chocolate chip.  I really don't speak techno-babble all that well, but maybe we have some tech heads amongst us who can make better heads and tails of all this new information.

My biggest question is whether or not we will lose all our current content.  I truly hope not.  I'd really like to hear member thoughts and opinions on this option before I make any decision and ask him to upgrade.  Aside from the content issue, what's on your mind concerning an upgrade?  Do tell! 

Last update: 08-09-2007 20:00

Users' Comments (4)

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Posted by elf_fu, on 08-09-2007 21:53, 1. Be careful Be careful of changing too many times, too frequently in the beginning. We can lose numbers due to fluctuating style, design, and loss of information on our side.     THAT said I: a) think it's neat, but do we really need all of those features? Can we choose which ones to use or not? b) I am all for a more stable version. c) If we loose information we loose it. I copied my stuff here before and I'll do so again. :D   » Report this comment to administrator » Reply to this comment... Posted by HGLowe, on 08-09-2007 22:41, 2. Forum commentary I believe that you can back up the database (I'm learning phpbb and you can with that) so I'd imagine that database backup would be available with this board as well.    I do think, however, that I would kill to help you folks design a less pink scheme (at least insofar as graphic-design, which I can do well). :s:: But that's only personal preference and absolutely not any ill will towards ME or the boards here.    I think that it couldn't hurt at all, though, to get to a stable version and to keep upgrading. As far as I can tell, this is a pretty new forum system and still has room to grow.   » Report this comment to administrator » Reply to this comment... » See all 3 replie(s) Posted by admin, on 08-09-2007 23:16, 3. Update No data would be lost. I'll simply make a full backup of the site files and database just in case something goes wrong. I can do a restore in less than five minutes that way. In all likelihood, things won't go wrong. I have the center code already, since I wrote it. So all I would need to do is put it back in the right files. I'd download local backups of the templates and the entire forum files as well. That would allow me to easily find the color codes used (mostly #660000, #FFFFFF, and #000000) and pop them back into the template. There may be a way to simply use the same CSS file, since the updated version will definitely use the CSS file. All in all, it wouldn't be terribly difficult. Should take 30-60 minutes.   » Report this comment to administrator » Reply to this comment... » See all 8 replie(s) Posted by admin, on 13-09-2007 19:42, 4. Done The forum upgrade is complete.   » Report this comment to administrator » Reply to this comment...