Well, now that we found a topic journalist, the next most important thing is a server admin and/or a reliable local hosting facility. Here is the link to the official request for a new home/help.

We are desperately seeking a server techie to look at the sites server and tweak it so that it runs better/faster. The site code base has been optimized considerably and it can be optimized a bit more, but I think perhaps I have the server settings wrong as I have no idea what i am doing with the server when it comes to scalability, memory management, etc.



We are really desperate here for server help, because there are a lot of new features that are waiting to be released for the site, but server optimization needs to be dealt with first.

We could also just move the site to a local location where (e:paul) is not in charge of serevr amdininstration. Right now it is housed in Vancouver and I would prefer to have it in Buffalo. We currently pay about $40.00 month, so we would be willing to match that on a local entrepreneur who can match or beat the speed we are at.

To make it a little easier, we also own a nice dual 2.6Ghz xeon server that we could use if anyone has a colocation facility in Buffalo.

>>Posted By: paul >>Updated By: paul 06/21/05 23:21 >>Updated By: paul 06/21/05 23:21

Everyone should try out fast mode, if you are using firefox or IE 6.0 - you can enable it in your prefs. It allows the journals to load really fast from the top twelve list using xmlHTTP so that it does not have to load the entire page each time. There is no guarantee it will work for you, so if it doesn't just go ahead and set it back to disabled in your preferences.

If you are in fast mode, you will see a little yellow and red lightning bold in your top twelve list.

I also added another little xmlHTTP fucntion to load the user names into a a little box when you click on the (?) next to the number of epeeps. This lets the number and names update more frequently, yet conserves bandwidth.

--update -> this has been changed slightly. Fast mode can now be toggled using the lighting bolt/turtle switch in the top twelve list.

We met the new topics author at spot today. I think that topic articles will make an interesting and exciting contribution to the site. Basically, the idea being that we start an online magazine of sorts with articles about lifestyles, music, food, events, etc.

We haven't decided on a format yet, so at the beginning the articles will appear as another journal but in a different color in the top twelve list. It will slowly be migrated to a new system that looks more like a print magazine. Other peeps will be able to link content into their journals. So say, the topic is Thursday in the square. The

She also expressed interested in possibly doing a talk radio show and video interviews. If anyone else is interested in participating in this, feel free to contact (e:paul)

We are especially looking for people interested in on the street interviews. topic author might report about who is playing, information about the events, etc and then journal writer who attended trhe event can link to the article with their own media content. I plan on added more mobile features to accomplish this as well.

>>Posted By: paul

I upgraded the comments system to include email alerts. This makes it easy to find out when someone posts comments on old journal entries.

By default, when someone leaves you a comment, the comment plus a link to the journal entry are sent to your email. If you would like to turn off this feature, simply open up your preferences control panel (the red switch ico) and switch the comments notifcations to no.

Currently, you can also click on the pink question mark in your control panel to see a list of all comment made on your journal.

I also redid the help files for the user preferences. You can just search for preferences in the help module.

>>Posted By: paul

I redid the send blog system that you can use to send the blogs to other people. If you would like to send an entry to another person via email, simply click on the envelope at the bottom of any entry and fill out the form. The entry along with any images and a message from you will be forwarded to the recipient.

Also, as I mentioned on my journal before, I redid the jump... box so you can type either a user_name or a user_name,id (if you know the specific entry IDyou want) into the who box. If the specific entry is not found, the next closest one will be displayed. For example, try typing news,640 in the who.. box.

You can also use the jump box to search for dates

e.g. terry,05/04 would give you terry's latest 10 journal entries in May 04

e.g. terry,05/18/04 would give you terry's latest 10 journal entries that are from 05/18/04 or before.