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We Believe in you Stephen. Main Article: http://www.bungie.net/News/content.aspx?ty...s&cid=16447

Cold blooded. Main Article: http://www.bungie.net/News/content.aspx?ty...;link=frostbite

And we said it was just a transport vehicle... Main Article: http://www.bungie.net/News/content.aspx?ty...ajorLeagueGoose

Meet the man behind the myths. Main Article: http://www.bungie.net/News/content.aspx?ty...s&cid=16401

The shortest path. Main Article: http://www.bungie.net/News/content.aspx?ty...s&cid=16382

Step right up, folks! Main Article: http://www.bungie.net/News/content.aspx?ty...s&cid=16330

The IP.Board 3.0 preview has been going quite well and we have received some good feedback and ideas for version 3.0 which we have already implemented. This blog entry will outline some of the changes that have been implemented in 3.0 since the preview was made available. Other than the changes listed here there have been lots of minor skin interface improvements and many bug fixes too numerous to go into. Search Index For a long time we have been looking at ways to solve a problem with global searching. Searching is very resource intensive and we are under pressure to deliver a comprehensive search that is both quick and light on the server. One solution we implemented on the preview board was a search index. This index contained the text from various sources such as posts, blogs and calendar events. The search index was successful in making global searching quick and efficient but it was limited by MySQL itself. While it worked well on smaller boards, there was an issue with scaling in that MySQL does not deal very well with large tables. While the posts table would often lock in normal searching, the search index table would lock in many more situations thereby eliminating any benefits it brought to IPB. Also, when upgrading to IPB 3 the search index needed to be built which could potentially take many hours. This is obviously undesirable. We also found that it limited what you could search for and how the results were displayed. For these reasons we have decided to remove the search index option in IPB 3.0. We will instead work on enhancing the normal search system (including some of the good ideas from the preview site) and large search solutions such as Sphinx. Removing the search index will not impact the overall ability to search and find content you are looking for and we will work on the normal search routines to make displaying the search results easier to work with. Gravatar Support Gravatar is as service that hosts your avatar so you can have the same avatar on the various communities you visit. It also allows you to centrally update your avatar and have it show up all over the web. You just sign up on their site and then enter your email address you registered with Gravatar in IPB 3.0's settings area. Warn Panel Updates The warn panel has been updated to allow for moderators to be able to better control troublesome members and posts without administrator intervention. Enhancements include: Option to "ban" a member permanently from the warn panel Increase or decrease warn value by a custom value (rather than just +1 or -1) for super moderators only Ability to unapprove (hide) all member's posts and/or topics made with the last X days/hours Member's current reputation and other general information now displayed on warn panel Mutual Friends Adding and removing friends is now a mutual option in that if you add someone as a friend you will also appear on their profile as a friend. The same goes for removing a friend: if you remove a friend you are also removed from their friend list. Reputation Logs Administrators can now edit a member's reputation points. They can also view the record of ratings that member has left for others and the ratings others have left for that member. Enhanced Watched Topics/Forums The listing of watched topics and forums in your user settings now displays the number of new topics or posts since your last visit. You can click this link to be taken to the forum listing showing only those new topics since your last visit. Filter Forum by New Topics You can now filter a forum using the filter options bar at the bottom of the page to show only new topics posted since your last visit. Public Polls The option to allow public polls is now in the admin area. Public polls are like normal polls but they show the name of the members who voted and what they voted for in the poll. Administrators can also optionally allow members to delete their vote and re-vote in polls. This new feature only functions with newly-created polls. Administrators can switch a poll from private to public only if the poll has had no votes. IP.Board 3.0.0 Release The preview testing and feedback has been going so well that we have decided to reevaluate our release schedule. We will still have a downloadable beta version of IP.Board 3.0.0 out by the end of this year but a final version will not be out by the end of this year. Because the preview site has become so useful, we are treating it as a "pseudo-beta" and using it to test various features and learn about how IPB 3.0 behaves in a production environment. Although this will delay our final release until early next year, it brings the benefit of a much shorter beta-release cycle since IPB is being so heavily tested now. This means that we will have fewer beta releases before moving on to the final release. It also means that the final release of IPB will be as good as it can be which is good for everyone. We believe that this short delay until the final release will be beneficial for all as the final version of IPB 3.0 will be as stable as it can be on day one. Thanks to everyone for your help and ideas. We will keep you updated on our progress in the coming weeks. View the full article

