Ok I apologize for things moving slow, personal problems have kept my time and energy diverted.

The first part of the large upgrade will go in soon. This upgrade will simply be the altering of the sites into one giant site and thus the rebuilding of the forums.

When this upgrade goes in, it will be a bit "ugly," as a new navigation bar will appear with the forums to allow you to navigate between boards quickly and easily. (When the appearance upgrade goes in, it will be a much cleaner interface!)

Along with this merger, the custom board tool will be put in place. This will allow team members to create a custom board of the forums they use the most. (20 is the projected limit at this time.) This means that you'll be able to surf the boards like normal, but also have the ability to create a "favorites" type board with the things you check most often.

The restructuring will also be aimed at making a lot more sense. There will be a "GENERAL" board for those who like open discussions on everyday topics. There will of course be the AR15 board, an AK board, a Handgun board, and a General Weapons board for everything else we want to throw in! The Equipment Exchange and Industry Forums will also move into this new upgrade untouched.

All the current sites, ak.ar15.com for example, will then be set to point to the ar15.com site.

There are a ton of fixes also going into this upgrade, all focused around the Forums. In the second upgrade, we'll focus on the GUI (look and feel) as well as engine upgrades. We'll also be doing some back end work on the database to speed things up and lower server loads.

All these changes should be very scalable, which should allow us to better utilize existing hardware.

The conversion of the forums to .Net will occur at a later date as time permits. [=D]

I'll give warning before the upgrade goes in, so that people are aware of it!

Okay..your wrong.

Quietshoez, I'll pitch in $30 for your team membership....whadda ya say?

By chance..have either of you read the thread directly below this one?
Here is a quote from it.

DUDE!!!! Where on this thread did the "Paids" give the "Non Paid's" crap??????

Edited to add, I met Quietshoez's at the BRC, he's the first guy I talked to there, nice guy, I'm just offering "my friend" a deal to be a team member, no insult to anyone who's not.

There is a first time for everything I guess. If you folks want to continue the paid vs. non-paid discussion can you do it in GD. This forum is for GB to advise everyone of site upgrades and such.
Thanks.

This is another TOOL which takes up resources and is not essential for getting around the site. In fact for the initial release, ONLY Team members will have custom boards so that we can guage resource usage, etc. I don't expect it to be much, but this also isn't critical for anyone.

The basic point is that the boards will be broken down to provide grouping of information and merger of what currently exists. This means that everyone will benefit.