Sometime within the next few weeks we'll be upgrading our existing discussion forum software to the latest revision (vB3), which is markedly different in layout (among other things) to our existing setup. Members may need to be aware of several key changes:

1) The default style is nothing like what we have now and, until we add some extra style choices, AVATAR sizes will be restricted to 100 pixels wide and 65 high (you'll understand why when you see it). We will, however, make it easier for everybody to gain Avatars (fewer posts required).

2) We find the default layout to be somewhat bulky and plan to offer members a 'choice' of different styles with time. The default style itself may change to another, it depends on how the new layout effects the server.

3) The upgrade itself will probably take the best part of a day to complete, we'll most likely do this on a 'Sunday'.

4) Expect intermitted downtime on our current forum over the next couple of weeks (mostly at weekends) as we prune old threads.

5) Sadly post counts will be hit as there's no way to avoid rebuilding them, thus expect some of them to go down due to the pruning of older topics and inactive members.

6) Following the upgrade we may experiment with a new index layout as opposed to the 'Category Only Display', it's too early to say whether this will succeed and be used.

The upgrade itself is quite a demanding task, so it could well end up taking longer than expected; hopefully that won't happen.

The software is currently on its third release candidate and a final version is expected within a week or two. Thankfully it already has an ISPr friendly colour scheme by default, so we won't need to change much. By example you can see the standard setup here:

http://www.vbulletin.com/forum/index.php