Review: IB Forums - Help Files
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New forum users often require some sort of help doing one thing or another. One way to help them is to provide help files on your board. IBF makes it very easy for an admin to add help files, and it also comes pre-configured with it's own. IBF’s own help files are a bit lacking however, but the administrator can easily edit them all.
Search The IBF search system is one of the best BB search systems around. It is quite complex but at the same time remains user friendly. The search system will always come up with good results, almost always finding a specific topic or post. You can search by keyword or member name, and also switch between simple and advanced search modes.
In addition to these features, you can also select which forums or categories to search (makes search faster) and how to organize and display the data. Here is a screenshot of the search system:
The search results are returned in a nice, simple manner so that you can find what you are looking for quickly.
Private Messenger The PM system in IBF is very good. It has a clean, easy to use interface and some features not seen in many other BB systems, including the ability to send a PM to someone in your address book, as well as a carbon copy feature.
The compose PM screen looks almost identical to the post screen, and it has the same formatting features, including the same emoticons. You can also create and change folders, as well as add or delete messages from them. This is very useful if you receive a large amount of PM's and need a way of organizing them all.
Another handy feature of the PM system is that in every folder there is always a bar showing you how much message space you have left. A unique feature of IBF is the ability to archive your messages. You can choose how many messages you want to archive, from which folder, from which time period, whether or not they should be deleted, etc. You can also choose between an MS Excel data file or a HTML page. After you select your desired options you will receive an e-mail with the archive as an attachment. This is very useful if you are reaching your message limit and you still want to save your messages.
Here's a screenshot of the PM system:
Calendar As of version 1.1, a calendar is also included with IBF. Unfortunately, this calendar cannot be accurately reviewed because version 1.1 is yet to be released at the time of writing and a review of the calendar now may prove to be inaccurate and unfair. Here is a screenshot of the calendar in the meantime though:
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