Our first community-oriented feature:

Two months after successfully launching MacScoop [1], we're proud to introduce the MacCulture Forums [2].

The MacCulture Forums represent the first community-oriented feature for members of the MacCulture Network [3] and its sites. As many of you have requested, you'll now be able to discuss Apple related topics on any of our sites.

The forums' structure is quite simple and generic at the moment. The forums are divided in five main sections: News & Speculation, Help - Support, Get A Macintosh, Specific Interests and Community. MacCulture remains open for feedback regarding the forum's structure and features.

The MacCulture Forums will be available through the navigation menu of current and forthcoming sites that are part of the MacCulture Network. New members, as well as, already registered members of any of these sites will be able to post new threads on the forums.

Registering [4] to the MacCulture Network is very easy and only requires you to provide an email address and a to choose a password. Sites that are part of the MacCulture Network are using a shared user-base, which means that you only have to create one account, providing you member access to all of the sites in the network.

MacCulture "Beta" members:

Members of the MacCulture forums beta-test program which started in April and ended in July 2006 should have already received an email with a one-time log-in information allowing them to set their password.

If you have trouble loging-in or if you did not receive your one-time log-in information, please contact the administrator [5]. Users who registered both as beta-testers and as MacScoop/MacCulture members should use their most recent account.

All the postings from the former "beta" forums have also been migrated to the new forums system. Former story comments might also be moved on the new system.

Members who have posted press release information on our dedicated "Press Releases" forum should hear news from us in the near future. For the moment, you may continue to submit your press releases as story postings.

Performance and security improvements:

By the way, some of you might have noticed that the site is much more responsive lately, even on very high traffic days. We actually have spent some time on analysing our sites' performance and optimizing the servers. We're already studying on a multi server-based infrastructure in case traffic continues to grow at this pace.

Security and spam prevention have also been improved. We're sorry for these annoying captcha-based form verifications that may appear in some forms, but we might need to use them so as to protect our sites from spam and hack attempts.

The spam issue also leaves us with no option but closing the story and forums comments system to anonymous users in the very near future. Creating an account is almost as easy as posting a comment though :).

Finally, we decided to not publish any user list and detailed information in our sites, so as to prevent spammers from collecting your email address.

Thanks!

We'd like to thank you for your support and your feedback on the MacCultrure "Beta" forums and on MacScoop. We welcome your feedback and are open to any improvements to the site. More community features and new web sites are coming to the MacCulture Network by the end of the year and during next year.

Enjoy!