I will be doing a major upgrade to the forum software very, very soon. WHEN I do, the forum will be shut down for a while. For how long depends on whether or not I'm successful in building and upgrading a test environment first. If so, then I can play around and do my fixes while you all go happily about posting. If not, I'll have to work on the production system. We'll see.
When I'm ready to do the upgrade, I'll post a thread and a global announcement on the forum. When I turn the forum off, I'll also post a message about it on the main home page of the website.
Wish me luck!