Site changes are now complete. Or almost. There are some weird quirks in IE 8 and below, but people using IE 9 and other "sane" browsers should have no problem. The forums are usable in every way, though you may still notice little oddities in the styling. I'll nitpick those at another time.

So now I've implemented a complete site overhaul using a theme I designed myself and integrated into WordPress. Furthermore, the forums have been upgraded to the latest version of Vanilla, the script which runs the forums. I held off on the upgrade until I finished and implemented my new site design. Furthermore, I was always unhappy with the "embedding" ability of Vanilla. While it initially made the software attractive to me since it boasted easy WordPress integration... the result honestly left a lot to be desired. Especially in the URL department, since Vanilla was installed in another directory and merely "accessed" by WordPress; a cheap hack if you ever saw one. The forum is now running completely independent of WordPress, on a version of the WP theme built specifically for Vanilla.

What benefits does this have? On my end, MANY. For example, administrating these forums always involved a redirect, which is time-consuming. But now I and the other moderators can jump straight from the forums to the admin dashboard instantly. Furthermore, there's no further need of a "Mobile users click here" message at the top of the forums anymore; browse to this forum on your smartphone and you'll jump straight to the mobile version of these forums. On your end, you'll probably notice that clicking on a discussion title takes you straight to the last entry of a thread. Before, it would always snap back to the middle of the page. Those days are over.

What caveats does this have? Well, you'll have to sign in again. If you don't remember your password you'll have to create a new one. Next, many of the forum topics you've already viewed will be marked as new or unread. To cope with this I've installed the Mark All Viewed plugin. Simply click the "Mark All Viewed" link at the top of the page to get rid of those little yellow notices. And lastly, your emails may be marked unread as well. If it bothers you, I'm afraid the only solution is to view the conversation again. The reason is because this is actually a "new" forum with all the topics imported from the old.

Why go to all this trouble? Well, I've been working more as a web developer than as a writer lately, and so it's important for my homepage to show off my skill level. I can't rightly claim how great my skills are if my own website is nothing but a hodgepodge of other people's scripts and designs. Hopefully the site now reflects both of my careers.

I hope you'll enjoy the new site design and the forum re-launch. At this point, please feel free to describe any errors you receive or styling quirks (remembering that I'm aware of the IE ones, and shame on you for still using IE in 2012) and provide any other feedback you'd like.

Now then, I'm going to finish up another site for a client and go back to writing my next strategy guide...