Pending Upgrade Coming

[anthony]

I have just downloaded and installed within a development environment the latest VB version. It seems they got this one much better than the last, and at a quick glance of it within a test environment, it actually seems quite stable and usable this time. I have done a test upgrade over a backup of this site, and it came out really well for functionality. The Facebook connect now works correctly with required profile fields and other aspects that failed last time have been fixed.

Due to VB making many changes with the styles themselves, the upgrade does break a lot of little aspects within the existing styles. So... as a result, when I upgrade I will open the site up live so users can continue using it, and will perform the style changes live. This means that you will see little faults, niggles and issues as I correct the main style for likely up to 48hrs after the upgrade itself.

I will then correct the fixed version, the moderator version will go as I have a solution that will be incorporated into the default to highlight links quickly for everyone...

I had just about finished the new style to be released on the forum birthday, though it containing a lot of custom coding has given me more work to fix due to style changes in the version upgrade.

I am waiting a couple of days to see what issues come out at vbulletin from others, and if nothing major that I missed, then I will likely upgrade the forum on the weekend, as that is usually the forums quietest time downtime.

 

[upstream]

The Facebook connect now works correctly with required profile fields and other aspects that failed last time have been fixed.

Does Facebook connect jeopardize the anonymity of members in any way?

Does it automatically connect if you're logged into facebook in another browser window?

 

[anthony]

It doesn't jeopardise your anonymity directly, though who finds you via Facebook is another story completely based on what your FB's privacy settings are based upon.

If your FB privacy is public, then if you push a thread title, like, etc, from here to FB, then obviously that title / link back to the thread is now spiderable by search engines. If your FB profile is private, then search engines cannot access it, though if you push data from here to your profile, then obviously anyone who has access to your profile can see your data here that is public.

The FB features show-up in the private forums also, though they don't compromise another members privacy, because whilst you can write a message, tick the box to push that data onto your FB profile, that is your data, which you can do as you wish. If you included a quote within your reply, it strips the quoted data out before pushing it to FB. The link back to that thread will simply result in a dead end for anyone trying to follow it who doesn't already have the permission set to access that content here.

If you are logged in within a browser to FB, then it will use those details to connect ONLY after you have instigated the action. Nothing is automatic and everything requires your action to connect, push or like data. If you change browsers, then your connection with FB to your account will be lost in that browser and must be reconnected. If you only ever used it from home, and didn't connect from another system or browser, then your home browser will retain your last used settings. The moment you connect the forum to your FB account elsewhere, you will lose your last known connection and have to reconnect.

Does that answer your question upstream? I expected these extremely valid questions, as social networking and privacy has had its own global issues.

 

[upstream]

I believe so. I would prefer that this forum and my facebook profile have no interaction at all, and as long as it can't happen without my explicit consent then there's no issue here.

 

[anthony]

Yep, no worries there. Every user completely controls whether or not they allow their profile to interact with any social networking aspects. Even the twitter integration on the left side, you must obviously choose to login and post into that feed, thus you must perform an act knowingly. Once you do that, obviously I have no control over social network data.

It is the same with user privacy settings here already, in that each user completely controls who can see their profile, album, blogs, etc... the only information not controlled by members here is forum and article data... and even that is to a point, in that you perform an act to post it in the first place.