Dear Car Talk Community Member,
Since you’re a registered member of the Car Talk Community, we want you to know about an important upgrade we’re making to our discussion forums. In the coming weeks, we’ll be adding some of the new features and functionality that our users have been asking for. While you don’t have to do anything in preparation for these changes, here’s some information you might be interested in:
On or before May 1, we’ll be moving the entire community, including registered users and all discussions, to a new forum system. We’re working hard to make this transition as smooth as possible for all involved. Our plan is to move all the discussions, existing usernames and passwords to the new forums. There should be no need for re-registration, the existing navigation will remain the same and the appearance of the forums will be very similar to our current design.
Before implementing the changes, we asked forum users to see what new features people wanted most. After much review and discussions with a variety of forum experts, we’ve settled on Vanilla Forums, an open-source forum that will allow us to offer some of the tools and flexibility for which you’ve asked. Some of the features will be operational from the outset. Others will be added in the coming months.
We’ve tested Vanilla Forums, and think its system will be up to the task of our busy forums. It’s stable, can handle our high volume of traffic, and we’ve found it to be very user friendly. We hope you like it.
In addition to the technical changes that will come to the Car Talk Community, in the coming weeks we’ll be working to clarify our discussion guidelines and have a closer working relationship with our many loyal users. To assist in that effort, this past week, Car Talk has promoted Carolyn D’Aquila, our long-time Car Talk Community support lackey, to Car Talk Community Czarina. You’ll be hearing more from her, via the forums, in the coming weeks and months.
We thank you for your patience as we move to the new system, and we will be back in touch once the transition is complete.
If you have questions, please don’t hesitate to contact me or Carolyn, via the Virtual Box 3500 box.
We greatly appreciate the energy and enthusiasm you all bring to the Car Talk Community forums. We’ve enjoyed following the many discussions, the helpful information that’s shared in the community, and the strong spirit of goodwill that exists there.
Thanks,
Doug Mayer and Carolyn D’Aquila
P.S. Bored? You can find our discussions about new forums possibilities here.
If it doesn’t go as smoothly as planned, like the last migration, you guys will be able to recognize me as “the same Whitey.” 
The real question is this:
Does the new forum software have the ability to prevent the amount of spammers that we have been seeing lately?
If Yes, go for it.
If No, then find another software to choose.
BC.
Hi there,
Your humble czarina here. Thanks for your comments. So far, we’re still expecting to have the usernames remain the same across the two systems. No mass re-registration has appeared on the horizon, but obviously we will provide any support we can in the event of an unforeseen problem.
And regarding spammers: we have added on the spam filtering feature to the new discussion area. We’ll keep our eye on the amount of spam that slips through the cracks, and we’ll continue to be on the lookout for the latest and greatest filtering techniques.
Again, thanks for your patience.
Carolyn
Perhaps I put a jinx on the change over but I ask if EBSCO or something similar is in the plan.
If mountainbike goes to “the same the same mountainbike” I’m going to have to completely avoid ever referring to his posts again.
I just want to say that I appreciate all the work that goes into creating a forum like this. I have no idea how difficult it is, but it just can’t be that easy - otherwise we all would be hosting forums.
Good Luck with the move!
Hi - got an update for you.
To ensure the smoothest possible transition to the new forum software, we’re delaying the migration to Monday, May 2. At 10:30 AM, we’ll be disabling members’ ability to post new comments to this board while we do the final migration to the new Vanilla system. (You will still be able to read old comments and discussions.) Access will be limited for much of the day, but when the transition is complete you will be redirected from the old forums to the new discussion area.
Thank you again for your patience, and we’ll be in touch with any further developments!
Carolyn