I have tonight upgraded the forum plugin on this site to an alpha build of 2.1 - mainly to start to test out the new stuff but also to ensure that the bug fixes that have surfaced are locked down. But it’s the new features that I am quite excited about two in particular.

The first is a new sidebar template tag that lists the most recent posts. It’s different to the current one because the text that gets displayed is configurable by the user. But also it gives the option to use AJAX (well it’s AHAH really) to refresh itself so anything new coming in can be quickly noticed.

The other main new feature is the cross linking of blog posts to a forum topic. This works both ways allowing a blog post to create a new topic in the forums or the other way around. This is something I’ve been wanting to make a start on since the beginning of the project and at last it is starting to materialise.

And a few other ‘goodies’? I have optionally added the ‘math spam’ to user registrations. Since I did this on my site here, rogue/spam registrations have dropped from about 120 a week to about 2 so I am delighted by this. There is also a new option to not use the math spam when an admin or moderator is posting which sort of made sense. MSN Messenger IS is a new option in the user profile as well as the ability to view all topics to which any member has posted.

The rest are bug fixes - many of the them embarrassingly stupid and some very important so the small feature set is now fixed for 2.1 so that the bugs can be tested out so as to get this into the field as soon as possible. Thanks to all the people using this for their suggestions, requests and for catching the problems and letting me know - usually in a most understanding way.