As the Developer, I wanted to offer a little insight that might enhance your experience here. This site was built around three major software components. All three components have been customized, and then integrated to create what you see here:

• The Registry function (registration forms, user profiles, database searches, reporting, etc.) utilizes a software package called Community Builder. As the name implies, it's designed to help implement many of the tasks common to community-based websites. Community Builder has been extremely popular, highly adaptable, and very robust.
• The Forum is built on another application, called Kunena. (The name, oddly, is Swahili for “to speak”.) You may even recognize many of Kunena's features and functions, since it's widely used on many sites – including several with 30,000+ users. So it should certainly be up to the task here!
• The overall website framework is a state-of-the-art Content Management System (CMS) known as Joomla. (Are you starting to get a feel for how obscure these name references can be?!) Joomla has been continuously enhanced over many years, and is used by companies such as Citibank, Harvard University, IHOP and MTV.

Perhaps what is most interesting about all three components is that they're all “Open Source” applications. Developed by a team of mostly volunteers (highly-talented, to be sure, but volunteers nonetheless), they are made available – and supported – free of charge. With the growth of non-proprietary software such as Linux, applications that are community-developed and supported have moved convincingly into mainstream computing.

I thought it very appropriate for a website created by volunteers and maintained by users to be built entirely with Open Source software. I hope you'll appreciate the symmetry of that, as well. Enjoy!

Don Potter
Garnet Design Group