Marija Vera has very kindly selected some portraits of 18th century gentlemen to add to our avatar collection, so if you feel like you could do with a new style here on the forums or would just like a look, visit your profile (via the user control panel - ucp.php?i=profile&mode=avatar) and navigate to the gallery labeled "men".

Thanks Marija!

P.S. If anyone else has some potraiture they think would make a nice addition to the gallery please feel free to let me know either by PM here or via email - editor@marie-antoinette.org

Thank you Adrienne, you did a great job!

You may have noticed avatars popping up where there were no avatars before ... this is because the board has been modified to show the picture of topic authors and the last person to post to a topic, so your avatar is more important than ever. If you don't have one, visit your profile page and navigate your way to the avatar gallery to choose one from the list or to upload your own. If you need help send me a PM and I will walk you through the process

Why the change? I find it quite distracting.

Oh I'm sorry to hear that Fleur ... it has been mentioned elsewhere that the board is somewhat boring to look at and I thought this might be a nice way to inject some additional colour and interest while I continue to work on bringing the forum into alignment if with the rest of the site. If there is general dislike I can easily disable the feature ... please, everyone, let me know what you think.

I find it positive. The site needs prettying up.

I found it quite exciting! I like it and look forward to all new changes.

What a surprise this morning to see the new look! I also think it is a nice change - thanks Adrienne!

Please look into the Top 10 posters of the day and of the forum Adrienne.

On the French forum they're at the bottom of the board index page.

Baron, I have been trying to find a modification that does that for us - so far I haven't found quite the thing but I do have my eyes out.

You will notice that so far I have made a small changes so that visitors and new posts in last 24 hours popping up at the bottom.

I am also looking into a system that allows us to vote on posts and topics ... the more votes the greater a star rating. It will allows us all to indicate which posts and topics we think are the best and sort some of the wheat from the chaff around here . Along with this is a system for giving points or votes to individual members here - if you like what someone has written you can give their post a star and give the person a star. I'm still playing around with this - there is a slight potential for abuse which I'd like to see if I can limit before introducing it, but these are just some of the things I have been looking into over the past few days.

I have also been working on integrating the look of the forum with the main site at http://www.marie-antoinette.org as well, but in the interests of keeping that process as painless as possible I would like to make these alterations to the features of the board before introducing a new template. Each time I add one the templates change ever so slightly and it will be much easier for me to work with a more complete version of the template rather than change everything time and time again. The design process is tricky enough!

Update: So when I should be working hard and dilligently for my employer I have been searching for the elusive modification to display top posters and I think I have found it! I shall install it this evening (outside of work hours) and see if I can get it functioning for us!

That would be good! Looking forward to seeing it and personally I prefer it to a star rating, subjective and in a sense who needs to come here to be praised? The top poster system motivates presence and participation, better in my view.

Thank you Adrienne for the new look of the forum and thank you Marija for the avatar collection!

You're welcome, I am very happy to see that some members used them. Thank you Adrienne for improving the forum.