Fixed the Captcha on the Gallery for public comments (it wasn't working before). Links Settings page no longer needs to reload when a setting is changed. Changes apply instantly without reloading the page. There is a new option to use AJAX for the details popups as well. The Forum, Gallery, and Links now generate Search Engine Friendly (SEF) URLs. Weather code has been optimized and loads faster. The weather module also remembers which day you were viewing when it auto updates. News system auto updates are faster and most of the processing happens with no noticeable impact…

The Site Authentication has been optimized and rewritten as a module. This simplifies management of the site - with a minor speedup. The Weather System has always allowed searching by city, but now it handles "city, state" as well. The "more quotes" page now has 15 random quotes, and a quote search function. The News System has improved the time display in the list, and has an auto reload feature. By default, it will auto update the news articles every ten minutes. This setting is configurable. The Home Page and News System both have improved image preloading on them…

The news system has received another round of updates. What you'll see: new smaller loading indicator, cleaner display that shows more articles (alternating row shading & rows slightly closer together), enhanced article parsing to reduce wasted screen space, articles selected by clicking in row (not just article title), background highlighting for article selection, article time display goes back 24 hours in headline list, time display in article (xx minutes ago) now calculated when browser loads (not when feed loads), better use of accent colors. What you won't see: simplified…

This update completes the most critical pieces of the new news system. Your settings are now saved. Any options configurable in the news system will be saved in cookies on your computer. Category filtering now re-queries the database to return as many matching articles within your limit as possible. For example, if you want to view 25 articles only from World. The new system will query the top 25 World articles. The old one would have only displayed the World articles out of the top 25 of all articles (maybe 2 or 3)…

The News System has undergone another modest update. The search is now always visible. The tool icons were updated. Articles that were opened now remain open when searching and refreshing news. There is a Close button on the right side of any opened articles. The "Please Wait..." dialog is nicer. The article count is now at the bottom of the display. I have more changes planned... :D

I have finished my first update to the new news system. By popular demand, clicking a news article displays it right below the headline. Try it and see... the power of AJAX, yet again. With the layout change, I was able to up the default number of articles from 20 to 25. I also took this opportunity to change my website to HTML 4.01 Strict. This will have a positive impact on those using IE on Windows, as the site should be more consistent with Firefox and Safari.

The updated news engine has made its way into production. Sure, there's still a bit more to be done... but, it's already so much better than what was there before. It's been a while since the last update. Since then, there have been many minor updates (mostly security related). What do you think of the new news system? Let me know.

The Themes have had their first update in quite a while. The forum had a color change, the gallery has been themed to match, and the rest of the site has had small updates to tie them together. The new image item on the home page now rotates among 10 images. If you are logged on, it includes pictures that are only viewable to registered users. :)

It's been a while since I've done any work on this site. Mostly because I've been working on other sites. :P I've got a few things that I want to work on here... The news system will be one of them (I haven't forgotten it). New Today: Forums and Gallery are linked! That's right, one login for both systems. This will streamline using this board and gallery. It also allows family members to post in the forums using only the family login.

Webmail received a major update today. It now has a preview pane that is enabled by default. Check it out, to see what I mean. Meanwhile, I'm working on a news aggregator to replace the javascript feed on the Home Page. Work is moving slowly, but the end results will be fantastic.