[txjovigal]

Hello everyone! As we announced last week, in order to provide our Community with a more stable and feature-rich experience on our Forums, we will be upgrading our message board software to vBulletin. vBulletin is the most popular Community software in use and is packed with great features we think you'll love.

The upgrade will take place at approximately 10pm PST on Wednesday, March 4th. The launch will take an estimated four hours, during which time the JustMommies message boards will be closed. We have been testing the new boards for several weeks, but there are bound to be some glitches. We'll be closely monitoring performance during and after the switch, but we are also grateful when users report bugs. Once the new boards are up we will create a thread to collect your feedback and any bug reports and will post a link to that thread.

There are a few things which we would like to call to your attention to:

-Passwords: As a security measure, our old message board system does not export your passwords to the new system along with the rest of your information. So we need for everyone to use the "Forgot Password" feature to reset your password. You do not need to choose a new password, you can use the same one you've been using – you just need enter it into our new system. This is an easy process which should take just a couple of minutes but if you have any trouble changing your password, please notify Rachel at boards@justmommies.com.

-Display Names: Now your display name will be the same as your username. Be sure to change your username to whatever you want displayed with your posts once you log in.

--Code in signatures: Due to the import of our current boards data into the new system, some of the code in your signature may show up as HTML and will need to be turned back into BB code. We'll provide you with a list of BB code tags when we launch to help you update your signature as needed.

-Links to forums/threads: If you have links in your signatures, etc. to boards or posts on the current system, these will need to be updated. Once we launch we will keep the old system live (but not open for posts) for one month. That way will have ample time to update these links with the URL from the new boards system, without the links being broken in the meantime. After one month, the old board links will all redirect to the new boards homepage.

-Some features are being temporarily disabled while we work on a new social networking site which, unlike the one we have today, will be available with your existing JustMommies account so you can more easily take advantage of groups, blogs, , and more. The features which will be temporarily unavailable are: Friends Lists, Recent Visitors on Profiles and Comments on Profiles. Our team is working hard to get those and other fun features available to you as quickly as possible.

During this upgrade, we've done our very best to maintain the current look-and-feel of the JustMommies message boards as much as possible, but there will be some small changes in the way things look.

We hope that you'll quickly get used to the new boards and find them to be an noticeable improvement.

Here are some of the great changes vB will bring to our Community:

*Increased avatar size. Avatars can be 100x100 pixels now!
*You can preview a topic by hovering your mouse over the topic title.
*You now have 2 minutes to edit a post without leaving an edit trail.
*You can leave a Reason for Editing your post at the bottom, if you wish. No more "edited for spelling" - especially with the new Spell Checker!
*You can make portions of your Profile private to everyone, viewable to only your contacts or public.
*You can report a Private Message directly from your PM center.
*You can add Tags to your posts to make them easier for other Members to find.
*You can set Polls to close on a certain date, and Polls can close for voting but remain open to responses. Additionally, you can make your poll public to show who voted and for which option, or make it private.
*You can add read receipts to your Private Messages. If you don't want the person to know you have read the message, you can click cancel until you are ready to confirm the receipt.

In addition to the new user features, vBulletin gives moderators and admins more powerful tools for managing the boards and interacting with members. This was another big consideration behind the switch, as we want JustMommies to continue being the most supportive and best-run moms community on the web.

We appreciate your participation in the JustMommies Community and hope that you enjoy the new boards! If you have any questions, please contact your Board Host or Rachel at boards@justmommies.com.

Sincerely,

The JustMommies Team