ezboarders,

Just over four years ago ezboard was introduced to the world as the website that would help people connect. Today, over fifteen million people worldwide have registered and our users are viewing close to 750 million page views per month. While we couldn’t be happier with the popularity of ezboard and the impact it has made on so many people’s lives, it has become clear that our network architecture was not designed to handle such a heavy load. As a result, speed and reliability issues have weighed down our network for quite some time now. More importantly, you have not been given the experience you deserve as an ezboard user.

With that understanding, we’ve been hard at work during the past few months with just one goal in mind: improving your ezboard experience. To do this, we needed to rebuild our network architecture from the ground up. Over the course of next few months we’ll be introducing a series of releases, termed Turns 1, 2, & 3, that will rebuild our infrastructure, fix bugs, and introduce new features so your experience is faster, more useful, and more reliable. At the heart of these releases are three new databases that will greatly alter the way ezboard operates. This new design will be able to support continued growth and lay the foundation for critical new and improved features.

Today we begin with the Turn 1 release (ezboard 7.3) that includes a new User Database and many high impact bug fixes. We hope to have everyone migrated over to the new User Database within the next two to four weeks – the transition from your point of view will be a seamless one. Once complete, we expect you to see a significant improvement in speed across the entire network of communities. The bugs fixed for this release address top issues that have affected your ezboard experience, including ezInbox, ezSupporter, Forum Find, and login problems.

For Turns 2 & 3 you can expect an even greater improvement in speed and reliability, as well as exciting new features made possible by our architecture redesign. In Turn 2, we will be introducing a new ezInbox Database, a fixed price plan for Gold Communities, and a brand-new, in-house version of Image Hosting, along with additional bug fixes. With Turn 3, we will roll out the final piece of our new architecture with a new Board Database. The release will also include a true, in-depth board content search feature that is made possible by the Board Database, a new polls feature, and more bug fixes.

What has begun today and will continue over the next couple of months amounts to major changes to the ezboard network. We have responded to your needs and concerns by rebuilding, not simply repairing the root causes of speed and reliability issues. This new foundation sets the stage for many great things to come from ezboard. Our commitment to you is to build the tools that allow for the best social network on the planet. We will constantly adapt and improve our product based on your needs. We’re extremely excited with the new direction we’re taking, and hope you are too.

Please use this forum to give us your thoughts on our new direction -- a friendly staff member will be here to answer all your questions.

Sincerely,

Vanchau Nguyen
Founder and CEO