It has taken me much longer than I would have liked to find the time to rewrite the UReddit backend, but I've finally finished it. Right now, there is no visual difference, but more obvious changes will be happening soon. Some of the advantages of the rewrite:

• Security: I've moved to the PDO database driver and use prepared statements, so security is much improved. This is the safest way of interacting with the database and eliminates any remaining concerns about SQL exploits.
• Speed: Fewer, more efficient database queries, extensive Memcached integration, and optimized caching of CSS/JS/images make the entire website load and work faster. All added functionality will be able to automatically take advantage of this.
• Extensibility: The new database structure and codebase are very flexible. Functionality can be easily added without altering the database schema or duplicating code that already exists; this was a big issue with version 2 of the backend and was the main reason that I rarely added new features.
• Open-source: the code for the site is available as a GitHub repository. Contributors are welcome.

Next on the agenda:

1. Website redesign. The current design is alright, I suppose, but it could do with a lot of improvement, both aesthetically and functionally. To pick two easy examples that will be addressed soonest, the catalog is getting cluttered and the class editing page is simply ugly.
2. Added functionality, e.g. more community-oriented features so that the website doesn't feel dead regardless of how much user-to-user messaging/email there is, and more tools for teachers such as statistics on class visitation and easier ways to interact with students.