User levels explained (briefly).
2: Free member. Able to post 3 times per day, but has no access to features like full-text search, private messaging, and "Next 10". This UserLevel sees ads on all pages. All other UserLevels only see ads on specific pages.
10-11: 10 is grandfathered accounts and 11 is lifetime subscriptions. These are not always shown accurately right now but that'll be fixed soon. As far as the interface and available options go, these levels are identical. Unlimited posting privileges, and access to any feature here that was also available on the old version, such as "Next 10".
20 and higher: Premium_PLUS accounts. These are accounts that bought Quarterly, Semi-Annual, or Annual subscriptions (in short, any expiring/renewable account) after we acquired the site in May of 2003, meaning *we* got paid for the account rather than any previous owner. There is also a userlevel 30 that isn't programmatically implemented yet, but is available as an upgrade only for userlevels 10 and 11.
Any of these accounts (20 and higher) have access to ALL features of the site, including some that are currently available to 10's and 11's, but won't be for much longer. Right now this superset list of features is quite small, while we're in shakedown mode, but will continue to grow.
Examples of things that we currently have that soon will only be available to UserLevels 20 and higher are:
1. Changing Next 10 to Next nnn where "nnn" is any number up to 100, in increments of 10.
2. Ability to do full-text search of Private Messages.
3. Ability to step through a particular author's posts, regardless of the thread on which they're posted.
I'm sure there are others already in production, but those are the only ones that currently occur to me.
The basic rule of thumb is that if a feature existed on the old version of the site (as of when we acquired it) and is available here, UserLevels 10 and 11 will have access to it. If the feature is something the old site didn't have, UserLevel will have to be 20 or higher to use it. |
