And so it begins...

When I became a part of the oc.at staff, the site already contained a living community of over 2000 members. The site was based on the popular vBulletin Forums software, the NewsPro News-Script, and a tiny CMS for its articles. The problems the site had, were:

- The guests visiting the Frontpage often ignored the Forums, because there was only one Link in its navigation pointing at it.
- The regular members spent their time in the forums only and missed the content that was published at the Frontpage.
- The vBulletin software is indeed a nice piece of software, but lacks important features a user can expect from a modern web application.

So the primary task was to integrate site and forums, giving the forums a chance to aquire new members trough the content on the site, and offering our members a comfortable way of dealing with the content.

Secondary task was to create a modern forum that offers our regular members more efficient ways of discussion.
Because the vBulletin software is Open Source, we had the option to simply take the forum and adapt it the way we need.