Dan - have you guys given any thought to upgrading to UBB Threads? It has many of the features users here have asked for:

New user control panel
Using a central control panel, users can now add favorite threads and forums to watch, remind themselves to reply to a certain post, and view users who are currently online from their address book.

A partial list of features from their website:

Member list
Users can browse a list of all registered users with various sorting options.

Time offset
Users can choose a time offset from the server so all displayed times reflect their local time.

Change language on the fly
The end user can choose which language to use. Choices include: Chinese (Big5 and GB encoding), Danish, English, French, German, Hungarian, Italian, Polish, Romanian, Russian and Spanish. Default language is set by the Admin in the config file. Admin section is English only, to keep the language file size small.

Flat or threaded mode
Users can decide to view the message board in flat or threaded mode. This preference can be changed at any time.

Total style sheet control (skins)
Style sheets control all color, fonts, etc. Users can choose from various style sheets or skins that you create. This allows you to easily change color schemes for holidays or other occasions.

Preview post
The user can edit his/her profile to turn the preview post screens on or off.

No duplicates
Enabling this feature means that the system will not accept duplicate posts. This can be helpful for slow-responding systems, where often users will hit the submit button several times if they get no response.


And it's a SQL database with some very good admin/geek features. And all for only slightly more than what you have now. Based on their pricing structure, I would expect you could buy the software, a year's technical support, and access to the member's area on their website for less than $900. I bet I could raise that amount from members here in less than a day. That presumes you have the basic system requirements - namely an SQL server, FTP access, and non-beta PHP-4.

For the rest of you, here's the link detailing the features/etc..

http://www.infopop.com/products/ubbthreads/

Is there a reason why this couldn't be a viable option? Do you have SQL guys on your staff?

I personally think the FT community would eagerly participate in upgrade costs if it provides features we would all like to have...