The powers that be have decided that due to the number of questions being raised recently about v4, (sometimes answered by members who do not actually know anything about it) to stop the spread of misinformation we have decided to hold a Q&A session in this thread, we will try to answer as many questions as possible so feel free to ask.

To start off I will answer some questions that have been PM'ed to me a few times

When will v4 be released

Late January at the latest.

Will we be able to test out v4?

We will be running a beta test of AP before we release to the general public. Because we cant decide which individuals should get the opportunity we have decided that we will repay the donating members with an opportunity to test out v4 before everyone else so we can iron out any remaining bugs.

Will the time reflect my time zone in v4?

We thought about this problem and decided to write a relative time function, i.e. if a wallpaper was posted an hour ago the time tag will say posted 1 hour ago. This should be less confusing for people outside the GMT time zone.

Couple spring instantly to mind:

Are groups going to be policed (Ie approved by admins and stuff)?

Is userpage modding going to become nice and easy, cos I can't make head nor tale of this massive css thing :/ ?

Any additional functionality on v4 forums for user?

Are groups going to be policed (Ie approved by admins and stuff)?

Yes groups will need to be approved if you are of member status.

Is userpage modding going to become nice and easy, cos I can't make head nor tale of this massive css thing :/ ?

I cant comment on that yet.

Any additional functionality on v4 forums for user?

Quick search, notifications, better editing, bbcode buttons, groups also have their own forum instead of a guestbook.

Is userpage modding going to become nice and easy, cos I can't make head nor tale of this massive css thing :/ ?

All I can say now that there will be plans to make modding easy, but as to how we are still working on it.

Basically we are going to divide customization to few stages, first of all there will be still that huge CSS thing (we can't avoid this since this is a pure CSS layout site). But the Cascading word in the CSS (Cascading Style Sheet) means that the styles can be overlay on top of each other overwriting the previous CSS design.

So using this we are going to create another basic CSS that simplified the huge CSS to important things like colors, background-images, fonts and other simpler stuff. We may even create a form-like control panel to help you change these simple things also if time permits.

For those advance CSS user, the raw huge CSS is still available for you to edit it directly to completely change the look of AP including all the icons used in AP (all icons images are declare directly in the CSS rather than having a image tag hard coded into the HTML).

We are also stripping away the one-click change theme features on v3 and replaced it with a more robust static profile page. This in exchange will give us more room to put more official themes and add others features like having more than one personal theme, group theme, and also sharing other users themes.

Erm, if anyone wanted a translation of that.

Customizing things like color, text, banner, and background images will become a lot easier (If things go smoothly).

The CSS has been improved to allow for further cusomization (like icons).

People will be able to create and share their own styles!

To: Bantam ... when you say that grups will have to be policed what do you mean? I would like to start a group (hopefully) by January. Does this mean that I will have to get it pre-approved by you or any other admin?

I can answer that billie :)

yes :)

well, the CSS is a bit confusing since i cannot understand the classnames as to where it applies to. but eventually i'll get used to this :) looking forward to the new AP4.

just one question: can you set the file size of avatars higher? i mean at most 500kb :) i have a cool avatar i made, unfortunately, it's too big for the site to accept it :( but that's ok.

When you say that grups will have to be policed what do you mean?

This is just to stop pointless groups like http://groups.animepaper.net/xxxLeexxx/

About the people who will be able to test v4 (donating members), will tehy be able to browse both AP during the test trial

You will be able to interchange betweeen v3 and v4, we developers are already doing this.

To Bantam (again sorry) : One last question--- again, I want to start a group soon. I was wondering, do I PM the approval notice or do you and the other admins check on your own?

Current groups dont require approval, they will be removed though when v4 starts, we're giving groups a clean slate.

To Bantam: Thx. but I was wondering about when I do start my group. Will I need to send you a Pm stating what kind of group I would like to start? How do I get approved? (I don't have a group at the moment, no.)

Billie-mate, he's said it a few times, but just to make sure you are on the same page. When v4 comes out, make a group, and the admins automatically check periodically any groups that need aproving. There shouldn't be any PMing involved.

Also, the procedure for starting groups will be covered in detail in the v4 guide, so you may want to give that a read when we switch over.

Basically group approval will work like scan or wallpaper approval. You will have a form to fill out saying what you want to call your group and what it's about and then a mod/admin will take a look at that and either say yes - in which case you will be able to set the group up in terms of access by other users and look and all the rest of the shinney new stuff.

Or they say no, and you will loose the paper and get an explanation as to why (duplicate group, inappropriate/pointless group).

The reason for this change is that at the moment groups are too cheap and un-monitored, so users can create groups about any old crap, or duplicate existing groups.

just one question: can you set the file size of avatars higher? i mean at most 500kb :) i have a cool avatar i made, unfortunately, it's too big for the site to accept it :( but that's ok.

That's a pretty easy one - no, avatar size limits will not increase.

500kb would be an enormous drain on resources for something so inconsequential as an avatar :/. Plus not everyone has broadband.

Is the CSS going to be changed and thus incompatible with the current one? I'm working on it so if it's changed... \o/
'N' about the avatar thingie: it would be nice if we have some resize function here like when I upload a 500MB avatar (my country's detailed map, for instant) the function will ask me if I wanna upload somehting else smaller, or it's resize/reduce quality/whatever...

The new CSS will be incompatible, but we have some new stylesheet sharing functions to compensate.