Over the last four months, we've quietly been working on a new version of ActionScript.com. The new site will have all the same content and features that you've come to know over the years. But it will have a whole new look and a whole new back-end content management system.

The current site is built using some commercial content management software written in PHP and MySQL. All of which are great, but we were looking for a more robust (preferable open-source) content management and database solution. After considering a wide range of options, we've decided to port ActionScript.com from PHP and MySQL to .NET and SQL Server. The new site is going to be a customized implementation of the DotNetNuke (DNN) platform. We realize that the concepts of a Windows .NET server and Open Source don't always fit into the same part of the brain. But DotNetNuke isn't your typical Windows type of application framework. The modular design and easy extensibility of DotNetNuke will provide us a robust platform to build out a lot of new community features at ActionScript.com.

We're currently in final testing, and if all goes as planned, the new version of the site will be going live over New Years weekend. It will feature a brand new fully integrated user forum. Users can register to ActionScript.com, post comments within our existing articles, post in the forum and use other features as they become available. Additional community features will be implemented throughout 2006 over a very aggressive development schedule.

If you've linked to ActionScript.com in your own website, there is no need to worry. We've gone to great lengths to try to support old links to the site. Existing links to articles or to the RSS feed (even when referencing PHP pages) should still resolve where they were intended. It's our hope that nobody should have to update their links.

I'm sure there will be hick-ups in the system at times. But, for the most part, we're anticipating that the transition will be seamless.

During the DNS transition between servers (over New Year's weekend), we'll be disabling comments on all articles, in order to freeze the database. This should happen on December 30th 2005. As the DNS change propagates, we hope that everyone will wake up to the new ActionScript.com first thing New Years day.

We hope you'll enjoy the new site, the new features and the new year!