Since the forum was originally set up as a vehicle to promote our games it has taken a life all of it's own, which is great.
However, what with all the new sections being added it has led to our game section being demoted and so less likely to be visited.
I took the view that the general section would have the most interest/traffic, then sales. I have moved our games to the next section below - specialist sections are therefore demoted.
Now, I realise that the PBI game whilst still where it was becomes less prominent as a side effect. I am quite happy to add it to the CiA events panel (as we did for D-Day) as co-promotion is in our interests in this case. What do you three think?
I'd put the order of the forums as
1 WWII Airsoft
2 CiA Events
3 Other Events
and then the rest in some order below . This forum is about promoting games predominantly , seems like sales and teams are taking precedence over this .
Guy is happy about moving the PBI game into the CiA events section, so that's two votes!
Yeah, go on.
hahahahahahahaha - bets ask em first or it'll be put down ot my control freakery instead 
Of course, just soliciting approval before an approach is made.
Having spent the whole of the weekend plus a good deal of Friday on the project, the new generation of forum software is now installed and set up.
I have kept the look and feel of the new forum similar to the old old, so there shouldn't be howls of horror 'I liked it how it was'.
The most obvious points are the advertising at the top. The Google ads I introduced on the website six months ago as an experiment - it generates only pennies of income but income nonetheless. If you are not aware, income is received from the advertisers on a 'per-click' basis. The amount paid depends on the amount the advertiser bid for the ad but as ours is a niche site and not premier high street, bids won't be very high.
Please do not click on the ads thinking it will generate more income - Google watch IP addresses and click frequency and all that will happen is the ad feed will be severed and my Adsense account will be jeopardised - I have other clients too!
Alongside that is a banner scheme that rolls banner ads with a frequency I set - now you know why I asked for standardised sig banners! Thinking longer term retailer or airsoft sites could be asked for cash to advertise...
Beyond that, what are the other differences?
Forum threads/sections have changed in concept - there can be an unlimited number of sub-threads so forum structure can be more in-depth than flat as at the moment. Navigation through the structure is made using the breadcrumb trail.
Moderators have more tool as at their disposal - a suite of banning tools, much more flexible options for splitting and moving posts and there is multi-layered moderator status's.
PMs a more sophisticated, both in preparing them as well as being able to see the replies and counter replies, much as a forum thread. Also there can be attachments to the PMs.
The system should in theory be less susceptible to forum hacking. Admin also has a list of all IP address poster has used.
Forum users can alert mods of posts that they have concerns with - users become the eyes and ears should we not be online at the time. Mods have a 'Quick-mod' tool at the foot of the page for common operations without having to go into the individual post. There is a 'Moderator Control Panel' link at the top right of the page that centralises tasks.
Anyway, here is the link:
index.php
Have a look around - any posts or entries you make won't affect the current forum so you can have a play.
I have just now got to replace some icons and it will be good to go. I'll have to take the board off-line for a few hours to make the switchover so I'll do this over the Christmas break.
I have set the v3 software up three times now so I'm confident of a smooth transition - there are no glitches that I have found other than Unicode characters displaying extra characters (£ sign being a case in point) and I'll see if I can get a fix in place for that.
Looks good , sounds fast and thanks for dedicating a weekend to it !
Migrating sounds like a job for Xmas afternoon 