As of today, the game formerly known as Halo 3 : Recon will henceforth be known as Halo 3 : ODST. Main Article: http://www.bungie.net/News/content.aspx?ty...s&cid=16289

With a sweet new Halo 3 theme. Main Article: http://www.bungie.net/News/content.aspx?ty...s&cid=16270

Scarab goes where? Main Article: http://www.bungie.net/News/content.aspx?ty...s&cid=16232

Salute the final run of the Summer League map variant! Main Article: http://www.bungie.net/News/content.aspx?ty...s&cid=16190

7 votes is more than enough. Main Article: http://www.bungie.net/News/content.aspx?ty...s&cid=16161

Is it really a virtue if it ends with your own demise? Main Article: http://www.bungie.net/News/content.aspx?ty...s&cid=16143

This Pelican's payload is pretty unusual. Main Article: http://www.bungie.net/News/content.aspx?ty...=dancingpelican

Pushing the limits... Main Article: http://www.bungie.net/News/content.aspx?ty...s&cid=16023

You don't need a degree in Archeology to uncover the gems other players have left behind. Main Article: http://www.bungie.net/News/content.aspx?ty...s&cid=15987

The fifth installment in the Halo 3 Mythbusters series. Main Article: http://www.bungie.net/News/content.aspx?ty...s&cid=15860

I want to say that this game is "smashing," but there's only room enough for one person to make bad jokes on the front page of this website. Main Article: http://www.bungie.net/News/content.aspx?ty...s&cid=15834

Clearing up some questions with some answers about Halo 3: Recon. Main Article: http://www.bungie.net/News/content.aspx?ty...s&cid=15806

The recently retired playlist returns this weekend for double your EXP Main Article: http://www.bungie.net/News/content.aspx?ty...s&cid=15800

A few weeks ago, you saw Part I, now see the rest of the story. Main Article: http://www.bungie.net/News/content.aspx?ty...ink=ournextgame

