I've got a gallery setup and running - it's called Coppermine, and seems to be fairly functional. You may have to logout of the forums, then click the Galleries link and log back in to see it. It hasn't been customized to match our theme or anything ... yet. I haven't even put in a link back to the forums!

The old gallery has been dead for quite some time - initially I had to pull it due to security concerns, and I just never got around to trying to track down the security holes and get it back online. Now there is software that allows you to 'bridge' your membership from a forum, and I'll try to get one of those online and hooked up in the next little while.

Found a problem with a bunch of links still referring to the rather old cynosure.dhs.org domain. Should be fixed.

Edit: Now it should REALLY be fixed. Forgot that editing the file directly will only fix it until the CMS rebuilds the page from code with the old bugs on it again.

Conversion complete, everything seems to be functioning as designed.

The upgrade was easier than I thought in some ways, and more difficult in others. All in all, it wasn't what I was expecting.

The bonus? Server CPU load has dropped significantly, from an average of ~25% down to something that really isn't even measurable. At least when GOOGLE isn't re-spidering the entire site, anyway!

It seems to be working, no complaints from the testers yet, so the full upgrade is scheduled for Jan 1st, 2008.

Sometimes it seems like I'm only seriously ever in here every few years... I guess that isn't, or shouldn't be, too big of a surprise, after all I haven't owned or ridden a Proflex or a K2 for years now.

Well, the day has finally come. YaBB was more than a little long in the tooth to begin with, and the security issues were starting to pile up, AND I couldn't seem to upgrade to any newer versions. So, I guess I'll put it out of my misery and switch to something new.

There are some advantages to new software, to say the least. YaBB was, in it's day, some of the most advanced forum software available. Now, it's old and clunky, using files on the local hard drive to store each message, member profile, and PM isn't the best idea ever. All modern software uses a database backend and a web front end, meaning, better performance and less CPU usage on my end.

I will be testing the new software and it's conversion routine over the next few weeks.