So I’m sitting here checking out Steve’s shiny new forum blog site thingy, while at the same time watching Martha Stewart’s Apprentice show. My initial assessment… good job Steve, bad job Martha.

Let’s face it, people watch the Apprentice with Donald Trump because it has a sense of corporate culture. There’s a cutthroat sort of business vibe behind it all. Martha’s show… well, it’s kinda like home economics taken too seriously. It doesn’t have a business slant in the same sense as The Donald’s show, and I can’t see any business minded people really digging it. The demographic seems to be women who shop at Michael’s and Hobby Lobby. I could be wrong… but I seriously feel it’s trying to be way too dramatic about foofy things. Last I checked, the ratings seemed to support this critique.

Anyways… great job with all the work Steve. You have become a coding master!

Say hello to LA for me. Go ‘SC!!
- rob

Well, gents and gams, here it is. The love of over two weeks of labor. Headaches involving such arcane essentials as CSS, MySQL, PHP, and .htaccess files have all been hammered together to create this new and, I hope, attractive ranting platform.

I am very proud of this beast. Too proud. I should be locked away, I’m so proud. I am especially tickled that all the old Wren Forum posts are here, as well as the comments. This took a lot of work, and I want to thank Ben Lee for his help on this. He got the dates properly converted from one data type to another, which was challenging.

New and exciting features include: A Forum-only search box (it won’t find who wrote something, though—use the Wren Writers area for that); RSS feeds for new posts, new comments, comments to specific posts, or posts by specific authors; TrackBack, which allows you to create a link to and from your own site; Permalinks, so you can link to a post for good; Archives by day, month, author, and more; Multiple pictures per post; and on and on.

ANYONE can comment on posts, but the new format requires that anyone wanting to write actual posts register for an account. Really, all this requires is a user name and an e-mail address, and you’re good to go. For now, as soon as you register and receive your password e-mail, you can post. If security becomes an issue, I may have to add an approval step, but I hope to not have to do this.

If you see your name in the Wren Writers area, it means you already have an account and can write posts. (Click on your name to see everything you’ve written!) I’ll be sending out info with how to log in later today—if I have your e-mail address. People like Rodney, who I know only through the forum, will have to ask me for their info or create a new account and I’ll port all their posts to the new account (though this is hard to do, so please e-mail me). You can e-mail me at a.stevelek.000@mac.com if you want to get the info privately. (Put [The Wren Forum] or Groovy in the subject or it won’t get through!) If you want to write posts and have not written before, just click Register in the Wren Control box, and you’ll be done in no time! You can change your password and all info once you have an account. Your e-mail will never appear anywhere on the site.

Many other topics are covered in the FAQ page. The link is under the Wren Forum banner logo.

I have many things to tweak yet, but the Forum is good to go. Have at it! Have fun! Try it out! Put it through its paces! And please let me know if you have any comments, issues, problems, or chocolate.