Altered Alterations

A dedicated Altering Time news blog is now live! Here you will find updates and thoughts on Altering Time, Faith, the Forums, and other site features. For those who have been watching, it took a few steps to get here:

• 2002: Sarcastic News blog launched
• 2004: Engineering Faith news blog launched
• 2006: General (mostly tech) commentary blog launched, merged with Faith blog
• October 2007: Commentary blog merged with old Sarcastic News and spun off into Antipode.
• November 2007: Altering Time finally gets a dedicate site news blog, restored with old Faith news

Before, some Altering Log readers would be bored/annoyed when I went on about non-AT topics, and some would be bored/annoyed when I went on about AT. Now I’m free to go on about my AT-related dreams! Topics I’d like to cover here soon include the Forum upgrade to phpBB3, when is Faith going to be finished, and a site redesign I have in mind. Stay tuned.

As you may have noticed, I’ve been making some changes around the site. The first of these was the blog, which you’re, uh, likely aware of. Things here have been going well so far, and this section is already comprising a substantial amount of the site’s traffic. But enough blogging about blogging - on with the show.

Homepage revamped - Give it up for a new homepage that comes up for logged-in visitors! Now featuring the last 20 items that changed from across the site, it lists the category and age of each. The previous model is still available for those who aren’t logged in - showing the newest item from each category is great for site newbs, since it helps them find what the site has to offer. The new edition effectively removes the need for the “Posts since last login” feature once used to watch Forum activity. Now you can log in and out with reckless abandon! There have been claims that it could look better, such as that it’s too cute or too plain. We rise to the challenge, and will keep at it to make it the shiniest and improvediest homepage ever.

Smilies bank cancelled - This summer, simplicity is the new cyan. You’ve been demanding less features, and we’re going to give it to you! The bank of yellow smilies that used to peer at you eerily whenever you were writing a Forum post have been shown offstage. Not only were they distracting, but they encouraged, well, using smilies. One of these things was not like the others. AT isn’t “just another forum” for 9 year olds - this is Altering Time, the most noble of alteration forums. Simplicity reigns supreme, and you get your dollar’s worth.

Spam spammed - Have you noticed buttloads of spam recently? Each moderator has been deleting at least one butt worth of spam posts daily, which amounts to maybe 3 buttloads a day on average, which is roughly equal to damn annoying. But wait! A suggestion has come forth: a feature where users’ first post can’t be a new topic. Not only would this stop a lot of spam, but it would be completely free of cost! On the other hand, it would inconvenience some newbs, potentially stopping them from joining the fray. On the other other hand, it would inconvenience some spammers, and we hate spammers even more than we love newbs.

Redesign philosophized - The “other guys” might flagellate themselves by doing a huge all-at-once redesign, changing every colour and every line in an orgy of rewriting. Not here at AT: every change is carefully calculated to titillate in the most subtle and refreshing ways. Expect these sort of piecemeal updates - it’s the way of the future. For example, the gradients that gracelessly fade white to black on either edge of the page shall be slain in due order.

That’s it for this episode. Don’t miss the next episode, slated for some completely undetermined time in the future.