If you've been on the site today, you've doubtless noticed some of the visual changes. In addition to providing a simpler theme that - over time - will be more mobile-friendly, we're also lining up for a major move of our discussion forums. That'll probably happen after TechEd, but we may be able to squeeze it in prior.
The existing forums are fine, but they're a bit heavy in the code department, and hard to maintain. We've also gotten a bit bloated with the categories. Sorry about that. Anyway, the plan is to move to an integrated forums, a simpler hierarchy, and better notification options. It'll make it a lot easier for us moderators to help answer questions.
We'll be archiving the old content, so it'll still be accessible and searchable. However... and here's the rub... we're gonna ditch your user accounts. We have to. The old database is cloggy with spambots, and we just need to get away from it. We're going to offer integrated login (Twitter, Facebook, LinkedIn, a bunch others), so you won't have to entrust your password to us any longer if you don't want to. We are not linking the old forums to this WordPress site. You'll be creating a NEW login here, and it can use those external authentication systems. The NEW login you create HERE will be completely separate from any login you have in the existing, old forums. You don't need to create a new account now - you can wait until the new forums go live.
Anyway... that's all ahead. Love to hear your thoughts as we continue planning.
There's another thing: The PowerShell People site. To be honest, that was created as a kind of... game/toy. Something to see if I could do. We've gotten a few people using it but not many, and it just kind of sits there on its own. We're probably going to be spinning that down, but we're going to take what we learned from it and try and incorporate something into this main site. No firm ideas, yet, and we'd appreciate any you may have.
In the meantime, we've already implemented a few changes. The new site theme is perhaps the most obvious; you'll notice that we've also moved a lot of static pages - like the newsletter, Scripting Games, and Summit pages - into the new theme. We've also enabled single sign-on to the site, using Facebook, Twitter, Google, OpenID, WordPress.com, and Live ID (or whatever Microsoft is calling it this week).
Thanks!
