So much to show you in the new site, which I’ve been working on all morning again, and so I thought I’d write a quick article to describe all the new features. Some will come and go, I want to see what you guys think to them, but the majority will stay.

• New Look Site - obviously the biggest change is the style of the site, the new black background is designed to show off those photos, and the featured post slideshow will be used to highlight articles to everyone on the front page.
• Latest Photo Article Thumnails – take a look at the bottom of the front page or the biopedia and you will see the latest articles listed with their photos (I’ll try and remove the tiled effect), hover over them to see a quick excerpt of the content.
• New Header Menu – the new header menu will give quick access to the new social functions on the site and other commonly used features.
• Recent Activity - look under the community menu header and you will see the Activity option.  this is a quick way to see all the recent activity on the site in one glance.
• Status Updates – From the Activity page a Facebook style “status” can be used to quickly tell others what you’re doing or where you’ve been, or some quick news about sightings.
• User Albums – Each user now has an Album page accessible from the top menu (My Account -> Album) so you can quickly upload individual photos, other users will be able to comment on your photos if you wish.
• Groups and Group Forums – Will this be a good addition, its something I’m not sure on. I’ve created a few groups with easy to use discussion forums, so users can quickly post and get peoples opinions on topics that aren’t suitable for a new article.
• Friendships – another feature I’m still testing the usefulness of, but you can add friends and quickly see their most recent activity at the click of a button, useful for when the community gets into the thousands.
• New Advanced Profile – Update your profile to let people know about yourself and what interests you. You can also upload an avatar (image of yourself) without needing a Gravatar (My Account -> Profile -> Change Avatar)
• Private Messaging – This is now more integrated into the above features. You will be notified of new messages  when you log into the site on the menu bar.
• New Media Uploader – those of you who submit articles will find the new functionality useful, in the old place where you uploaded images you can now drag and drop images directly into the upload screen to add them.

and all the old pages and functionality is all still there!

Explore and enjoy the new functionality. I started a new forum post in the new groups where you can let me know what you think. See if you can find it and let me know what you think