This will be the first major change to the Lithosphere design since we launched the community less than a year ago, and we all know how much everybody loves change. 
So I want to give everyone a brief orientation to things you should expect to see that are different.
First, let me tell everyone that a lot of thought and effort was spent really trying to push the envelope of community design and demonstrate what can be done with the new tools available in the platform. But by no means should we consider this a finished product! Our vision has always been that the Lithosphere should shift over time as we achieve some of our of objectives and start to focus on others. In many ways, a big part of the new platform introduced in the Winter '09 release is increased flexibility in what can be done, and we fully intent to take advantage of that over time! But as we experiment, we will be looking to all of you Lithospherians to provide us with the feedback we need so we can improve!
So with that in mind, here is the first few in a series on the upcoming changes to the site:
New main page & tabs
Today we have 3 main areas of the community: Learn (blogs), Discuss (forums) and Suggest (ideas). On the new site, each of these will be highlighted on the front page carousel, and have their own site tabs with a unique look and feel. We also will be doing more to highlight these areas throughout the site, so they are visible no matter how you arrive at the community.
Board structure consolidation
As we discussed previously, we will be doing some board consolidation to concentrate activity - after the move there will be 2 public boards and one private one:
Public:
- Growing Successful Communities: all ongoing posts in the Managing, Developing and Square Pegs boards will be moved here for ease of location and discussion.
- Lithosphere Feedback: The existing board will remain, with a simplified name. This board is for feedback on the Lithosphere community itself (not Lithium products, that's still Ideas). So examples would be feedback on all these changes we're planning right here.
Private:
- Customer Connection: Existing private customer content will be moved to a single board to consolidate activity and make it easier to find. As a private board, it will only be visible if you have been granted access (in other words, you have to be a customer).
Other categories:
- Events: will remain unchanged and accessible as before.
- Archive: will remain unchanged and accessible as before.
That's enough to chew on for now - more to come in the next few days. If you have any questions, suggestions or concerns, let me know in the comments or via private message!
Coming up next time:
New blogs
New avatars
RSS everywhere
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