Hi all, It's probably become obvious that I don't keep up on my Linuxchix mail as often as I should, and for that I apologize. My only excuse is that I'm usually hip-deep in other things, including: 1. building a brand new Linuxchix site 2. wrestling with PHP 3. work (as usual) 4. a couple of other projects (OSWG, dria.org, another brand new secret project that will be done in a couple of months, etc.) 5. spending a lot of time at the dentist (hoorah) 6. actually trying to relax a bit (as some of you know, I burned out a while back and have just recently started to get back into the swing of things) 7. playing far more Baldur's Gate II than is probably healthy ;> Anyhow, all excuses aside, I have been working on the new site, and it's coming along quite nicely now. When it's unveiled it will include the following features: 1. user accounts 2. personal weblogs (a la advogato.org) 3. profile pages that you can create and update without any intervention on my part 4. chapter pages that you can create and update without any intervention on my part 5. a slashdot-esque news and announcement posting system (no comment system, however -- that's what the mailing lists are for) 6. a wikiwikiweb for random sharing of information (ie: FAQs and such) and so forth... At this point, parts 1, 3, 4, and 5 are mostly done, 2 has to be implemented, and 6 is simply a matter of dropping in phpwiki (with a bit of customization thrown in so it matches the rest of the site. There are plans for even more and better features in the future (book reviews, software reviews, etc), but those will come in time. I'm hoping to have an alpha-testable version of the site available sometime in the near future, but I'm not exactly sure when that will be. Sooner rather than later, at this point, which is a nice change :) I've been promising a new site for a long time now, I know, but I wanted to pop in to assure you that I am actively working on it. When the new site goes live we will also be moving linuxchix.org to a new server. This new server is a co-located machine hosted at rackspace.com. It's not free (by any means), and I'm currently paying the costs out of my own pocket. If you would like to help defray those costs at all, I've created a Linuxchix.org Collectible Mug series over here: http://www.cafepress.com/linuxchix/ For each mug purchased I get a small profit (about $2.50 after I sock away the taxman's share), which I will use to help pay for the server and bandwidth fees. If you have any suggestions/ideas for the new site (and/or for different mug designs :), please send them to me at [EMAIL PROTECTED] I'm terrible at responding to mail, but I do read everything that is sent to me directly (that isn't obviously spam :). In particular, I would like to know what you think is good about Linuxchix as it currently exists, and what you think is bad or needs improvement. The more feedback/ideas I get, the better...many of you are more active in this community than I have been lately, and I'd really like to know what you think of it all. Thanks a million for your patience and support. I'll post more news when it's available (especially when I need people to alphatest the new site :) Finally, a heartfelt apology to everyone who has emailed me but has never received a response. I really do feel terrible about it, but if I responded to all the mail I got in a day, I'd never manage to get anything else done. - deb --- Deb Richardson (aka: dria) --- [EMAIL PROTECTED] http://www.dria.org ---------------------------------- _______________________________________________ techtalk mailing list [EMAIL PROTECTED] http://www.linux.org.uk/mailman/listinfo/techtalk
