Time for a change I feel...

IPB3`s in beta stages now and will be installed here when it`s stable, this is sort of a given but still. For a sneak peak you can check it out on invision`s preview site. I`m excited about it so far, it`s a vast improvement in many areas.

In the mean time the amount of forums will be reduced, at the moment there are a lot of empty forums and the index is overly long winded. All the "download support topic forums" will be consolidated into one category, this will dramaticly reduce the amount of forums. There will then be a few other categorys containing forums for hotfix requests, general support, announcements ect... suggestions for new forums are welcome.

Inactive members, defined as having 0 posts and not logged in for 6 months, will be pruned. This will free up a lot of resources and help keep the database runing fast and smooth. I`ll send out an email before this happens to give you the chance to save your account from deletion if you so wish.

Finaly, a homepage will be created. I`m thinking it`ll either be a simple static page or a blog consisting of hotfix/windows related news. This will be left untill the IPB3 upgrade as it`ll need to be re-coded then anyway.

Aside from some other smaller less interesting things that`s about the size of the changes, of course your feedback is instrumental in making the hotfix share better so don`t be shy.

A few guidelines to help you get the most out of the hotfix share.

Hotfix Request Guidelines

1. You can use these tips to try and request your hotfix from microsoft
2. If your not able to request a hotfix from microsoft you can post your request in one of the sticked request topics in the appropriate forum and someone may be able to get it for you
3. If you can`t find an appropriate forum, post your request in the miscellaneous hotfix requests topic

Upload Guidelines

1. Registered members can submit files to the archive by clicking the Add File button in the download manager. Submitted files go into a mod queue and are checked before being approved and made publicly available for download
2. The hotfix share only hosts hotfix`s which aren`t publicly available from the microsoft download centre
3. When submitting a file the filename should be used for the title and bellow is a template to be used for file submissions, relpace <*> with the appropriate info. Feel free to add any extra relevant info.
   
   CODE
   [url="http://support.microsoft.com/kb/<Article number>"]KB<Article number>[/url] - <Description from KB article>

Download Guidelines

1. Despite there being over 10GB`s (and growing all the time) of hotfix`s available here, downloads are free and you can download as much as you like. So long as your not having a detrimental effect on the servers performance
2. Download managers and so called download accelerators are not supported and you are likely to have difficulty downloading if they are used. It`s best to download normally through your browser.

Forum Guidelines

1. This is an english speaking forum and so for you to get the most help it`s recomended that you post in english whenever possible
2. Post in the appropriate forum and stay on topic
3. Please do not link directly to the hotfix`s from other websites, links may become dead or out dated so it`s best to link to the homepage: http://thehotfixshare.net/
4. Spam will not be tollerated and will be deleted