For several years now I have been one of the moderators on the Digital Photography School website. It was running on an increasingly outdated version of the VBulletin forum software, which exposed it to the problems of unfixed security problems and inability to consider plugins written for more recent versions of the code. Finally it got upgraded this week and, well, it will take some time to get used to.

Some things are prettier, some perhaps a bit more ugly and the main challenge is that it will take a while to pick up all the information clues that have changed their position or appearance. I wonder how it will feel in a month’s time? That is surely the acid test of a user interface. Anything new takes a while to get used to and feels uncomfortable by virtue of being different. A good design quickly establishes itself, as you grasp the logic of its design and find it familiar with relatively little time or study needed. For me, the jury is still out on the DPS upgrade but it was overdue and I will give it a little longer to settle in.