As you can see, I'm in the process of switching to a different forum system. The old forum system was not being used much, probably because it wasn't integrated well with the rest of the site and because it required separate registration and login. Also, it used PHPBB, and as such it got a lot of attention from spambots, which was an ongoing headache.

The new forums work a lot better with the rest of the site and don't require separate registration or login. Anyone can read the forums, but you still need to be logged in to the site to post in the forums.

I've copied many of the posts from the old forum system to the new forums. I didn't bother copying topics that are no longer relevant. However, I will also leave a link to the old forums on the site for reference purposes. I will also lock down the old forum system.

One other reason I took this step was that we've been getting into some long conversations in the blog comments. While this is not exactly a problem, the discussion features of the blog comments leave a lot to be desired. So, when we want to have longer on-line conversations, I'm suggesting that we use the new forum system.

Go ahead and experiment: create new topics, post questions, etc.