Your auto-user-creation plugin will be greatly appreciated!

As for the upgrade...I just performed the upgrade you're considering and it went very smoothly. Really, the only issues I had to deal with were converting my skin to work with 1.6 (that took about 10 minutes) and then recreating some stub files (that took about 3 minutes). Other than that the upgrade process for b2e is very straight-forward.

thanks for the feedback, another question if i may, is the 1.6 actually stable or is it says just alpha...? i would rather go with the latest obviously because of the features of 1.6 but i'm just a little concerned about 1.6 not being stable enough. how have you found it??

Well, I've only used it for 1 day so I can't speak from experience. But judging by the messages posted here at the forums there really haven't been any show stopping bugs that I've read about. It's probably a safe bet to grab, although it sounds like you're running a big operation.

The only issue is you may have to re-install a month or so down the road when the next version comes out. But the installations are really not that painful.

yeah it is a fairly big thing. to start there will be at least 100 users with blogs to start, but that is likely to go up to 1000s when site is finished after the new year...

the reinstall isn;t much of an issue if i can do everything via plugins, but i have a feeling i will be doing a lot of hacking.

speaking of plugins do you know of any docs on creating a plugin and the plugin events. I know there is that test plugin but it seems like there aren't that many events there...?

Ok it is stable, i've been using it for 1-2weeks, but if you have modified skins, or got plugins there is quite a chance that they will fall over and die in 1.6.

I would recomend having a test setup, install 1.6 on it, and see if all your plugins work with it.
For the skins you can check out a tute made by EdB here:
http://forums.b2evolution.net//viewtopic.php?t=6227
It will guide you through upgrading ur skins.

But if you wait 1-2months, there will be many plugins and skins for 1.6
All the developers have already made the change which was quite suprising for me to see the progress of the skinning reach how far it did.

Heres the 1.6 compatiable plugins page:
http://plugins.b2evolution.net/index.php?cat=16

Heres the 1.6 compatiable skins page:
http://skins.b2evolution.net/160.php

So once you get all the plugins and skins going again, i recomend upgrading.
It's faster, and allows developers and the users to do sooo much more, with even less effort.

Edit:
From me... i will never use plugins, they are still rather limiting in what you can do... but that is most probably because i have no idea how to use or create them.

And as for the actual upgrade installation, it is a breeze, click upgrade and its done.

Ta for that info. I shall give it all a good read.

I've also managed to find how to ask for eventTriggers to be installed which is good. I'm well o nthe way to create the auto blog generation plugin already.