Over the past 10 months we have been working behind the scenes on a completely new Nexus site code. Because my code was not up to professional standards the premise was really simple, I've hired on 2 great programmers, and in order for us to make the most of the quality of these coders we needed to rebuild the site code so we had a strong base to push off from. We haven't added any new functionality or major changes, in fact, by the time we're happy with the code we want the site to look and behave exactly the same (apart from one or two bug fixes and small improvements).

Think of it like you would a house: You have a house. It has 2 bedrooms, it's old, decrepit and falling apart. You want a better house, with more rooms, an extension, a conservatory and lots of mod cons on the same patch of land. You can try and build on and extend your old house, but it's likely that at some point all the new extensions and additions you make to the house will make your old, decrepit house fall in on itself from all the load and burden you're placing on it. You don't want your house to be held together by sticky tape and band aids, or be afraid of it falling down at any moment! So what you do is demolish the old house, reset the foundation and rebuild the house brick by brick to your new specifications. That's what we've done. We've rebuilt the site brick by brick, but better, and with massive room to grow.

Before we roll-out this new code we would really love your help in testing it out. We want you to jump all over it, and try out all the features on the site to make sure they work exactly like they do right now on the Nexus sites, because as much as we test it, there are things that you do that we don't! And it's impossible for us to test every eventuality. To that end we have setup a Beta Site which is a mock-up of TESNexus. It is using completely dummy, test data. This means all the data on the site, and anything you add or change will NOT be live on any Nexus site and you're safe to test things with test data without having to worry about affecting the general operation of any of the Nexus sites. Feel free to add, upload, modify and delete to your heart's content because it will not affect any of the content available on the Nexus sites.

The beta site should look and behave exactly like the current sites. We haven't made any major changes to the looks or functionality of the sites, so it should be practically like-for-like, and if it isn't, it's a bug which we need to squash! If you find a bug then please use our bug tracker to let us know and we'll get it fixed ASAP! So please, take 15 minutes out of your busy schedule to help us beta test the new code, because the sooner we roll-out the code the sooner we can start adding some really awesome new functionality to the sites.

This beta test is important as it enables us to iron out bugs before we roll out the code to the sites. If we don't know about a bug then we can't fix it, and you'll come across it on the live site (which might have worse implications!), so help us to help you!

So hurry up and help us ensure the transition is as smooth as possible by using every feature you can think of on our beta site.