In the words of the Cybermen, we have been upgraded....* checks head - not metal, phew! * .
To celebrate the release of the final movie, I've update the forum to the latest version of phpBB. The last upgrade a while ago only seemed to half-work, but with a bit of tweaking and coaxing, this one seems to have done the trick nicely. If you do see any problems or glitches, please post them in this thread.
There are a few new features, mostly tiny ones but the main addition you may notice is something I remember Scellanis asking about many moons ago - there's now a quick-reply box that you can use at the bottom of every thread. At the moment I've activated it in all areas of the forum. You can still use the full reply editor complete with smilies and formatting options by clicking the "Post Reply" button like before, or the "Full editor" button. It would be great to know whether you like it or if you'd prefer things the old way.
Also there is a "Newly Registered Users" group. I need to check exactly how this works, but this may help in defeating the spambots as it should be able to be used to review posts of new members rather than letting new- spambot-users post their icky spam to the world immediately if they somehow get through the account approval process.
As far as I've been able to find, there seem to be a few extra anti-spam plugins that may be available too. I'll be experimenting in the next few days with these. If we can cut the huge numbers of spambots that are trying to join, it'll make it more straightforward to enable real members to join, and hopefully BaO's membership will grow as it has done in the past before the spambots started to attempt to invade in their droves.
Eeek...I've just noticed that there's been another new version released in the last few hours. Looks like I'll be upgrading again tomorrow too.