Those who have been around on CR for awhile may have seen Coral Collector. It is an area of the site set up to be able to not only show off your coral collection, but also provide information to others that are researching corals to add to their collection. Coral Collector 2.0 improves on the original by providing a tighter integration with our forums and a more familiar/easier interface to be able to navigate and post.
You can search for corals by type, color, etc. The search is mostly driven by drop down boxes...with a simple click of a drop-down menu you can narrow down your coral search and find out who has a coral you are interested in as well as care information and pricing information.
As an example you are looking for a zoanthid, your not sure of the name, but you know it is primarily pink. Simply select zoanthid and pink and the corals meeting that criteria are displayed. You can also search to see if anyone has frags available for sale...or that may be open to fragging their colony.
In addition, their are fields where you can optionally input how much you paid for the coral. The idea of this is to provide a pricing guide to help when members and guests are researching corals.
When entering your corals, use the photo upload tool to include at least one photo of your coral. This photo will be shown as the thumbnail for the thread. You may include additional photos using the standard [img] tag.
I want to thank members of Team CR...they have been a great help with providing input on all of the site features.
So to bring this all together so it makes a bit more sense...Member Showcase is the category of forums that I feel gives members an opportunity to show off their systems, livestock, skills and talents.
Member Showcase is currently comprised of these forums:
Tank of the Month
Member's Reefs
Photography
FishFinder
Coral Collector
DIY Projects & Plans
Articles
Product Reviews
It is likely that we will continue to expand this area of the site. I think these forums are the crown jewels of CR. The content in this area of CR demonstrates the enthusiasm our community has for reefkeeping and also provide an environment for learning from each other.