Well, I'm very opposed to using three exclamation marks in a thread title (or, indeed, anywhere) but if there's one place I feel I can let myself slip it's when announcing the 10th anniversary of fwfr. Yes- 26th October, 2009 and this succinct corner of the web is officially 10 years old. Huzzah!
Now, as some of you might know, I've been away from the site quite a bit working hard on the new site and was really hoping to have that finished (or at least usable) in time. Unfortunately, due to assorted issues popping up over the last year, this won't be the case. There'll be a change to the home page and logo and of course the cakes will be back, but as much as I'm desperate to see what you make of it, the new site isn't yet in a place where you can all play around with it.
However, I don't want to leave you all hanging with nothing to show, so I'm going to post a few screen grabs up here tomorrow (consider it like Coming Attractions) to give you an idea of what's in store for fwfr before the year's out (barring any more delays).
Meantime, I'd like to thank you all for sticking with fwfr, be that days, months or in the case of some here, years (which I think is truly a rare thing in web site terms) and continuing to fill this site with your four word goodness. I may have put the game out there, but it would be nothing without anyone playing it.
Cheers one and all and here's to another 10 great years with this huge silly tiny idea...
I'm a bit afraid of the changes, though. Apart from the MERPs not making very good decisions, I like things as they are.
Yep, I figured there'd be some uncertainty to the change (I still recall the dislike of the changes I made to myfwfr years ago). Unfortunately, the code is now very outdated and difficult to improve- something that's inevitable if you don't want the site to disappear from search engines. My plan is to introduce it on a separate URL and listen to peoples' feelings on things to further refine it. I'm not going to just flip the switch one night- it'll be a slow rollout which I hope most will see as a considerable improvement on the current site.
On the most part, it isn't a massive change anyway- the design is cleaner and more professional looking, a lot more is done in the same window to speed up things and a few things have been added. The biggest thing is that the code is much better designed and consistent and allows me to modify and fix it much more easily.
It's birthday time for me and one of my best friends today (U.K time ... tomorrow U.S. time). Happy birthday FWFR! I'm 46, FWFR is 10, and I've been with her for 6 years. TOP THAT SHIT ROMAN POLANSKI!
Thanks for hooking me up benj!!!
BEST PART OF ALL: I don't even have to change my screen name this year!