FaunaClassifieds upgrade now in progress

My programmer is now in the process of updating the main message board software for this site, along with all the custom mods he has done over the years. So this is going to be a pretty involved process.

I'm thinking about dropping the main page and going with something different, but will have to test out some options to see how well this works. I'm not sure how many people actually go to the front page of this site rather than just jumping right into the forums anyway.

I've been discussing with my programmer the possibility of adding a blog section and perhaps wiki capability as well, since the new version will be compatible with some new addons. I tried providing individual forums for members a while back, but that didn't go over very well, so I'm not sure if blogging would have much interest to anyone here. As for wiki capability, my programmer feels it may be a waste of time on this site since it is so infested with trolls and individuals who would attempt to derail it's effectiveness that it would never really get off the ground.

I would also like to do something with the two classifieds sections so I could combine them both into a single section, having the best of both aspects incorporated. This, of course, will require custom coding, so I would like some input about what features you all would want to see in this new classifieds section. I can then present this to my programmer as a wish list so I can get a feel for feasibility as well as cost for implementing such a thing. The upgrade itself is going to be quite expensive, so it's entirely possible that the cost just might be more than I can afford now, if at all.

Some features will not be incorporated into the upgraded site, simply because I don't feel they ever really pulled their own weight. And to be perfectly honest, if I thought I could get away with it without killing this site completely, I would go back to being HerpWantAds.com and just drop the other animal sections completely. But I seriously doubt I could get away with that at this late date. Obviously expanding from HerpWantAds to include the other animal groups in FaunaClassifieds just never really worked out. So I may trim them all down substantially, or just roll them all together into an "Other Animals" type of category.

Not sure how long this will take, or even what final changes will happen here when the dust all settles. But in any event, the site will likely be different enough to disorient some people when the switchover finally takes place. Of course, some will like it and others will hate it. But regardless of that, it will definitely be a one way ticket with no going back to the old version. The newer version is NEEDED to be compatible with the newer more secure versions of PHP and MySQL, so there is really not much choice in this matter at all. I put if off longer than I should, already as it is.

Anyway, just a fyi.