I've been asked to add blogs, forums, and comments for a while now and I've always waited on the right software to come along to do this. I did a quick blog to appease some of the folks but it wasn't what I really wanted. Sure, it was a great way to test out some new programming practices and tricks but it wasn't a real strong blog software with the features that I wanted to have. Now, I think with BlogEngine, we've got a strong base to work with. I've added some minor improvements and extensions to help the guys here do some really cool stuff.
Comments and forums were also on hold until Yet Another Forum made their latest version. While it is an alpha, I haven't had any glaring issues and so far it's worked out pretty well. Again, I made a few changes here and there thanks to access to the source code so I'm happy how it turned out.
It just so happens that both software came out with their latest versions at the same time and I set out to see how long it would take me to get them running. Integrating the main site to access the forums to do comments wasn't too bad and changing the styles temporarily also wasn't bad as well. So after I setup a few test environments I went at it. In a span of a few days I got everything working as you see here. It's great to be able to leverage open source software for your needs and to see everything fall into place. It took me a little less than a week from start to finish to get it all working and I've made some small tweaks here and there to both the blog software and forum software since launch.
I guess I wanted to go out of 2007 with a bang on my to do list for the site so I hope you guys enjoy the new features.