Wow, how things change, yet still feel the same.

Hey everybody.

So it's been over a year since I last saw the PunBB homepage. And while I'm sorry I wasn't around or using it, it does mean I'm pleasantly surprised to see how nice PunBB is today. It was good enough at the end of 2003, and although by 2004 it was feeling a bit cluttered, now in 2005 either the design has matured, or I've forgotten what it was like in 2003. (probably a bit of both)

I'll admit that when, in mid-2004, I was faced with a merger that would expand my small PunBB-based community website from about 500 people to twice that - with maybe hundreds of posts each day - I didn't think that PunBB 1.1.4(?) would cut it. So I switched to the newly released beta 5 of SMF. And while it worked well enough, with PMs and everything, I never did get it just the way I liked it. I even styled it so it looked like PunBB, because I missed that simplistic layout.

And now, seeing how PunBB is still in constant development, and is looking pretty nice, while SMF hasn't changed all that much since beta 5, maybe I'll switch back For the record, SMF 1.1 should be a big improvement, but it's taken so long that I don't know if I'll bother with it. And since I'm doing a lot more www.rubyonrails.com based development, having an all-in-one communications solution isn't as important to me as it once was. Plus, I've always hated looking through both Gmail and PMs for a message someone said they sent me (without telling me where they sent it to).

Anyway, just a quick little note. Keep up the good work! -- Louis.