Believe it or not, the new forum software, which has been a personal project of mine for the last two years, is finally in a state that I feel is ready for public use.

Obviously, topics and posts from the old forum were brought over, along with topic subscriptions, which you can verify under the Subscriptions tab. Unfortunately, migrating private messages would've been a monumental effort, so they were left behind. If you have any PMs that you need to recover, the old forum software will remain available for the next 30 days only. After that time, all content in the old software will be deleted.

This is not to say that the forum software is "finished," because it certainly isn't. There are no emoticons yet, posting requires the use of traditional forum tags (no fancy WYSIWYG editor), polls aren't enabled...the list goes on. However, if I waited until the software was perfect, it would never get out the door.

This is beta software. As such, it's prone to errors, crashes, odd behavior, and other annoyances. Please don't flood this topic with issues and requests; I ask that you post your thoughts in the appropriate forums: Bug Reports and Feature Requests and Enhancements.

One great favor I ask of you is that you report any security lapses to me immediately via private message. For example, if you're not a mod, but you see a link that lets you delete a topic, you're probably not meant to :) These types of bugs are critical and require immediate attention.

Some things to note about the new software:

1. There is now an ignore function. Simply click the "ignore" link under a user's name in a post and select your ignore options. Both your ignore list and buddy list are managed through the User Lists tab (soon to include a Who's Online section as well).

2. Private messages are turned on by default. All members have a limit of 200 messages (this includes items in your inbox and sent items folder). Any of you who had PMs turned off will need to turn them off again (see the Preferences tab). E-mail notifications of new PMs are also on by default.

3. Please take the time to explore the Profile and Preferences tabs to see the options you have available to you for various forum settings.

4. You can save individual posts and personal notes to describe the post by clicking the bookmark link at the bottom of any post. Never hunt for a specific post again. View your saved posts under the Bookmarks tab.

5. Posts can be saved as drafts. If you find yourself having to log out in the middle of writing a post, click the Save as Draft button and it will be waiting for you when you get back under the Drafts tab. No more lost posts.

6. Topic subscriptions are managed through the Subscriptions tab.

7. Full text search, finally! Post titles, post text, and usernames are included in the forum search.

8. Formatting tags that are more in line with modern conventions; I always hated the FuseTalk tags. See the help section for more info.

9. The default color scheme is blue, but I'm working on a color scheme that's reminiscent of the old forum software for those of you who prefer the dark look. You can preview this color scheme by selecting it on the Preferences page. Other color schemes are in the works also.

10. Posts have a Quick Edit feature that lets you make changes, well, quickly. Click the Quick Edit link under your username to activate it.

Things I'm still working on:

1. Polls
2. Emoticons
3. Help/FAQ
4. Save as Draft for private messages
5. The overall user interface (still a work in progress)

Thanks for your patience through all the delays and false starts. The mods and I hope you enjoy the upgrade and continue to make originaltrilogy.com the best place online for open, honest talk about the Star Wars universe.