Well, the site has been running with it's present software for several years, and has served well, but it's getting a little long in the tooth! Keeping up the security issues and maintenance as well as some additional things I'd like to do with the site is bringing me to the point of a major upgrade! I'll be working on small preparations over the next couple of weeks, as well as rolling out a beta of the new site style for you to look at and try out. I'm going to set an optomistic goal of 1 Oct 06 to have the new site up and running. While getting the site up and running will be a fairly quick job, where I'm anticipating the biggest challenge is moving over all the posts and user names to avoid everybody having to reregister, as well as losing all the great information and discussions that we have here! What goals do I have for the new site? Well the following are some of the things that I plan to have working, or working better on the new site software: - Improved user management and catagorizing. - Improved RSS feeds, will allow you to get anything on the site in your feed aggregator (forum posts, news, pictures, Podcasts, etc.) You should be able to read and reply without actually visiting the site. - Organic groups usable by users. Groups can set up parts of the site just for themselves (sub, surface, etc.) If someone volunteers as a moderator for that group, or is the owner, you can open it up to the public, or only those members of the group. Those groups can have their own forums, messages, pictures etc. - Shopping cart for selling of IDCA items, memberships, or coming later in the year, the ability to register and pay for the conference online! - Customizable fields to track NEC's or other items that we might want to search or group on. - WAP access. You'll be able to access the site on a mobile browser such as a cellphone and have it readable. - Better ability to add and moderate comments - Role designations to allow some to become authors and post items on the site without waiting for approval from a moderator. - Ability to share user logins with other sites... an example is the IDMT site. If other IDC sites use the same software, we can link userbases so that if you have a login on one site, you will be able to login and participate in all sites that are linked with one username/password. - AND MORE!!! I should have the beta up in the next week or two, and will post for some to try it out and give suggestions on the look. The rest of the time, I'll be working on getting the scripts right to transfer over all the information. Anticipate just before the grand opening that the site will be down for 24-48 hours in order to freeze and transfer over all information before opening of the site. This will be posted in advance so you'll know when it is happening! Look forward to presenting to you the new site very soon!!! Webmaster, NavyIDC.org [/list]