We receive requests quite frequently to "add SEO to IPB". This is a very difficult request to quantify and to fulfill. What is SEO? What is wrong with IPB's positioning to search engines presently? What can be done better? We've seen some suggestions over time that make sense, and some we feel would be better left to modifications. While we are not jumping full force into the "SEO" arena with IPB 3, we have made changes throughout the software that we believe will help you position yourself better for search engine indexing. This blog post will touch on a few of these changes. Semantically correct HTML The word "semantic" means the study of meaning in communication. Basically, when used in the context of an HTML document, to state that the source code is semantic means that the HTML tags used are appropriate for their representations. It wasn't too long ago that tables were used to position elements in your browser window, and 1x1px gif images were used to pad areas so things looked nice. Those days are (almost) long gone, and today's modern web pages are focusing on producing HTML source code that makes sense, while separating styling to CSS documents and javascript to external javascript files. When IPB 3 ships it will validate as xHTML valid, and the source code will be semantically correct. Deprecated HTML tags and excessive and unnecessary tags (such as 3-layer nested divs) are not used, and the javascript is not obtrusive (*see comments). Screen readers and search engine spiders should find it much easier to read a topic generated by IPB 3 than IPB 2. Furthermore, all functions should work (although in some cases to a lesser degree) when javascript is not available. Heading tags are used properly and feature keywords related to the content on the page. They also cascade in a defined format so that they represent the content in a meaningful way. *Note: HTML will be semantic and javascript unobtrusive to the extent possible. There are thousands of configurations, literally, and with so many browsers, options and features it is hard to make a blanket guarantee of this sort. Rikki has explained more about our goals for the skin in another blog entry if you are interested in the new skin. Microformat support Microformats are common ways to represent similar data. For instance, it is not uncommon for a random website to have some sort of news or articles data and some sort of user profile page for each user. Microformats were developed so that these common things could be represented in a common way to help further the web. By utilizing microformats, other webpages and scripts can parse your page and extract valuable data that they can then share. Even Internet Explorer 8 will be making use of Microformats for some of it's cooler new features, while other browsers already do or are also planning to. IP.Board 3 makes use of several microformats to help your document make sense to tools that can read and understand these formats. Specifically, we are making use of the hCard, hCalendar, rel-nofollow, rel-tag, and rel-home microformats. We also make use of some other common relationship attributes where appropriate (such as "rel='help'" for the link to the help documentation), even though they are not necessary full-fledged microformats at this time. Furthermore, we will continue exploring and watching microformats, and applying them as they develop and relate to IPB. rel='nofollow' Support This is another common request we receive: making all posted links in topics utilize the "rel='nofollow'" attribute appropriately. Many users, on the other hand, have asked that we do not implement this. The idea is that search engines should understand "rel='nofollow'" to mean that the webmaster is not endorsing the link, so when the search engine follows it, the search engine shouldn't penalize the website the link is hosted on should they determine it was a bad link, or irrelevant to the linking site. We have added a setting to allow users to enable this without having to make source code modifications. The rel='nofollow' attribute will be automatically appended to all urls posted and parsed through the normal bbcode routines when the setting is enabled. Removal of "(Powered by Invision Power Board)" from board index For years, since the beginning of IPB, the page title of the board index page has had "(Powered by Invision Power Board)" added to it if you did not purchase copyright removal. We did not disallow users from removing this text, however, and many users did. We've gone ahead and bit the bullet, and removed this text from the base release. Removal of "lo-fi" version The lofi version in IP.Board was meant to provide a toned-down basic representation of the current topic or forum. It was useful for both search engines and mobile browsers. It was so useful, in fact, that many times when you reach an IPB in a search engine listing you will actually end up at the lo-fi page instead of the full-version page. In IP.Board 3 we have removed the lofi version entirely in favor of the new output engine capabilities. A mobile skin can be set directly through the admin control panel, negating the necessity for an entirely different script to serve the content. This is the great thing about the MVC pattern for all you developers - leave the model and controller alone, and just change the view itself. The relationship to search engine optimization comes into play when you consider that the lo-fi version and the full version are essentially duplicating the content from one another, and a commonly held belief exists that search engines penalize you for duplicate content. While we can't speak for what any given search engine actually does, we did feel this feature was deprecated and no longer needed given advances in the skin system in IPB, and have removed it entirely. Changing of modes moved to user control panel It's not uncommon for a search engine to index a link to a topic on a site running IP.Board, and for some unknown reason decide the topic is best represented when "&mode=outline" is added to the URL. While this doesn't stop you from visiting the page, it DOES change the layout of the page, and for newcomers some of the alternate layouts may not be as easy to follow when they first visit your site. Many users do utilize the different layout options (which are handled on a per user-account basis) so we did not feel it wise to remove these options. Instead, we have moved the ability to change the layout of topics to the user control panel. This should stop search engines from indexing topics with "mode" parameters in them, reducing confusion for visitors actually clicking the link to visit your site. Additional features Additionally, we've already gone over a few other changes that are related to better search engine positioning which we need not repeat here. Just as a brief recap, you may also be interested in reading these blog entries Friendly URLs will be in IPB3 New user agent management used for search engine spider configuration (in addition to other things) There are many more minor but important improvements buried deep within IP.Board 3 that should help you keep your site listed in search engines appropriately. While we won't jump on the SEO bandwagon and advocate certain styles of running your site or formatting your urls, we are doing our part to bring basic functionality our users have requested with regards to their site's optimization into reality with IPB 3. View the full article

Enjoy the teaser for one of our current projects. Main Article: http://www.bungie.net/News/content.aspx?ty...s&cid=15574

The title update for Halo 3 is now available on Xbox LIVE. New achievements and more await. Details inside. Main Article: http://www.bungie.net/News/content.aspx?ty...s&cid=15545

SERVICES WILL RESUME Main Article: http://www.bungie.net/News/content.aspx?ty...s&cid=15526