PAX happened! It was amazing. I'm so happy I went and I'm so happy I got to meet so many of you. It meant a lot to me to hear how all of you liked the Forums. If I could do PAX every day, I would. It was fantastic. Just seeing how wonderful this community is did a great deal to motivate me to make the Forums as great as I possibly can. Thank you so much especially to Maya (bushofghosts) for my awesome flask. Thank you to Cameron (The GHost) for the printed version of my GHost card and THANK YOU to Mikey (Mikey) for the art of me from the Dtoid comic. Also thank you to Scotty (ScottyG) for getting me a Uncharted 2 shirt. Everyone I met at PAX, thank you for the best weekend of my life.

OK, enough sappy stuff. Let's talk about the new design.

As some of you probably noticed (at least the ones that use the AlsoCocks skin) there has been a new header design for the Forums. Our banner is now bigger, so I have more room to work with. We also completely redid the nav bar. It now matches what is on the front page and C blog page. Additionally, your profile and blog navigation is on the top of the page like the rest of the site. To make it easier to navigate, I added Forum specific navigation to the sub-bar and added some of the most popular threads to the small nav bar beneath it. This makes it easier for you to get where you want to go and helps the Forums feel connected to the rest of the site. These updates are only on the AlsoCocks skin and Redtoid skin.

We added a couple of badges as well. A PAX09 badge which is exactly what it sounds like. If you were there, you get the badge. I plan on having an east PAX badge and a new badge for 10 as well. Further down the line, I will probably consolidate those badges so we don't get too crowded.

The other badge I made is the Thread of the Day badge. As you know, every Friday I send threads to Hamza for The Daily Hotness. So, if your thread is chosen you will get this badge. While I like to promote threads that have good or interesting discussion, I will also nominate threads that are funny or are on a subject that I think should get more attention. Please feel free to send me a PM nominating a thread for the thread of the week. I'm not opposed to repeating threads that have been up before as long as I'm not promoting a thread two weeks in a row. Also, I prefer that the thread be somewhat new or has current discussion going on in it. Please don't be shy and send me threads!

Lastly, I just put up a poll in the forums asking what skin you use in the Forums.

The Poll

I urge you to PLEASE post in the poll and keep the thread on topic. I've had a lot of feedback from people on the various skins they use and I wanted to consolidate them and get some real numbers to use. It's important that thread stays on topic and is just feedback so I don't have to sort through junk to get what I need. I'm going to use that thread to direct how the skins look. There will be some changes made to keep the Forums consistent with the rest of the site, but the rest of it is changeable. So, it's important you post in the poll and keep it honest.

As always, if you lurk, sign up and post. If you've never been, come check us out. If you post all the time, then keep it up! My private messages are always open and you can send me anything from questions, new banners or just bounce some ideas off me. Don't be shy!

See you next month!

(To explain the header, Go here and prepare to have your life change)