When it comes to making images, you can do a great job with 13-year-old (or even 130-year-old) technology. When it comes to technology for online discussion forums, though, the same doesn’t hold true.

APAnet, APAdigital and APAmotion are invaluable resources for many of our members, but they’re based on a Yahoo! Groups structure that’s pretty antiquated by web standards. And what worked back in the year 2000 (where we had only 52 messages for all of December, as opposed to more than four times that in the same month in 2011) is exposing some serious shortcomings with heavier usage today.

Fortunately, there are much better alternatives available. Even better, taking advantage of those opportunities has considerable benefits — like the ability to post images! — for all of us who rely on this tool. Take a look at some of the features of the new forum:

Improved interface with better organization of topics

Image posting – a particularly important feature for photographers’ forums

Better search capabilities

Combination of all APA forums on one easily navigable site

User-editable posts — make a mistake? Fix it without having to repost

Threaded posts, removing the need to quote original posts & streamlining the board

Private message function, allowing users to follow up discussion off the main board

Option to subscribe to threads, so responses are emailed to you directly

Option to subscribe to entire forums, so all posts in that forum are emailed daily or weekly

Dynamic signature lines — if you change your sig line it updates all posts past and present with the new info

You can see it all by visiting the new forum here.

Start Now but you’ll need to register in order to post and to take full advantage of all the features, but all the forums — which together provide all four of our core values of Activism, Education, Inspiration and Community — can be viewed without registering.

We look forward to hearing your thoughts on this much-needed update. The improvements were carefully selected based on user feedback and input, so we hope you like what you see.

Thanks again for being an essential part of American Photographic Artists.