I've been keeping a rather low profile on this forum of late due to work issues and the fact that I have been busy in the background on website upgrades. First, thanks to Ann Cantlow and John Nebel, MySQL and PHP have been upgraded on the server to version 5. Initially, this will allow the forum to be upgraded to V3.6.2, which I plan to install at 12:00 am CST on November 5, 2006. This upgrade is mainly a security upgrade, but also adds some minor functionality that I will elaborate on when the upgrade is complete. The forum will be down while the upgrade is underway. Assuming that there are no unanticipated problems, it should be down less than 1 hour.
After the upgrade, I will be implementing the "MySQL full text search" feature to replace the vbulletin search engine on the forum. The MySQL search engine has more versatile support for wildcards and Boolean operators in comparison to the vbulletin engine. The main reason that it wasn't implemented previously was that our database was set up to index words no smaller than 4 characters. This meant that any 3 letter acronyms (such as JBL) would not be searchable. Ann has changed the minimum word size to 3 characters so that this restriction should no longer apply.
I am also intending to replace our guestbook this weekend with a new purchased package available here:
http://www.esoftpro.com/product.php?pid=eguestpro
Due to spammers, I had to change our guestbook to a moderated format. However, even with this format, I was not able to keep up with the sheer volume of spam as evidenced here:
http://www.audioheritage.org/guestlog.htm
This new application uses a "captcha" verification system that I hope will foil the majority of spammers. It also adds considerable new functionality due to the MySQL backend used to store the guestbook data.
Beyond all of this, most of my time has been spent on the first major upgrade to our library in years. I have a backlog of submitted product literature that is finally is ready for posting. I have formatted all of the updates, organized them in my off-line archive and updated the database that I use to track all scanned literature. The final publishing will occur this weekend with the above updates.
My next task is to move the data that is in the reference section of this forum into the library as well. Before embarking upon this, I need some input from the users. Some have requested that these documents be posted as PDF's instead of the jpegs normally used library documents. To be clear, the use of PDF's would not change the fact that the underlying documents are jpegs. In other words, unlike most documents initially created as PDF's, the text will not be selectable or searchable since the embedded information remains an unintelligent jpeg image.
The advantage of PDF's would be that there would be one thumbnail image that would download an entire document. This is obviously advantageous for people that want to keep their own private copy of documents on our website. However, it carries a number of disadvantages. First, it would significantly raise bandwidth. It would no longer be possible to view a single page of interest. To see any part of a document, the full PDF file containing the entire document must be downloaded. Further, it will no longer be possible to link to a specific page from such a library document in a forum post, nor will it be possible to have a page from such a library document embedded as an image in a forum post. For these reasons, I am reluctant to go this route. However, I am open to discussion.
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Don, John, and Ann
Originally Posted by Don McRitchie
) the page refreshes by merely de-indicating unread forums - it no longer requires a complete refresh (layman terminology here...). 
