The new site software is called Mambo and it is a much more full-featured and mature product compared to PHP Nuke. The drawback of PHP Nuke is mainly that one person controls and develops the software and so it reflects his interests/biases. Mambo is a large team effort and has an extensible architecture where new features can be built and added easily.
Here's a rundown of what you will see differently by area:
Front page:
There will be a new look to go with the new software. It is intended to be more subtle and less likely to get questions about what the site is about from people looking over your shoulder than the old look.
The most recent forum posts will appear on the front page as well as the 5 most recent stories. AR alerts will apear on the top left corner of the front page (and all other pages in the site).
Stories
The Stories section will change the most. Finally, the stories will be viewable alphabetically by title or by date submitted or by most recent added. You can click on an author's name and see a list of all of their stories. There is a excellent search for the stories section with lots of options to narrow your search.
The stories section is divided into familiar categories (AR, AP, AR & AP, mental AR, Infantilist). There are also genres available to label a story as being part of a particular universe (altered fates, SRU, etc.). Warnings (Strong Sexual Content, etc.) are available and will popup before the reader can see the story - they have to see the warning and click OK before they can move on. A rating system similar to movie ratings is in place (G, PG, X) and X pops up a warning before you can see it.
To submit, authors will create a story and then add chapters to it. Stories show whether they are complete (the author selects a checkbox to mark it complete). For now, you have to be a registered user to submit a story. The reason anonymous users can't submit directly is that authors own their stories. The author can add to, edit, or unpublish their stories with no administrative intervention. I am working on how anonymous users will submit. I think a discussion forum for that purpose would work best. Then a consensus as to whether a story should be officially added can be determined.
For formatting, authors can add html formatting to their stories - it isn't actual html code but special tags like [b][/b] to affect the presentation of the story. Last, but definitely not least - images can be easily added to stories now! The URL of an external image or any image in the image gallery can be added into the body of a story.
Images
This probably changes the least, although the software behind it was upgraded. Now new submissions will appear on the first page of an album (in other words, albums will be sorted in reverse chronoligical order). The gallery software is better integrated with the overall site software. I am working on getting the latest image submitted to appear on the front page but so far it doesn't work correctly with the latest version of the site software. That should be coming in the future.
Discussion Board
Another area with a fair number of changes. Finally, you can see the same discussion board in threaded or flat style. It can be saved as a user preference and always appear the way you like (see below on user profiles). There is a Karma system for registered users.
News
The news will be limited to site announcements and AR alerts. I am also thinking about promoting a featured story on a regular basis and it would also appear as news. The news function allows images to be included.
Miscellaneous
There is a weblink and FAQ function, but they are pretty typical and don't add anything new compared to today.
Member's Only functions
Registered users can submit and manage their stories, submit weblinks and news. They can also send Private Messages to other members.
My Details
Users can edit the profile data including avatar image. They can also set their forum preferences like flat or threaded, their forum signature, etc.
My Stories
This is where your story submissions are managed, but it also has functions for non-authors. You can choose favorite authors or stories and links to them will appear in this section, so if there are stories or authors that you return to again and again, you can just add them here and not have to bookmark.
That pretty much sums it up for now. E-mail me at Heidegger@ararchive.com or post your questions here or on the discussion board.