New moderators and updates; the Ichiraku Blog beta

Ichiraku congratulates Poldo and kittikai for being our new moderators for the Boys’ and Girls’ Club respectively! They have secured an overwhelming landslide victory against their competitors with the votes of their constituents in their clubs.

Poldo got 8 votes out of 13 with 2 other candidates, while kittikai got 9 out of 11 votes with 1 other candidate.

They have already begun their improvement plans within their own community, so if you aren’t member of either yet, you can now request membership as long as you have the required minimum of 100 posts.

In other news, we have revised the Animation and Manga & Comics boards. General discussion are now in the parent board, while series discussions are separated to Ongoing and Concluded child boards. This is to further organize these very popular boards and make searching and posting topics a chore, unlike before. Their descriptions have also been updated, and the Boot Camp board for Clan Founders are now open.

We have also launched the beta of the Ichiraku Blog by zCommunity a couple of days ago. It’s a modification that adds a blogging community functionality for the members right in the forum itself. However, since it’s still in beta stage, we are keeping in touch with its developers regarding possible bugs, one of which are the bugs for the Moderator group that prevents them from using the Blog. They can make one, even an article, but they cannot access it afterward. It seems the error is in the Subs.php file of zCommunity, which also occasionally conflicts with the Whos.php (which serves the Who’s Online list in the board index) file of SMF. According to zCommunity, this might be an incompatibility issue with SMF 2.0 RC1-1 (the first RC ran fine), so they are going to look into it.

The Ichiraku Blog can be accessed by anyone, but only Premium Members and the staff are able to make and write blogs for themselves. If you are interested, you might want to look into our Premium Membership offer.

Till the next update!

July 03 new updates!

Sup dawg(s),

We have made some new updates on the functionality of Ichiraku this July 3. Since they’re quite too numerous to explain one by one, let us give you a summary of what they are:

1.) Search Dropdown Enhancement – When viewing a board or a topic, the search field in the upper right (on the forum header) will have a dropdown list. If you are viewing a board, the options on the dropdown list will enable you to search either the board you’re viewing or the entire forum. On the other hand, if you’re viewing a single topic, the dropdown list will enable you to search the topic, the board where the topic is located, or the entire forum.

2.) Good Post/Bad Post is now active – The new reputation system is now active for all members! Take note that pending a rule for the Good Post/Bad Post, you can only use this ability a maximum of five times per hour, regardless of up or down votes.

3.) Added Topic Note and Ignore Board ability to Premium Members – Topic Notes are a sort of update on the topic, which is especially useful if the nature of the thread is volatile and changing (example of this are polls). This way, the thread starter can announce what is happening on the thread to outsiders or visitors of the topic. New Topic Notes are indicated by a yellow triangle beside the topic when viewing the contents of a board. Ignoring Boards meanwhile disables the forum updating you of ignored boards’ new posts/new topics when looking at Unread Posts or Recent Posts. You can choose which board to ignore by going to your Profile > Modify Profile > Ignore Boards Options. The Introductions Board, the Birthdays board and the News & Announcements board cannot be ignored.

4.) Topic Starter Icon – A simple way to determine the person who made the topic. A pencil icon will appear beside the user’s name during topic view.

5.) Premium Membership Promo – revamped the Premium Membership payment scheme and announced the Premium Promo, adding new privileges to the Premium member group. Check the News & Announcements section for details. The Red Carpet exclusive board for Premium members is also now online.

6.) Redirecting Board for Ichiraku DEV – Ichiraku DEV now features its own link in the style of a redirecting board above the board index.

7.) Activity Bar aka Posting Power – An activity gauge is now also featured to keep track of active members. It counts all posts made within the last 30 days and matches it against the 500-post goal (100%).

8.) Board Notes – There are admin-enabled announcements for boards that may contain notices or warnings on the contents of that board, visible to all. As of this writing, only the Premium-exclusive board The Red Carpet contains such a board note.

9.) Updated permissions for existing member groups – Member groups now have updated permissions and privileges that were otherwise overlooked in the old version of the forum.

10.) SimplePortal Article announcements visible in boards – Articles that will contain announcements from the Ichiraku staff as an improvised version of  Global Forum Announcement. The Article/s will be clickable to the original announcement made at the News & Announcements board.

Future updates will cover the referral mod and a way for us to keep track of the voting system in the Good Post/Bad Post modification. We’ll also hopefully include new trial features that existing Premium members will get to test soon.

Thank you from your continued belief in us!