For the past few days weeks months, Alternative-Internet.com has been in a state that can only be described as “Out to Lunch.” The main page consisted of a single image explaining that while the main site was down, the forums were not, and, while they forums were online, they were somewhat quiet, and without their usual visual style (actually, they’re still without that – I’m getting to it, though). As for the rest of the site, all of the stories, articles, poems, and art galleries – all were missing, or at least, out of easy reach.
However, those dark days are over, and we’re back! Sure, we’re not completely back yet – the stories and galleries are still in-transit – but we’re on the brink! The main page is here, and the other pages and sections will follow shortly. Plus, there is already a nice little bundle of brand new content waiting to go online both in tandem with the sections returning and shortly after they are all up. Yay!
For those of you who are interested in why we’ve been more or less offline for so long, allow me to explain: from the start, Alternative-Internet.com has been rather… disorganized on the back-end. There was very little system for keeping things together, and as such, a lot of our content was a bit muddled, hard to find, and hard to update. In addition, we had no back-end system to speak of (with the exceptions of the blog, which was previously powered by Google’s wonderful Blogger service, and forums, which are powered by the amazing punBB system), so both changing/updating old content and adding new content had to be done manually.
The idea of adapting a back-end was tossed around a few times with various conclusions, however none of them ever resulted in us actually implementing anything. That is, up until a few months ago, when we did a test run of a Content Management System called Textpattern.
The test went very will, and the whole staff liked it, so we decided to make the switch, and Alternative-Internet.com went out to lunch.
Until last night, when I finally stopped dragging my arse and fixed the last few kinks in getting the Alternative-Internet.com design into out testing Textpattern set-up (in addition, a few other kinks in our design have been fixed, including a problem with out colours in Internet Explorer), and the design was, at last, done.
Then I called Mike and ended up talking all night long and not putting us back online.
But now it’s done. We’re back online and ready to start cranking out the classic Alternative-Internet.com content you love, with all the same attitude and fun we’ve always had – with plenty of new plans and surprises thrown in for good measure!
So that’s it – there’s the story, minus all the gritty details. If you read it all, I commend you – I don’t have that kind of patience. If you didn’t, that’s cool to, but why are you reading this bit?
One final note – this is it, I mean it – you may have noticed that our blog’s name had been changed from “This blog is not pornography” to “This Blog is Not Clever.” This comes at the request of a few of our visitors, who have voiced concerns about our use of the word ‘pornography’ so prominently on our main page. Taking this into consideration, and weighing out everything, I had to agree. While I’m sure some of us (myself included) will miss the old blog name, I believe it is necessary to discontinue using it. No – the “word of the day” episode of News of the Future will not be next to go. We’re still the same Alternative-Internet.com. Sometimes you just gotta’ give a little.
More soon – until then,
Patrick J. Simmons
Webmaster, Alternative-Internet.com
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