Probably, you’ve noticed a few changes around here. Some of these changes were badly needed for many years now. Most importantly, standardizing on a somewhat modern and readable design. That is something that I should have done a very long time ago. Some of the colors used here were so bad, I’m not really sure why I picked them, except that myself and about 1/2 the web design community was using a lot of orange then (1999). Also, there was a darker shade of cyan that Netscape was quite fond of back in their good old days (1995-ish), so was I. For some ungodly reason, I combined the two. While it was unique and it definitely made this site stand out, it was simply a horrible combination that was difficult to read for long periods of time. Given the amount of content that is on this site. I owed it to myself, my wonderful contributors, and to you as readers to make it better. When the poor design of a website gets in the way of good content, well… it’s just a shame.
While on the subject of the amount of content, you’ll notice that things are organized a bit better and categories are now displayed. The search feature works much more quickly and accurately than it used to, nothing against Google, to be sure. Hopefully, if you’ve come here to find a specific post, you’ll be able to find it much easier. You’ll also notice that the recent comments list is still there, as it was. Additionally, you’ll see an “unread comments” section. Some of the original links to older posts here are permanently changed. A few (100 or, so) of the older posts and comments did not make it in the data migration to the new system. So as a result, some posts will just not exist any more. It was a problem that I was struggling with and decided it shouldn’t be a barrier to the upgrades any longer. Also, I’ll be slowly pruning the archives of posts and comments that are no longer valuable.
For now, until I can be sure that I can protect paxtonland from comment Spam, only registered users can comment. In a couple of days, I will open comments to the public that will be moderated. Finally, when I can be sure that I’ve secured everything as much as I can, I’ll open comments and trackbacks back up to the general pubic.
Update, 4/5/05, 6:25 PM, EST:
Comments are temporarily open to the public for testing. New user registration is closed for the moment. To my regular readers, thanks so much for your patience through this upgrade.