First of all, I'd like to begin this by giving a big thank you to the entire community of RF Generation. Over the years, our community and user base has grown by quite a bit. We continue to have great members that are accepting of others, willing to help, and always have a great attitude. I couple of times over 8 (8?!) years, I've written some open letters of thanks to the community. The thoughts expressed in those still apply today.

While some members have moved on and others have jumped in, the overall feel of the forum hasn't shifted and we've even extended out to have more members and even meeting up in person to get a more personal touch to the site. We've also had tables at RetroWorld Expo, allowing even more people to get to know the site!

With all of that being said, we on the administrative team have some work to do. There are a couple of main topics that we are going to have to tackle in a fairly short manner that will ultimately be for the best.

First, we have to work toward getting https working site wide. This is something that we should have done in the past, but now we're being sort of pushed that way as Google will be marking any site that does not use https as not secure. We have not had any issues that we're aware of regarding accounts being compromised, but it is still something that needs to be implemented to help with security.

Secondly, SPAM! We see the reports and work to get those accounts removed as quickly as possible, but it's gotten out of hand. We are running older forum software currently that is no longer supported. As part of the work to help bolster security, we will also be working on getting the forum software upgraded. This will require a lot of work to get the forum software upgraded as well as working to get the theme changed back to something that would fit in with the site look better.

The initial plan is to get the forum software updated properly with a generic theme, then work to get the theme modified gradually to get the look we are going for. This will allow us to get the software and basic features upgraded, giving us both additional security as well as helping to block spam bots further by being able to implement ReCaptcha.

Until that work is done, we are looking in to changing how user registration is handled. This would include making a user click a link to confirm their account before they can log in. We wanted to try to avoid any possible hurdles to registration, but I feel that there are enough accounts out there that require both that it wouldn't be a great inconvenience to implement this feature.

Because of the nature of the work and the work itself involved, we will need to do the forum upgrade and the https work first. We can then do work with new features, theme work, or other pieces being implemented, but we need to get the initial pieces in place before we start work on new stuff.

Also on the table is a reworking of the Android app and getting it published back on the Play Store. But that's taking a little longer than I would like, just because of a lack of time to really dig in. It is something that I would like to have happen to both modernize the app a bit as well as add in a few features.

Now, what we need from you is some feedback. Is there anything that you would like implemented? Any concerns about how things are going?

Thanks again, everyone, for helping make RF Generation one of the best places to be on the Internet. And, as always, don't forget to keep it on channel 3!

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