I wouldn't quite say the forum is junk either - I had also suggested that Michael use VBulletin (which I own a license) or perhaps PHPBB (I've been recently playing with an install of v3 RC4 and I'm loving it!)

I could appreciate his wishes to keep the forums simple. However only time will tell how this forum holds up over time especially when MOI is released and folks sign up in droves.

My only argument would be that millions of msgboard'ers are familiar and proficient with VB and PHPBB already so (surprisingly) that does mean it will take getting used to using this board when they comes here.

My only other concern is - right now I have the board set to "Unread discussions" - what this means is for one, way down the line, say a year from now, ALL of these discussions will pretty much be gone in the wind - VAPOR!

I've tried searching for recent threads - usually dealing with tutorials or keyboard shortcut scripts and I've rarely found what I was looking for, especially easily finding it.

So my only standing argument would be that (IMO) the common format lends itself to "historical perusal" since the theads are laid out in categories and subjects. (Though I have to say I don't think I've ever seen as many categories and topics like on MIKESCHN's board!??!!)

I can appreciate the ability to have the topics on the side while viewing each post - you CAN do this with the other software when you switch to threaded mode (which is a user option) it's just in those cases, the topics are on the top while the msg body is at the bottom.

Yes a MOD or hack can probably be developed to emulate what Michael desires but that's definitely some development time for sure.

I also agree about the spam and protection; VB and PHPBB are about as secure as you're gonna get and if setup properly (using the verification images and login attempt lockouts and/or even admin approvals).

The one good thing about being attacked so often is they have to be on top of there stuff - if a hacker took a fancy to this software since it's not all that common, they may find all kinds of exploits to hammer on that hasn't come to light yet!

Using CGTalk as the standard, I definitely miss the thread tools; being able to subscribe to a thread that contains really good information for example, and other standard features (being able to see at a glance what topics I have posts in, etc.)

Yes I can save favorites here to meaty threads and I guess I should start! But that ends up clogging up my browser favorites and if I say switch to FireFox, then all of those links need to be ported over from IExplorer etc...

-Will