mnartists.org INTRODUCES NEW FORUM SOFTWARE

The new and improved forum software is being installed on mnartists.org to provide our members and the Minnesota arts community with better service and more opportunities for discourse between artists, arts organizations and the public.

The original forum software had been showing its age quite dramatically with numerous problems, especially those that arose during our transition to a new server system in January. These problems have been eradicated by the acquisition of new forum software and the development of them by the Walker’s New Media Department and mnartists.org staff.

We have implemented a vBulletin forum package that provides the community with a variety of up-to-date forum functions and features. These include: much improved search function for the forums, the ability to see who else is online, the ability to send private messages and create your own user groups, and many other functions to numerous to count. Explore the functions and check out the features for yourself!

The functionality of this software gives us the ability to not only better serve the community now, but look towards the future needs of the community, anticipate them and implement new programs & features that will service the community.

We will be changing the structure of the forums to allow for more ease of use by those regular forum contributors and encourage participation on the forums by new users.

Members of the community will be able to create threads themselves, while threads with hundreds of post will not be prohibited, users will no longer be forced into that pattern for every topic of discussion.

A new user help area will be created to provide the most comprehensive source of technical help for everyone. This will not preclude the emailing of questions related to technical support but will provide examples of problems the users have come across and the varied solutions to those issues.

In addition to the new forum software new terms of use and forum etiquette have been established—this very common practice among community forums is being introduced on the mnartsits.org forums to facilitate honest and hassle free discussions of topics and create ongoing communications for all users. We know you will appreciate and respect some simple guidelines for forum use.

We look forward to utilizing this latest in forum technology to facilitate discussions by and for all members of the mnartists.org community about the arts, arts events, and other issues that face Minnesota’s arts culture.