If you haven't visited Self-Storage Talk today, you're in for a bit of a surprise when you log on.

Today marks the first day of the new design, or “skin,” for the forum, and you might notice a few aesthetic and functional changes.

First, we tweaked the color scheme to rid the pages of the blue-gray horizontal bars. The new design is much more chic and less headache-inducing. Second, we added a search field to the top-right corner of every page (for logged-in users). There are now two ways to search the site for content—the newly formed box and the navigation bar's “search” link, which carried over from the old site.

Speaking of the nav bar, it has been rearranged as some elements are new and others have gone away. I encourage you to check out the training link, which leads to Inside Self-Storage's education arm, the Self-Storage Training Institute.

Also notice that the left side of the every page features a constant updating list of the five latest posts. However, for a full list of new, unread posts continue to visit “New Posts” from the nav bar.

There are other minor site changes, but those are the highlights. Have a reaction to new skin? Visit the ISS and Self-Storage Talk News forum and look for the thread asking for feedback. We want to hear what you think and to see if we need to make any other changes to improve your user experience.

If you're not an SST regular, there's no better day than today to log on to the site and start participating. Come peruse the forum, read a few threads and then register. The best way to greet the new skin is to christen it with a wave of new community members.