So the only people that have seen it are probably the IRC regulars. Heheh...Anyway, I've been working on setting up a new design, and a new entry posting system, and stuff. It's not complete yet - still some missing links, only the main page and entry comment pages are using the new design, and some minor things that aren't quite finished. But I think it's good enough for now, and having it not quite complete might get me to work on it some more.
Yes, there are Google text ads on the sidebar (assuming you don't have them blocked by something like Adblock for Mozilla Firefox). However, if they ever generate any income, it will be used to help with hosting costs (currently $20/mo USD, and paid up until March 2005 thanks to previous donations). So, if anybody is feeling particularly generous, feel free to help out marpirc.net and the forums by donating (donations go directly towards account fees at Dreamhost).
Note that there are no immediate problems or concerns about hosting, and I only mention it because people might not be aware or have forgotten
As for the main marpirc.net page, I'm open to suggestions for new things. It keeps ending up not being updated for months at a time, or longer. Hopefully we can start doing things with it more regularly.
Also, a note to people doing things like hosting pages for MARP competitions on external sites - I can easily set up a web account like knockout.marpirc.net, or something. Then we have an easy to remember address, and not have to worry about lost pages! Plenty of disk space and bandwidth to spare.
The forum software will be updated sometime after phpBB 2.2 is out. With all of the modifications currently on here, it's far too much work to bother with minor updates for 2.0.x (the version listed on the bottom of the page doesn't accurately reflect the actual version - security patches do get applied).