As one of the biggest hobby forums out there, Reef Central was certainly showing her age. As other forums sprung up tapping into the latest and greatest forum software, Reef Central was stuck in the past. Serious modifications to the platform over time handcuffed the forum to the past but today Reef Central is getting a facelift shifting to a newer version of the forum software. The site improvements include a sleeker and more “Web 2.0″ user interface and a simple, WYSIWYG text editor.

I know they had discussed the upgrade and it was publicly posted but today I’ve been stuck waiting to make a post for our club’s event as they do the rollout. My first attempt at posting today included the typical way of getting customized text and hyperlinks into the post–manually. The old format included buttons to insert the code but it was almost counterproductive and much easier to learn the basic codes and insert them manually. Most of the time it was just easier to ignore it and just do simple text.

I nearly got the post up the first time but from the time I began to write it, to the time I was going to post it, the database and software upgrade was in progress. So I waited patiently, clicking refresh every 15 minutes or so waiting for her to come back up. Finally I got a glimpse of the new site and really liked it. It’s nothing new and extremely whiz-bang, just the kinds of features you’ve seen on other more up-to-date forums.

So there I was, typing and formatting away ready to post again in the new format when they decided to do some checks on the forum database and I was stuck again! I guess the moral of the story is I guess our club, the Northern Valley Reefers, really needs to host our own forum and not on Reef Central!