You may have noticed that I've changed a few things in the forums over the last week or so. The colors are a bit brighter, and I've added some different graphics and emoticons. On the back end, I've been doing a few things as well, but most users won't notice. The back-end work involves looking at moderated threads, complaints about threads, and a few other things like that. Summer was busy for me (as it usually is), so there were a few hundred different things that I needed to look at.

So, a few things I want to work on in the future, and some of these are just thoughts or ideas and aren't guaranteed to show up in the forums:

• Adding a database of practice test scores compared with official test scores. (Inspiration: Practice GMAT scores vs. Real GMAT scores)
  
• Adding a forum for post-academia life, i.e., a career forum.
  
• Adding a forum for parents who are researching information for their children. This is much more in line with what we do at TestMagic in the Bay Area (of California), so it seems like a natural fit.
  
• Adding a function for people to track which schools their applying to, see who else is applying there, and get updates when results or information comes in.
  
• Add some kind of function to verify the identity of posters. For example, is that guy really an instructor at Manhattan GMAT?
  
• Add some functions for people to buy and sell test prep material.
  
• Add some functions for people to form study groups.
  
• Add some functions to encourage people to give feedback on the essays that other people have written.
  

These are the main ideas for now. I'll continue to work on the 'skin' of the forum to make it more visually appealing. I don't understand why vBulletin just cannot make a nice skin. I don't think they've ever had an attractive, professional look.

Any thoughts? I'd love to hear. Seriously. Please comment. :)