Originally Posted by: 6strngs_2hmbkrsdude, I don't have that "today in the forum" menu on the side! I've got a bunch of adds on the right, and just lessons on the left! no fair! if I've got to have menus on the side, why can't I have useful ones?

yeah, you get ads if you aren't a High Bandwidth Subscriber.
I think what Jon's trying to do is make the forum look more like it's a part of the site as a whole. Up until now, a lot of people haven't even been aware that Guitar Tricks is anything more than a forum (hence the reason why we get constant questions asking "where can I find such and such lesson".
I think the formatting problems will get fixed eventually, there's just some initial teething problems.

I think another thing you guys have to realize is that in order to stay afloat, Guitar Tricks has been forced to become a pay per use site. Otherwise it would have been too expensive to run. Up until now, for instance, we've been paying out of our own pockets to post lessons.
Personally, after 6 years of doing that it was getting to the point where I was getting ready to quit, and move my lessons to my own site. (where I would have been charging a lot more than 5 bucks a month)
Right now, the only way to attract high bandwidth users here is to advertise and make people aware that the rest of the site exists.

As far as the text and tab portion of the lessons disappearing... the reason for that was the pending legal hassles with the music industry shutting down tab sites. We've had to make it so that the tabs are only accessible to paying customers because of copyright problems. The only other option would be to license every song which would mean having to raise the price of high bandwidth access to a lot more than five bucks.

As for the forum, it's always going to remain free. The only difference is that it has to be redesigned to look more like it belongs on the Guitar Tricks site, and if you aren't a paying member, you'll have to put up with some advertisements.