I just wanted to suggestion upgrading the forum to vBulletin 3.7.1. As a web developer myself, I'm a member of a few different forums, and have found the latest version of vBulletin to offer a lot better features compared this phpbb system the forum is currently running on. I think vBulletin would give all the members here much better user interaction, some these features include personal blogs for each member of the forum that can retrieve rss feeds from a existing blog already hosted on another site or they could start blogging here. It has a much better user profile with friends list and comments a lot like the basic works of myspace. My personal favorite a button that allows you to view first unread post on each thread instead of searching for it, and thats really just naming a few.
I noticed that a lot of the pro mets and members here especially the highly active ones have their own sites and personal blogs, and I'm visioning how great of tool this would be to those. I know I am not highly active member of this forum but I wouldn't suggest this if I didn't believe it wouldn't improve the forum.
I also took the time to research and find out if you could install vBulletin as upgrade from phpbb, and found that they do offer a install pack for doing so or else I wouldn't be suggesting this. That means current members and post shouldn't be affected and would be converted to the new system.
I hope the site admins will take my suggestion seriously and at least weigh out the pros and cons.
Btw, I am in no way affiliated with vBulletin.
